> Coding is a hard part of game dev. Coming up with interesting novel mechanics or plays on known genres is rather easy but bringing them to life is hard esp the code. Multiplayer vampire survivors but with giant battletech mech customization.

I disagree. Sure, it's hard, but it's much harder to come up with novel and fun gameplay ideas. Once you have the fun idea, it's just a matter of splitting the problem in bite-sized chunks and iterating.

There is no methodology when you are faced with the dreaded blank page problem and need to come up with something out of nothing. Maybe going for a walk helps. Maybe taking a heroic dose of drugs. Maybe trying a few different things and see what sticks. It's a problem that has existed for millennia in all creative endeavours; whereas coding is "just" engineering.

I've been learning game dev the past month, had to learn a ton of maths to do anything, which was still easier than the question "what kind of game do I want to make?" which is still, to this day, unanswered. No 3Blue1Brown video is gonna help here, unlike learning how to do vector maths and what the hell is a quaternion.

I understand the “writers block” but once you do have a vision or idea, it is incredibly hard to bring it into reality. Much like building a product you have to cut and cut and cut due to time/skill/money constraints. I think many people get hung up on “originality” part too much.

Most of the comments lamenting the idea stage come from those who have not pushed past that. Once you do have an idea, a vision, that is when the real work begins. It is also the most difficult. For every completed game no matter how bad, there is a graveyard of thousands of incomplete projects that no one sees. People vastly underestimate the effort it takes to make a complete game.

If you do struggle with, “what kind of game”, go play games. Alot of games. Write about the games. Between the likes and didnt likes, is the kind of game only you can make.

>but it's much harder to come up with novel and fun gameplay ideas

I'm going to give an analogy to fiction writing. You ever notice how seemingly everyone has an idea for a story, but shockingly few of them ever execute on their ideas? Why is that?

Well, it's because the ideation stage is the easiest fucking part of writing a book! Sitting down to turn that idea into reality is a process that takes months/years. It requires a lot of concentrated effort, and a willingness to deal with the fact that your writing skills (probably) suck.

It's the same with video games. Probably more so, because the medium is much less restrictive than fiction writing.

Also, quick tangent on the topic of "novel" gameplay ideas--if you listen to successful creatives, some common advice they give is that focusing on being original is a noob trap. Ideas are cheap in the arts, and most things have already been done. It's the execution that matters, which ties back in to my point above.