alt Hacker NewsIt makes sense. It hard to think creatively when your environment is stagnant. You need some new sights and sounds to kick things along, especially when you’re stuck on something.
I like the story of Shigeru Miyamoto getting the idea for flying through archways in Star Fox from walking through archways in a Shinto shrine near the Nintendo headquarters. It wasn’t from playing other video games or reading about game development, it was just from thinking creatively about his real world environment right outside the office.
I have really noticed recently that a lot of modern media (film, TV, videogames, etc) seems much more based on prior media than on the author's experience of the world. Like everything is now operating at a meta level. It's a little sad.