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If
you read this blog, you can probably guess what I do for a living.
For the last three years, I have been working on computer games,
working my way up from a level designer to a mighty designer and then
even specialising somewhat into Narrative Design.
I make games, I live that dream. I even do some writing, so I must
be doubly-blessed. I have had the chance to pass on my knowledge of
games and writing to students and even to other industry professionals
as an expert in my field apparently. What have I to complain about? I
even draw a wage, so I have a constant income and a secure future; my
manager even mentioned that my job was more secure than his, since a
games company can live without middle-management more easily than
without designers.
The benefits are great too, with company sponsored
paint-balling and karting, activity adventures and even paid sick leave
if you happen to do something stupid like break your coccyx falling
down the stairs.
 What can I possibly complain about? Perhaps it is the myth of the designer that gets to me...
Designers are creative souls with the freedom to make worlds:
Er... Nope. The average designer ends up getting to follow a lot of
very badly-worded 'ideas' by email, which are presented as suggestions
and must be considered deal-breakers if they don't go in. With a week
to go, you might for instance have to suddenly include a disabled
character because the marketing team think the target demographic are
big on equal opportunities. Tough luck if that was not part of the
plan and said character was supposed to be dancing with the player at
the prom, that's just the way it is.
Designers get to see their ideas made into games: Yeah, kind
of. Maybe one in ten of your valuable ideas will ever get approved for
a game proposal, let alone made into a game. When you feel creative
the company will often not want to even think of extra projects (though
I admit that my employer is quite open to new ideas) and when you feel
drained and suspect a case of the 'flu, they will suddenly want three
8-page concepts based on the theme of root vegetables by the end of the
day. If the publishers want games for tweens, you might as well give
up on your epic RPG concepts and pitch a dating sim or two.
There's big money in games: Somewhere, yeah. I think the
shareholders and the publishers get most of it; I am far from minimum
wage, but I am so 'rolling in it' that I qualify for at least two types
of benefits. I doubt anyone in the company is on a salary over £50k,
even the management.
You get to rub shoulders with big names: Huh? The producer
used to meet a few big names and I think I heard that the CEO might
have been at Peter Molyneux's wedding, but the most famous person I
ever met as a designer was the actor who played a paramedic in The Dark
Knight for a few seconds before getting blown up.
Anyone can be a designer, you just need to be a gamer: Not in
any place I ever saw. The world is full of people who have a great
idea for a game (just like it is full of people who have a great idea
for a film / book / TV show) and surprisingly few who can actually
explain it in enough mind-numbing detail that it could ever be made.
You have to be able to pull ideas out of your backside at 11pm on
Friday, awake only because the company plies you with free coffee and
keeps the Relentless well-stocked, that still make sense on Monday when
the publishers are coming to see your designs.
I won't lie; I love my job some days. When the ideas are flowing
and the project is falling together, there is nothing like it in the
world. The only thing better is the thrill of the stage, but that time
of my life is over.
The trouble is that sometimes, all I want to do is
cry and hand the project over to someone else, anyone else. The
storylines don't match up, the combat mechanic is clunky and annoying,
but you know it is all your fault because you designed them and
everyone is looking at you when they can't work out how to complete the
next puzzle or open a door.
You take the rough with the smooth
though. This is not a rant about me saying 'my job sucks', just saying
that some people (and you know who you are) think that my job is amazing and
cannot grasp why I am not smiling even as I finish a 60-hour week and
wave good-bye to the master disc.
It's a great job, but it will still crush you if you let it...
I was actually inspired to write this by a similar discussion at Patrick Rothfuss' blog
which contains some bad language, sexual references and a pretty good
humour if you can handle mildly adult themes. If you are not a child
and/or not easily shocked by people being brutally honest, I recommend
reading it. If you think you can write if you ever got around to it, or if you aspire to being a writer for games,
read it now! The man is certainly on the money...
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One quick example relating to the above. My wife has been a school teacher for years. She has seen her fair share of new teachers who come into the profession with a passionate desire to teach young minds. Unfortunately many of these new teachers quickly lose their passion when they find out that 80% of their job is dealing and coping with the systems and policies around their profession, rather than with teaching students. The same could be said for most professions within large organizations and corporations. You spend most of your time trying to work around the inadequate system, rather than doing your actually job.
The place where designers get to REALLY do what they want is in the indie movement, where there is even less money.
What does a designer need? To an outsider, we are just tossing out ideas and letting the 'real' staff turn them into a reality. The reality is all about late nights, constant redesigns and more paperwork than even the company accountant ever writes. I think RSI is a bigger risk than burnout...
The words "skill" and "degree" are things that have nothing to do with each other. Not exactly. But yes, many people think that.
You have level designers, game designers, multiplayer designers, narrative designers and a shedload more? How is the average Joe supposed to keep up?
You also have a problem/blessing of the subjectivity of our creative work. Everyone is capable of opening up their mind to accept and implement your ideas into their own thoughts, but this means people (co-workers, game communities and even your average Gertrude on the street) have the ability to generate their own ideas. The amount of "You should make a game with XXX and YYY" pitches I've had aimed at me, is maddening! I've only been 'in' the industry little under a year! Which then also brings into light the issue of choosing between ideas and directions - How do you judge an idea against another? How do you choose the right idea to symbiotically sit alongside the existing game features to further promote an aesthetic?
.... why is everyone looking at the design team expectantly? :P
My biggest problem though, is people who assume all 'we' do is play games all day. It's a doddle! .... right!
@Ernest - I agree with you, the indie movement is a great springboard for tighter designer control of direction. But it's sickening how many indie gems just don't get the coverage or exposure they need to survive!
Believe it or not, there are people out there (*cough*) that are fully aware of these "myths" and are willing to accept them as necessary evils. Try working in a position where your only creative tool is Excel. Try working in a position where you DON'T HAVE A DESK. Try working in a position where your "office day" is lunch in the parking lot. Yeah, your job's rough.
If you don't like it, step aside and let someone else (*cough*) take the helm. I think WE can handle the pain.
See Dan's reply to Ernest, the sad thing is, many times that highly-creative environment just doesn't make enough money to survive
We need Mythbusters for the video game industry. "Why are you here, son?" - "I like to play games" = #fail
Just saying you have to take the good with the bad and focus on the stuff that matters.
And thanks for the tip, The Name of The Wind looks to be an epic book..
I love my job! I wouldn't trade it for any other!!
All I was trying to do was highlight a few problems that the job entails, which is the same as any other job. I'm very lucky to be working for a company that takes negative industry working conventions and tries to fix them, find a better way so to speak.
I could highlight all the good parts, but I'd be here all day and you'd probably want to kill me afterwards :D
1. What actually makes a game work is when ideas fit together, and the synergy between them creates an added value. A huge majority of people are blind to that synergy on their conscious level, and they only have a vague feeling of the game being "fun", "atmospheric", "addicting" etc. But they fail to appreciate it when designer tries to take care of it. Hence game development needs to rely on tedious and inefficient procedures involving poorly conducted playtests, because it's nearly impossible to convince anyone to do a thought experiment. It's a hopeless battle, because, unlike software engineering, game design has a strong non-technical component. Simply put, there's no math for "fun".
2. In the world of ideas, being "good" is orthogonal to being a good fit. Choosing ideas based solely on whether or not they seem good means making random design decisions, essentially. And it makes evaluating a designer's job that much harder.
3. Anyone can have a good idea. Sometimes people can have a good idea every fifteen seconds. So there's a surplus of ideas, all of them good, most of them useless because they don't fit. But there's no metric for an idea's "goodness". A significant number of people who don't have what it takes to be a designer actually manage to keep the job, because they can talk fast.
4. People tend to focus on making sure *their* idea makes it into the game. Given how there's no objective metric of an idea's "goodness", and not everyone is a fast talker, the ideas of those in charge tend to make it into the game, simply because they are in charge. Given how anyone can have a good idea, and there's usually more than one good idea that solves a given design problem, it's all too easy and tempting for leaders to keep the creative agency all to themselves. All it takes is to claim your idea is "better", because no one can possibly prove you wrong most of the time.
5. Obviously enough, there's no way to prevent a non-designer in charge of a project from spoiling the game with their pet ideas, or, even worse, their common sense. Ironically, this is not really their fault.
6. Most people define making "their own" game as calling all the shots. When ideas are all that matters, calling all the shots means putting all your pet ideas in the game, even though they may or may not fit together. Many ambitious, creative projects are misguided in this fashion, which dooms them to failure on day one of their lifecycle.
They say if you enjoy doing what you do for a living, you'll never work another day in your life. Well, admittedly some days are less enjoyable (and hence more work) than others, but it's better than flipping burgers, driving a taxi, punching in numbers in a spreadsheet or waiting on customers.
We've all had our share of disillusionment, but rarely do we consider doing anything else until the passion has left us. Designers expand the boundaries of human experience, and it's not many people who can do that. Cheer up. You'll get your chance to lead a team some day, maybe not on an idea you can call your own, but perhaps on one that you'll put enough of yourself into to feel personally vested in.
That's just wrong on so many different levels.
Don't be thankful for what you have; be thankful that you have greater aspirations! If you want to succeed, you'll have to redefine video games as people know it. The question is how. Become the "new voice" of game design. So ignore anyone saying get over it. Don't get "over it", take advantage of it.
I know how lucky I am, working almost no crunch time these days, actually being productively creative half the time, getting taken seriously when I tell my boss 'I think we should try something different' despite the fact that I have three years' experience to his thirty. I have done retail over the Christmas period for practically minimum wage, I have been unemployed and 'signing on' just to make ends meet, I have even worked in telemarketing just to put food on the table.
That said, like anyone in a creative job, there are days when it all seems too much. Some days, I am not feeling 100% and someone will ask me 'what do you have to be depressed about?' because the myth of the designer is just a little too persistent. When I was an actor / director I saw the same thing; people assumed I was doing okay and partied all the time for fun, but people are more aware of the idea that actors can be starving artists.
I have much less to complain about than most designers, but the image outsiders and (worse) students have can be a little depressing.
I never said I like it (as a matter of fact I was hoping the word "bane" would make my intent clear enough), but the point is you can't make a change if you're looking for it in wrong places. Simply asking people to respect your ideas more is not going to work.
In game design, you cannot argue about ideas, because "creative" ideas are arbitrary and subjective by nature. Hence the many pathologies. If you want this to change, you need to shift focus away from sheer ideas.
See, it's working, look at Erik's post >.>
What is design about except ideas? Of course being creative doesn't mean an idea is good. For an idea to be good, it must serve a purpose in an effective manner. You must also be able to justify and defend an idea. You can point to a problem if there is one. But that requires an integrated approach to analyzing design. Any and all design jobs are -idea- based jobs. That's why design is difficult, because few people actually develop an integrated approach to design and don't advance further than "it felt right". Ultimately, though, the designer(s) need to do what they want or else you're left with dissatisfaction (as illustrated by the main post) OR poor design.
Thanks
goerge
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Video Game Design Careers
Totally agree. That's what I wanted to say but lost enthusiasm for trying to explain it long time ago.
In practise, I think this is actually a myth. I think after 10 years of paying dues there will always be more dues to be paid, another year or two, and so on. This is because the people who are top of the pyramid of the industry got there before you, don't want to move on from that, and are too young to retire any time soon. So it could actually be 20 or 25 years before you actually get to be the man with the plan. And the downside of going through that is that by the time you're 45 or 50, all of your best ideas are likely going to be behind you.
On the other hand, what has changed, however, is the opportunities on the edges. Forget console development and C++ and all that old slow stuff. Learn Flash/Actionscript. Learn to make the games you want to make today, or in 6 months from now, or a year. There's nothing stopping a designer from doing that today other than their fear and I think that's where the real wave of next generation big game designers will come from.
The 2DBoy's of today will be the Molyneuxs of tomorrow because they've shown they've got the talent and all the rest is just plugging into a management and production layer. So stop putting off all your ideas and start making them. Now.
Having said that, I also was back to work less than a week after my 2nd child was born. I accumulated over 9 weeks of overtime in a matter of months and, on occasion, came to work in the mornings and left in the mornings---the next day. It can be tough but the rewards are there if you know where to look.
Best of luck to you in what I hope is a long career.
I think the trick is to push; push your limits, push your boundaries and push your luck. I got my break by approaching a studio and saying 'I can code, design and make levels; I can do whatever you need', landing myself a level designer job. I could have just meekly posted my CV around (and I did), trying to sell myself on my degree, but that isn't how to get ahead these days.
I can't talk for all students, but as a student of the University of Skövde (second year) I don't recognise that at all. On the contrary, the atmosphere can sometimes give an hopeless impression. "We're educating ourselves to unemployment", "no designers gets hired" (with more nuanced variations), "its a lot of work with next to no reward" etcetera. Sometimes I can't believe as many are still on the education as it is - but we are, because somewhere we still want to make games, because we all believe in games, either as spare-time, culture/art, state-of-the-art software or something else.
Of course the public still don't know much about game-design, or games at all for that matter, but I'd say that problem's source is the games and not the public. I'm currently writing an opinion-piece about that (being my first article on the site, and potentially first impression for a lot of could-be-important people, I don't dare stepping on anyone's toes or say something misguided, so it'll take awhile).
It is kind of a different matter, but it is good to see that some students are at least being made aware of how hard it is to break in. This is a bad time to try to get into any industry, but too many educational establishments (or their marketing teams) are trying to tell people that they are giving their students a leg up into the promised land.