Already a member?
Welcome to Brazen Careerist!
Emily Ma is using Brazen Careerist to share ideas. Join now to become a member and start networking with Emily Ma and other professionals just like you. Learn more.
Brazen careerist
Where ambitious young professionals connect and grow
Email
Print
Eric and Sandra over at Elder Game run what I consider to be the best blog on MMO game design, and one of the best game design blogs in general.
Sandra just posted a succinct piece of advice about another, possibly too-succinct, piece of advice: "think like a designer."
This is a very important piece of advice, and I've seen many aspiring and even experienced designers fail interviews for being "too playerish" or "not designerly enough." But what does that mean exactly? Here's Sandra's post:
“Learn to think like a designer, not a player.”
You’ll hear this a lot from game developers giving advice to would-be designers. And it’s not wrong … but taken at face value, it leads to being a sub-par designer. There’s no value in mimicing what you think a stereotypical designer would do.
Better advice: “Learn to understand how different types of players (including you!) experience your game, and analyze that like a designer.”
Not nearly as memorable, but way more accurate.
There's still something missing
Sandra has a great point; considering your whole playerbase is very important. I think there's one more detail that both versions only hint at: Think about your whole game. This is implied by "think about your whole playerbase," but it's so important that implication alone doesn't do it justice.
In my experience, taking a high-level view is especially difficult and important for designers of MMOs and other large, multifaceted games. We have so many competing features, playstyles, and subcommunities within our games that it's very easy to get hung up on just a small set.
Here's what "think like a designer" means to me:
Learn to think about your game and playerbase holistically. The classes, features, and gameplay style that you enjoy are only a small part of what is important to the playerbase as a whole.
We spend so much time as designers reminding ourselves to be detail-oriented that thinking of the game as a gestalt is sometimes easy to forget. Balancing between these two competing modes of thinking is what can really make a designer great.
Speaking of more advanced design thinking, I think this advice also comes with a counterintuitive but important corollary:
Learn to recognize which parts of your game and playerbase aren't important. Your favorite part of the game may be something the playerbase doesn't care about, and there are some players who care about things that it isn't in your best interests to focus on.
That may sound a bit mean or negligent, but there's no faster way to game design failure than trying to please everyone. If you can learn to tell what's not important, you'll be a better designer than just about everyone in this industry. Much more on that subject another time.
All this advice rolls off of the tongue less trippingly than "think like a designer," but it's a great point that we often give people important advice without bothering to clarify what our advice actually means.
For more timely, relevant, and engaging articles,
subscribe to Brazen Careerist.
- A New Kind of Business Mover and Shaker
- How To Find a Writing Partner Who Can Help You Achieve Your Goals and Make More Money
- The Anti-Stalker’s Guide for Converting Online Contact into Real World Collaboration
- Continuing Education: Extending Learning Beyond Your Campus Years
- Why You Might Be Better Off Without a Job After College
Comments
09.21.09
Hi Mike,
First, I apologize for my english. I'm still workin' on it.
If I may suggest some hints about Game Design and interviews.
Sidenote : My suggestions do not applies to HR (they don't know the job). That's applies to Leads and Director who'll interview you. They'll understand your langage.
- A Game Designer who's good with Game Design, it's OK. A Game Designer who's understand "why we cannot create an animals and plants real AI in order to make a RPG immersive" it's better. I mean that the Game Designer have to understand if his ideas (even if they are great) will be impossible to put in the game. As the Game Designer have to work with both creatives and technicals people, he have to understand how both works and think. It'll be a great gain of time for the prod'.
You have a "Lead Game Designer" who have to understand both. You have the "Technical Game Designer" who's balancing the game (classes, weapons, spells and such) and make games mechanics works. You have the "Creative Game Designer" who imagine the game, works close to the creatives department and the writter(s).
The title of "Game Designer" is very generic. There some specialities. That's why a computer dev' can become one day a Game Designer (not only based on his dev skills of course) and being a great asset to his team for example.
That's why a Level Designer can become a Game Designer too with enough experience.
This job is wonderful because you're working with everybody and every department. You're working with graphic designer, 2D/3D animators, writters, other designers, developpers, marketing and sometimes even with your administrators.
Great post by the way !
Eric
09.22.09
Thanks Eric. I always have a very hard time describing my job to people at parties =)
09.22.09
Well, I can imagine.
I'm a recruiter and it's really hard to me to make administrators explain what they REALLY want when they tell me "We need a Game Designer".
And it's funny, because I think a LOT of video game jobs are like that.
Look at the Community Manager's job. In the company X that will be only "Forum Moderator". In the company Y that will be marketing, public relation, customer support, a bit of game designer and a participation in production meetings.
I think that the video game industry needs to grow a bit and have "standards" with job's title because atm it's a pain in the neck.
Got Something To Say?
Got Something To Say?
Not a Member? Brazen Careerist is a career management tool for next-generation professionals. Set up a free account today to comment on this post and start sharing your ideas. Learn more.
Login to view your networks!
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
