Every week, We're asked the question:
This is an incredibly complicated question.
One that James has had to wrestle with both vocationally,
and pedago....
This word.
But this week,
We're gonna try to give you the best answer we've been able to come up with.
So, What should you learn if you want to be a game designer?
You ready?
Seriously, Game Design is the art of crafting experiences.
And you'll find yourself drawing on everything you have.
To a great game designer,
There is NO useless knowledge.
But, not all of us have the time to learn everything that ever was or will be,
before starting to design experiences.
So, what should you focus on?
Well, First, you can start with the game designer's single, most core skill.
As you start to build games,
most of you would find that
you have to work with interdisciplinary teams.
Teams formed of people with radically different skill sets,
and backgrounds from you.
If you work on video games,
you'll have to work with artists,
programmers,
designers,
producers,
sound guys,
marketers, and business people.
If you can't communicate the experience
you're trying to design to each of these groups,
the quality of your ideas would not matter
because these are the people that translate those ideas
into an experience that reaches the world.
The tricky part here is how different all these people are.
I know it's a horrible generalization, but I'm gonna say it anyway.
Artists and Programmers have
a totally opposite, diametrically opposed way of approaching problem.
And it's your job to make both of those people share the same vision.
Which brings us to our next point.
And this is extremely important.
A game designer is not the same as a director.
Your job is not to be a dictator:
demanding people to implement your brilliant ideas.
Everyone who touches a game influences its design.
Even if you don't intent from them to.
When your programmer writes a physics system,
the choices he makes are gonna impact the design of the game.
Anyone out there who thinks that
the designer is the guy who gets to decide what the game is,
has some serious desolution with ahead of them before they can excel at this job.
Speaking of common misconceptions,
here's another important tip.
Game design is not the job of creating fabulous stories,
or coming up with concepts for games.
Concepts are cheap.
Every one of you budding designers
probably have 5 or 6 you can pull out right now.
Even if you don't want to get into game design,
probably come up with 1 or 2 game ideas over the years.
Hell, I'd be a terrible game designer but,
even I can come up with 2 or 3.
Not only your game concepts cheap,
but they're also pretty meaningless.
At the end of the day, the best selling franchise of all time
is about an Italian stereotype in hallucinogens.
One of the most lotted concepts of the last few years was,
First Person Shooter,
Anne Ran,
underwater.
Go.
Real game design is a lot of hard-wrote work.
creating systems, mechanics and levels,
Concepts are great,
but if that's what you want to do,
you probably better find another field.
There isn't just any room in the game studio for a specialized, idea guy.
Every game studio is full of idea guys.
And everyone who works there has ideas.
Good ones.
What studios are looking for
are people who can make those concepts to reality.
Another important thing that every game designer has to learn eventually,
is that you are the worst judge of your games.
Especially early on, when you can justify away the flaws,
It's easy to fall into the trap of saying
that people just don't get it because they haven't seen the finished product.
This is almost never true.
Introspection and the ability to take criticism are core designer skills.
Don't let yourself get too attached to your ideas.
Because you'll always be wrong.
No great game has ever, ever sprung fully-formed from a game designer's head.
Games need players.
Players themselves design half the experiences of their play.
Being able to accept that your idea didn't work.
To be willing to give upon that idea you loved so much
because it just isn't working,
and try something else.
These are the hallmarks of a great game designer.
Next, game design is a disciplint.
Just because you played a lot of games or
a whole lot of a specific game
does not mean you're prepared to design games.
Most of the time, designers don't play games.
They study them, and analyze them.
They deconstruct their systems and test all their break points.
A designer who figure out where all the triggers are located,
and then try to figure out why.
They'll reverse engineer the math behind the principle systems.
Designers are as fascinated by what makes an experience unfun,
as by what makes it fun.
Additionally, a game designer must understand the cost of the decisions they make.
Whenever you make a decision as a designer,
what you're really doing is asking people to do work.
That work represents time and money.
And you have a finite amount of work that will ever be done on your project.
Your job as a designer
is to ensure the most bang for your buck.
I know this may not seem like that big of deal but,
this is the number one cause of failed games.
From the giants of the AAA industry
to the small fry hobbyist motors,
more game projects fail because of teams with the poor sense of scope
than any other reason.
As a corollary of that point, understand that no game has ever done.
Never.
During the process of putting your game together,
I guarantee you'll find things you should've done differently,
and discover countless other amazing things you could do.
File those ideas away.
Or, at least realize how incredibly expensive usually is
to expand the scope of your game mid-stream.
Remember. At some point, you must ship.
You can't work on your game forever.
And you haven't made a game unless people are playing it.
On top of all that stuff,
here's a list of many practical skills you'll need if you want to be a game designer.
#1. A high level of technical writing skill.
That's technical, not creative writing skill.
I'm talking about grammar, spelling, and punctuation here.
I'm sure that this isn't a problem for most of you but,
For some of you...
Nah, like I said, we do read the e-mails.
#2. A solid grounding of logic,
#3. Some basic psychology,
#4. Understanding the medium you're working in.
You're gonna be building an electronic game, so
learning the fundamentals of how a computer works would be a good idea.
#5. A solid grasp of mathematics.
At least through advanced algebra.
Those skills will prepare you to be decent game designer.
Now. You want to be a really good game designer,
you'll also need...
#1. A thorough knowledge of literature, philosophy, and myth.
#2. An understanding of world religions.
#3. Basic scripting and programming ability.
#4 An understanding of art principles.
You don't have to be a great artist, but
you do need to understand art.
If you happen to be able to sketch, or throw together a collage on Photoshops,
so much the better.
#5. An understanding of basic audio design and musical principals.
If you have it already, go pick up an instrument.
It's good for the soul, anyway.
#6. A practical knowledge of graphic design.
#7. A thorough internal library of games to reference.
This is where having played a lot of games will help you.
The more games in genres you've experienced,
the more you'll have to draw from.
But most of all, you'll need life experience.
As a designer, your crafting experiences.
You cannot do this without having some yourself.
Knowing all about video games,
anime, or Star Wars expanded universe
isn't gonna cut it.
Go live.
A well balanced, well examined life will make you a great designer.
Last and most obvious of all,
Make games.
If you weren't sure where to begin, you can always start with pen and paper games.
Things you could put together out of chip and poster board.
or, if you're dead set on jumping right into electronic games,
We recommend Gamemaker for the PC owners,
or Gamesalad if you got a Mac.
Both of these programs are free,
have a lower barrier to entry,
and will teach you the logic of a computer
without expecting you to already have a lot of programming knowledge.
Be Brave.
Be Bold.
Create.
Bring us new experiences, and help to expand the language of games.
Good Luck. and See you next week.