What Game Designers Actually Do

[zhai]

A very short prologue: I've been very lousy about actually posting game-related topics since I first set up philomathgames.com. The site also needs a better skin. Largely, I don't say much about games because I've always felt that the volume that I'm learning still dwarfs what I already "know". But I've realized 1) this will probably always be the

Comments

[zhai]

Thanks, Dave. Yeah, you're absolutely right, and one of the things I left out is cultivating the ability to work with all of those design decisions, reward them, and keep them running in the same direction with the central vision.

I'm finding with my current place more than with others that a lot of my job is teaching what I know about game design to the rest of the team. If they throw out a model for a system, I ask how the player will interact with it, and they can usually come up with the better design just through prompting. The other important element is cultivating this further through recognition, so that the rest of the team knows where the design is coming from -- it not only protects against resentment, it creates an environment where people will feel more motivated to bring up and/or execute their own micro-design.

There's also the whole discussion to be had on how design changes when you start getting above a 10 person team, because then you do have lead design, associate design, level design, all of that -- which is a very different dynamic. But I've only worked on a couple of projects that size, and found that I don't like them as much, though certainly they're necessary for AAA, which has its own rush and beauty.

But yes, that imparting of vision is communication, but it brings up a secondary point that communication is really only the first part. You have to not only communicate but convince them that your vision is the right one for the project, because without that buy-in they'll inevitably be making their own game and not yours. We've talked internally about how many projects get out the door really being five or more games trying to be one game rather than one game trying to be one game -- Tabula Rasa being one of the most recent manifestations.

While you're here, what have you liked best about the designers you've worked with, and what least?

Also, how would you glaze a ham? The Jim Beam + maple syrup + dijon mustard I did recently was freaking amazing and I've got another half of a ham to experiment with.