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I am a game designer. I am a game designer. I am a game designer. I am a game designer. I am a game designer. There were times when I used to sit back and look at my career path and wonder how I could possibly be a game designer. What qualifies me as a game designer?
Do I have the necessary skill sets to be a game designer? The simple answer was I didn’t know. I often told people that I understand the language spoken by programmers and artists and therefore have an edge at being a good game designer. However, over the period of time at the ETC I have realized that is not necessarily true. I have seen great examples of game design from people who never really spoke the languages of an artist or programmer. And I have stumbled upon design challenges where I really did not have a good solution.
So I again end up asking the same question to myself, am I qualified to be a game designer? However, now I know the answer. It is exactly the first five statements of this blog. I have come to realize that if I ever want to become a game designer at all, my first step would be to accept the fact that I am a game designer no matter what people may say or think.
I need to gain a level of confidence before I can design games and conquer its challenges. So now that I am a game designer it means I just have to brainstorm and come up with the most innovative and out of the box game ideas and implement them.
I have seen how the games have evolved over the years. Compared to games of yesteryears today they have become more realistic, challenging and bolder. Games have evolved into so many genres and have started to address a wider audience. Each genre has been the brain child of some of the greatest game designers out there.
So do game designers have a characteristic genre? Do we need a further classification under game designers? I believe these questions would have been a lot easier to answer when the game industry wasn’t so big; the period when it was mostly about passion and less about business and profits.
Today a lot of the creative control of a game lies in the hands of the publishers. It reminds me of how cinema has evolved in my native place. There used to be a time when movies were all about creative expression irrespective of how the audience received it. It led to the creation of some ofthe most magnificent films I have seen and they were all well received by the general population too.
Today when a movie formula succeeds you see a hundred others following it. The producers say it is the current trend and this is what will make profits soar. God forbid that the game industry enters a similar situation. The game industry is today a multi-billion dollar industry and the competition has never been so strong.
With so much competition and money involved, the stakes are high and there isn’t enough room for taking risks. A publisher is far more comfortable reusing a successful formula than taking chances with a completely new one. I do not blame them. The industry has grown to the extent that if the cards are not played right there are chances of going out of business, especially when the economy is undergoing a major crisis. As my professor, Jesse Schell, mentioned in his class, the most important skill of a game designer is listening. I believe the number of people a game designer has to listen to these days has increased considerably compared to when the industry was still at a very nascent stage.
So in the end all of this boils down to one question. Can I really be the Game Designer I want to be? Or do I have to mould myself into making games which are improved versions of already successful formulas. But wouldn’t that obstruct my creative freedom as adesigner? Doesn’t it completely shut down the possibility of making a completely new game genre? When Ernest Adams asked what kind of a game designer I was, I replied with a question; does it matter, if I couldn’t be the game designer I am? These are a lot of questions and the answers to them aren’t very straight forward.
Of course I can be the game designer I want to be and of course I may not become the game designer I want to be. There are a lot of factors that go into making a game. Personal passion and creative freedom is one thing and generating enough revenue to keep this process of game development going is another. So there is definitely a line that needs to be drawn between creative freedom and playing it safe. There needs to be a balance between innovation and pragmatism.
Videogames are a powerful media and its recipients are mostly the younger generation; a generation that will run the world of tomorrow. I want to make games which are able to deliver an important social message; games that allow players to experience another’s tragedy or happiness; games that make people think while they have fun; games that teach them to be better human beings. So can I design such games? Well, I could if it strikes that balance between creative freedom and playing safe. And how exactly do I know if the balance exists? Listen; that is the most important skill a game designer can have.
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Great post! I'm going to drop the "aspiring" and just call myself a game designer from now on ;-) I'm in an incredibly flexible MA Communication Studies prog (Baylor Univeristy) that has an awesome faculty with expertise in everything from simulation design (i use that term b/c it covers both "serious games" & their entertainment cousins), to organizational communication, to rhetorical/textual studies (books, films & games as texts), to production/distribution (streaming media, Ultimatte screening, digitial cinema, Sat dist., Cellies, etc.) - The CS MA prog has some overlap with the fantastic Computer Science Gaming Track that has started up recently @ BU.
I feel like I'm in the absolutely perfect spot to become a game designer b/c I can't think of one of those areas that isn't vital to managing modern VG production...Yet I'm still cautious to consider myself an actual game designer b/c of my newbness to it all. It's good to see that someone with obvious intelligence and such a strong background can have the same type of doubts - as odd as it may sound, it gives me confidence!
ps - sry if I sound like i'm bragging, i'm just proud to be in such a strong program. It's them not me!
I wish the "masses" would start thinking a little bit more independently and start researching into games they are slightly curious about and start a great journey out of their comfort zone. I think the problem to, is that there are a lot of indie developers trying to exploit the new software instead of amping and thrashing out 16-128 bit QUALITY work and that's why I believe the indie market has not earned its due respect amongst the mainstream.
Game design is just one more form of communication and expression, sooner or later i am sure your heart will guide you there...even if the financial part is not what you want it to be, your unique expression will be what you want it to be.
Thanks Bjornar! I am currently a student at ETC and Jesse Schell is one of my professors. I had the opportunity to take up his Game Design class and so was able to learn the art of game design from the man himself :) My knowledge and concepts about game design is largely inspired by him. At the ETC we make a lot of games as part of the Building Virtual Worlds and the Game Design class. I have put up some of the game design work that I have done as a team and also by myself in my website. Here is the link:
http://www.johnkolsphere.com/GameDesign/GameDesign.html
What do you think holds many people back from being successful in the game industry?
Frank
I've thought the same thing many times. Unfortunately, this seems a quite likely scenario.
If you look at how fundamentally varied design was even back in the NES days compared to now, it is impossible not to see an encroaching homogenization of game design, as expressed in genres.
Firstly, I feel the game industry is one place where without actually enjoying the work you do, its hard to survive. While making games are fun, there is so much hardwork that goes into it. Every trade, be it game programming, art, sound or design, has its challenges. Looking at the number of jobs out there, a game designer post would probably be the most difficult, specially for an entry level position. Ultimately, it is the game's design which will decide if the game is fun and most companies don't want to gamble with such a position. However, there are exceptions and I know companies which encourage game design internships and also offer entry level game design positions.
Also, there aren't many game companies out there compared to some of the other fields. So the job opportunities it generates is less and hence the stronger competition. The fact that some people do look down up a game industry job is true to some extent. But I guess it largely depends on the geographic location. I come from India and I know a lot of people who think making games is childs play and not really a job. And it is because the game industry is still in its early stages.
In the end, if you really desire to break into the game industry you should give it a shot. At least that way you wouldn't have to say at a later point, if only I had given it a try.
I agree Tim. You really don't gain a title by just saying you are one. You need to earn it. At the same time I feel a person can go wrong no matter how much of an expert he is in that field. Failures are a part and parcel of any profession. For example, I watched this talk that Sid Meier gave at DICE about the mistakes he made as a designer. And you think how a person of his caliber can have an idea like that. I feel in times of failure the belief that you are capable of doing something really helps. And the only way to strengthen that belief is by actually doing it, in our context, designing the game.
Thank you! That is indeed an interesting post you have there. The prototyping really helps in benchmarking yourself. However a bad prototype shouldn't discourage you from making further prototypes. Every game you make will teach you something or the other and play testing lets you know how good or bad your game really is :)
But here's the thing. The people who said I was a programmer and not a designer were referring to level design. The people who were talking about salaries missed the point about why I say I'm a designer. The people who said I wouldn't fit in as a designer were talking about the kinds of design that they do.
At the end of the day, design is something that I do out of passion. I am capable at a variety of things, but design is what strings everything together. Without design, the passion I have for any of the other things I can do isn't there to the same degree.
In my mind, design is a personal thing. I'm not concerned about whether my designs will end up being the next big thing being pumped out of a massive company, because that's not why I do it, or what I even aspire to. The scale of the project is only measured by what the design needs to be completed.
But, as others have said, above all the most important thing is that you create. Whether what you've created is a success or a failure, you learn a whole lot more about design and what you need to be a designer than if you never step into the development phase.