13) I swear I wasn't high. Well, maybe a little.

When it comes to creating art, most tend to come up with something that hasn't done before. The premise is that you really want to avoid being called a plagiarizer.

Video games are no exception. I'm referring to the unique ones with an interesting premise, or lack thereof. For those who can pull it off, they not only have something terribly unique, but they also have a blockbuster hit on their hands.

It all means that when you sit down and try to ponder where these ideas came from, you might as well draw blanks. Some games really take the phrase "I couldn't make this up if I tried" to a new level. That's how creative you have to be when you want to sell to millions around the world.

But of course, you demand examples (SPOILER ALERTS):

Portal: Imagine yourself trapped in an abandoned testing facility built in 1986. Your only companion is an AI voice named GLaDOS that becomes increasingly homicidal as you progress through test areas of the facility. Also, you solve puzzles using a device that opens and closes instant teleportation portals.

Fallout 3: Taking place in an alternate timeline in which the electronic transistor was never invented, you fight for your life in a post apocalyptic Washington D.C., devastated by nuclear war. The entire setting is locked in a 1950s culture with a Cold War that lasts 332 years. Think of The Jetsons, but with atomic weapons.

Silent Hill (series): Protagonists are drawn into an abandoned town that is home to two alternate dimensions: an empty and deserted town with perhaps ten inhabitants, or a dark and hellish nightmare. All the games are depicted as a protagonist's fight against him/herself. Also, you fight humanoid headless teddy bears with giant claws (I'm not kidding).

Bioshock: An underwater dystopian/anti-utopian city of the 1960s where gene manipulation has caused people to make lighting/fire/water/ice from their hands. As the lower classes suffer, a civil war erupts into pure chaos. The citizens who modify their genes suffer extreme mental and physical degeneration. And they all want to kill you. Here's a speech from the beginning of the game:

I am Andrew Ryan and I am here to ask you a question:
Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?

No, says the man in Washington; it belongs to the poor.
No, says the man in the Vatican; it belongs to God.
No, says the man in Moscow; it belongs to everyone.

I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something
different. I chose the impossible. I chose...

Rapture.

— Andrew Ryan

That's my speech when I create a game that involves hyper ninja green space zombies of doom that fight humanity along with a religious alien empire hell bent on human extinction.

Wait, that's the Halo series.

Damn.