So You Wannaa Be A: Game Designer

Admit it. The thought has crossed your mind while playing a game at some
point. Maybe it was a terrible game you rented at the video store, and
you thought to yourself, "I could do this a lot better." Or perhaps it
was a fantastic game that enthralled you for hours, and you imagined
how great it would be to have your name associated with such great
work. Almost everyone who has played a game has thought about what it
might be like to be a designer--for some of you, it might actually be a
lifelong dream to work as a designer in the game industry.


It's no wonder so many gamers who want to work in the industry aspire
to be designers, as opposed to, say, networking engineers. Despite the
fact that creating a game today is a collaborative effort, involving
the work of dozens, if not hundreds, of different people, being a
designer is still the most glamorous job in the industry. Designers are
the closest thing our industry has to rock stars or movie stars,
because their names are the most visible. A select few have even become
household names, at least among hardcore game players. Will Wright and
Sim City. Sid Meier and Civilization. Peter Molyneux and Populous.
Shigeru Miyamoto and, well, countless games. If you read this site
regularly, you almost certainly know those names.


But how many of you actually know what being a game designer means?
What does a game designer do on a day-to-day basis? Some of us might
imagine that all it takes is vision or having great ideas. But it's
much more than that. The days of just scribbling something on the back
of a napkin are long gone, if they ever even existed. Today's game
designers need to be multidimensional. Their job is to make great ideas
become reality, and that involves working with many different people
and understanding the different specialists who need to work together
to create games. Coordination, cooperation, and compromise are the name
of the game.


Even if you know (or think you know) what it takes to be a game
designer, what is the path to becoming one? Yes, a number of
interactive-entertainment programs are popping up at accredited
universities, but there are no standardized tests and no schools of
game design that offer you a clear path to employment. Today's game
designers learned their trade and rose up through the ranks via the
school of hard knocks.


Rather than read about what we at GameSpot think it means to be a game
designer, you'd probably be more interested in hearing from people who
actually do it for a living, and do it well. We got in contact with
four of the industry's most accomplished and well-regarded game
designers and asked them about their jobs, their career paths, and what
advice they have for those who might follow in their footsteps. Read on
to find out what being a game designer really means.


"A great
idea is meaningless. A great idea that leverages your existing
technology, gets the team excited, is feasible to do on time and
budget, is commericially competitive, and, last but not least, floats
the boat of a major publisher... Now you have something."
-- Ken Levine

How did you become a designer? Can you tell us about the career path you took?



Chris Avellone: At age 9, I was playing an exciting game of
boomerang baseball (catch-return-catch) with one of the kids in the
neighborhood when he told me about some bizarre game of pretend with
rules, called D&D. This was shortly followed by seeing another
friend playing Bard's Tale 2 on his Commodore 64, which solved the
problem of wanting to play D&D without having anyone to play with.
So I designed dungeon after dungeon [and] sent a lot of crappy
submissions to Dragon magazine, Palladium, and GURPS
that were sent back with dismissive form letters. Eventually, I wore
down the patience of some Hero Games guys and wrote some pen-and-paper
Champions supplements for them. The pay was pretty lousy (when it
happened at all) and didn't do much for a feeling of security in the
grand scheme of things, so I asked the editors if they heard of any
"real" jobs in gaming, to let me know.
One of the editors was in touch with Mark O'Green, who was head of
Interplay's Dragonplay division, so I went out to interview with him.
Mark asked me some hard questions (the answers for which ended up
becoming the basis for Torment), but in the end, he figured I was worth
a junior designer salary. So I took the job at Interplay and drove
cross-country to begin my computer game designer career at Interplay
Productions. From there, I worked on most of the Black Isle titles
until leaving to help form Obsidian Entertainment.
So the short of it was, I was doing freelance game design for a
while, did some pen-and-paper supplements, then used that to get a job
in computer game design. It wasn't a bad way to go, but it's not the
easiest.


Cliff Bleszinski: No one just falls into the position. You claw,
kick and scream and push your way into it. Most designers start off as
programmers or artists. They understand gameplay systems; they live and
breathe games. From my perspective, I was making my own games,
programming them, doing all the artwork, the production, level design,
and everything because I didn't have anybody else to do it for me. That
background helped give me the perspective it takes to pull a product
together and have a creative vision for it. Being a designer is about
having a creative vision and adhering to it.



Ken Levine: I had always been a gamer. But I became a game
designer pretty much by accident. I started my career as a
screenwriter, rewriting a really terrible script for Paramount when I
was just out of college. That career didn't last very long... If you
want to get a good idea of how the industry works, observe Jeremy
Piven's agent character on Entourage. It makes the games industry look like a church picnic.

I bummed around during most of my 20s doing a wide range of things. I
was a computer consultant, a graphic designer, a magazine writer, a
playwright. You name it. And then I got hit by the "I'm almost 30!"
panic and decided I needed to figure out what I wanted to do when I
grew up.

I noticed an ad for game designers in an issue of Next Gen
magazine at Looking Glass, the company that had made two of my favorite
games of all time: Ultima Underworld and System Shock. I answered the
ad, and around a week or two later, got invited to fly up to Boston to
interview. I got hired around a week later. My guess is they were
unduly impressed by my brief flirtation with Hollywood, as this was
back in '95, during the whole Hollywood/video game/full-motion-video
fiasco.



Akira Yamaoka: I joined this industry as a sound designer.
Before video games, I worked on other sound-/music-related projects. I
thought that working as an employee for a corporation would be good
experience, because even if you were to work as an independent sound
designer, your clients would be corporations. So that's why I joined
Konami. Now that I have gained experience, it may be time for me to
move on. :-)


A lot of people think
they want to be game designers but don't have much of an idea about
what the work entails. What exactly does a game designer do? Tell us
about the job, both in a general sense and on a day-to-day level.



Avellone: The duties of a designer vary from project to project
and from game genre to genre. I can tell you what Obsidian designers do
on a day-to-day basis, but even that varies depending on the month and
milestone. Keep in mind there are a lot of different types of designers
(systems, level builders, technical designers, writers, area designers,
lead designers, etc.).
As designers on Neverwinter Nights 2, the job is to take the chunks
given out by the lead designer (Ferret Baudoin) and flesh them out.
This generally involves doing a lot of area overview work, drawing maps
on paper or in Photoshop, writing all the dialogues and quests, making
creature lists for the areas, placing objects and critters, building
levels in the editor, and proofreading/play-testing each other's work.
You also do a lot of jumping up and down on implemented designs to see
what breaks. If you've ever done a NWN module of your own, then you'll
understand what we do on a day-to-day basis firsthand.
As lead designer on Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith
Lords, I was responsible for keeping the vision for the game, the game
mechanics and the "fun" of the game [and] the overall story (and any
specific elements about the game designed to propel the overall story,
such as companions, key locations, etc.), and then breaking down the
remaining elements into digestible chunks for the other designers--in
terms of area briefs and area overviews ("this planet is X, the
following things need to happen on it, etc., etc.")--breaking up the
mechanics and play-balancing ("I need you to oversee the feat and class
advancement systems, as long as they accomplish the following goals,"
etc.), and then managing all the parts so programmers, artists, and the
producer are getting everything they need to keep moving.
As chief creative officer, I do all the design tasks assigned for NWN2
(see below), plus oversee all the design at Obsidian, provide feedback
on documentation, help out with vision docs and product pitches, talk
with publishers, and try to make sure the design team is well-fed and
their litter box is changed.
There's a lot more than that, but all of it stems from the points above.
Bleszinski: Here in 2005, as the industry
grows, we can't just think of our games as games. We have to think of
them as, the term being lobbied around is, "transmedia franchises." You
can't just think "how are we going to make the best video game
possible?" You have to think, "how is this going to appeal to a large,
mass market audience? How are we going to turn this into a phenomenon?"
Halo is a phenomenon. Grand Theft Auto is a phenomenon.
On a day to day basis, it's a combination of writing, playing,
and working with the talent you have available. You're trying to come
up with a general idea of what a game system is going to be. You're
creating game systems that interact in an interesting manner but you're
also creating a universe. So it's technical as well as creative. "Who's
this dude? This is the flamethrower guy, and he smokes a lot." Or,
"this is the bioweapons guy, and he has cancer and that's his shtick."
So you take your angles and you figure out how they can create a
compelling universe. How are these gameplay systems going to interact?
Is the chemical guy going to be able to shoot out something that the
flamethrower guy can leverage? Is that going to get hooks in people's
brains? It's not enough to create cool characters or systems. It's
about seeing how it all merges in the end.
You're constantly under pressure to deliver something that's
not only compelling, but also relevant, something that matches gamers'
expectations on what they think a game should be about. You also have
to be aware of the competition. I know designers that don't play other
people's games or pay attention to the gaming press or even real world
news and what's hip and cool in pop culture. But it's part of your job
as a game designer to stay up-to-date on all those things. You can't
just lock yourself in a room and create some random thing. You have to
be big picture.



Levine: Game designers have a weird job. At root, it is their
responsibility to ensure that a game is fun to play. The problem with
being a game designer is "fun" is an extremely relative term. I
remember playing Midnight Club 2 recently on the Xbox and thinking, "I
could never design this game in a million years." I have no idea what
makes sports games fun. But for some reason, I have some insight into
what makes strategy games, shooters, and RPGs fun...probably because
they're the kind of games I enjoy playing.
The challenge for a designer is that until very late in the development
process, you can never be positive you're on the right track. And
sometimes you never know. For instance, I'm the last person in the
world who could tell you if System Shock 2 was scary. When you design a
game, you know what's around every corner, which completely
disqualifies you from judging a critical component of any game design:
defying the player's expectations.



Yamaoka: There are a lot of professions in game designing, like
planning, character design, background design, programming, etc. And
each field has its unique requirements. To be generic, a game designer
has to think of how to "entertain." Utilizing the hardware, a game
designer has to create a way of entertaining the fans, and also keep
his/her style unique from other competitors every day. You have to
think about entertainment, using your imagination every moment in the
vast world of video game contents.



"I was
making my own games, programming them, doing all the artwork, the
production, level design, and everything because I didn't have anybody
else to do it for me."
-- Cliff Bleszinski

"Game
designers have a weird job. At root, it is their responsibility to
ensure that a game is fun to play. The problem with being a game
designer is "fun" is an extremely relative term."
-- Ken Levine

How does the reality of being a game designer match
up with what your expectations of the job were in the past? Was it
about what you expected?



Chris Avellone: It's pretty much the same as doing pen-and-paper
design, except you have to think more visually and you have to be much,
much, much more detailed in your designs. Oh, and it's a lot more fun
than I thought it was.


Cliff Bleszinski:You go from being a 16-year old kid sitting in
your mother's house doodling and making what you think is cool at the
time. Then you wind up getting a sense of the big picture and what
gamers want, and what's considered hip. I turned 30 this year, and I
talk to 18, 19, 20 year olds and I already realize there's a very
significant gap there between what they like, and what I like and grew
up with. Ultimately you have to make the games that you want to
play, but you have to be also aware of the big picture and adjust for
that. That's the biggest difference between being young and wanting to
be a game designer, and being older and getting a perspective. You have
to find a balance between those two.



Ken Levine: I remember being really surprised to learn about how
technical game design was. A lot of people tell me: "I've got a great
idea for a game." Frankly, who gives a crap? A great idea is
meaningless. A great idea that leverages your existing technology, gets
the team excited, is feasible to do on time and budget, is
commericially competitive, and, last but not least, floats the boat of
a major publisher... Now you have something.



Akira Yamaoka: There was not much of a difference between my
expectations and the real world of game designing...although it was
surprising that you have to communicate with a lot of staffs outside
development, like sales and marketing department, etc., in the course
of game production. I realized that many people in different fields are
involved, from when a game concept is born until the fans get the
finished products in their hands. The scale of a game project is
enormous.



Question: How does the designer's contribution to a project evolve
as the game comes together? Do you write the design document and then
let the rest of the team figure it out? How do you involve yourself in
the process?



Avellone: We're working on Neverwinter Nights 2 right now (most
everyone at Obsidian is, although we have 10-15 people working on our
next project, which is not a sequel). The way design usually works is
that we blue-sky a vision document for the game's key features and fun
factor. Then we make it more realistic, turning it into a "creative
design doc" that the programmers break down into a schedule.
This creative design doc is revised, cut up into smaller pieces, each
piece is detailed, and then it is passed off to another designer to
fully flesh out. And this process is repeated until every aspect of
design is covered and handled. The story and area design works much the
same way as it did on KOTOR2. We take the overall story, chop up the
planets and systems design, pass it off to individual designers, then
they flesh out their planets and quests and make them game-ready.


For Neverwinter Nights 2, I'm responsible for all the companion
dialogues for the game, writing major non-player characters (and lesser
ones), doing the vision quests, balancing and implementing influence
mechanics, critiquing area designs, helping out with writing other
parts of the game, and trying to juggle other manager and cofounder
stuff, like prepping vision docs, providing input on game pitches, and
helping out with designer hiring, looking over design tests, and
[handling] interviews.
I'm also looking over stuff for our third coming project, which is
being headed up by Kevin Saunders (KOTOR2). But he's handling it just
fine without me, so he mostly just humors me and gives me reassuring
pats on the head.



Bleszinski: Going from the original creative vision to what the
game is eventually going to be…it isn't always about making the best
game possible. It's about the tradeoffs you decide on as a designer.
You're making the best game possible with x people, y months, and with z
dollars. It's like playing an RPG where you have 20 points to allocate
to strength, dexterity and intelligence. You can't have it all.

You have to pick, what are the things you're going to do well in this
game? There are three to five things we're going to do that no one has
ever seen, that we're going to do better than anyone else, and commit
to it. You start off with your grandiose design of what your first game
in a new franchise is gonna be. And you have 800 million ideas.
Ultimately you wind up with a fraction of them. If you have enough
ideas, you've got plenty of material for the sequel. If you do a good
enough job on the first game and establish the franchise, you'll have
plenty of ideas for the rest of the games.



Levine: Game development is an extremely iterative,
collaborative process. A designer who sits off in a corner by himself
writing a game design doc is going to be pretty shocked at the reaction
he gets when he gives it to the team to "figure out." Great games are
great because they leverage all the tools at hand: people, technology, design, art, etc.



Yamaoka: We, the development team, hold meetings and spend a lot
of time until we reach a consensus of opinion. We talk about everything
from the promotional side of the game to very philosophical
topics...like "crime and punishment," for instance, in Silent Hill 2.
[We] discussed pain and anguish of a human being until everybody fully
understood their part in the game development. My job is to make sure
everything is shared within the team, from the theme of the game to
individual opinions, so that the team can work efficiently. And this
responsibility will continue until the game is complete.



Question: What do you like best about your job? What are the more unpleasant aspects of your job?

Avellone: I love the fact it's not static. I love the
atmosphere, I like the creativity, and I like implementing the ideas
once the creativity has done its job. The hours can be long, but it's
all worthwhile. In fact, there's plenty of times where you don't want
to go home because you want to get a quest or dialogue just right, or
you can see a way to make a part of the game that much better. Plus,
the people generally are your age and have the same interests, so you
can game with them and talk about nerdly stuff that would be out of
place at, say, the patent office or a local accounting firm. Also, free
soda is good. And movie days.
Unpleasant aspects? I don't know. It can be a little hard to
sell publishers on riskier titles. It's hard not having room for all
the applicants you think show promise. Tight deadlines are a reality,
but sometimes it would be nice to do enough iterations until you feel
it's perfect. But there's no real unpleasant aspects to it, in my
opinion.



Bleszinski: The unpleasant aspects include the lag in having an
idea and finally seeing it realized. Let's say you want to have a giant
pterodactyl in your game. You're not going to see that pterodactyl
attacking people for a month and a half. For that whole time you're
waiting, it's easy to sit there and second guess yourself. "Are
pterodactyls cool? I dunno, maybe it should be a bunny." Then when the
pterodactyl is finally made, you realize "yea this is cool," and people
see it and believe in the vision you have. Maintaining that faith while
you're waiting for ideas to be implemented is difficult. It requires a
good amount of patience, which I often don't have.
The best part is seeing something that started as a random idea
in the back of your head come to life. Seeing customers pick it up and
appreciate it, having people interested in the universe you created.
You feel like a proud poppa when it's all done.



Levine: The best part of my job is nerdy dream fulfillment. When I was a kid, reruns of the original Star Trek
used come on at 6:00pm on channel 11. The thing I loved about that show
was the feeling of how cool it would be to work with a group of people
who were absolutely experts at what they do, who could constantly
surprise you with their creativity and resourcefulness. Also, I wanted
to have sex with that green chick.

When you're on a good development team, you get that Star Trek
feeling. You're surrounded by people who are all dedicated to making
something great. I don't know anybody in game development that goes to
work for the paycheck. They're here because they wouldn't want to be
anywhere else.
For me, the only really unpleasant aspects of the job are
worrying about money and having to say no to people. There's no part of
the game design stuff I don't enjoy. I've been very fortunate. I've
gotten to work on remarkably cool products, like Shock 2, Thief,
Freedom Force, and BioShock. I'm not sure how I'd feel about my job if
I was working on Barbie's Horse Groomer 2.



Yamaoka: Being able to meet people all around the world.






"I love the
atmosphere, I like the creativity, and I like implementing the ideas
once the creativity has done its job. The hours can be long, but it's
all worthwhile."
-- Chris Avellone



"You're making the best game possible with x people, y months, and with z
dollars. It's like playing an RPG where you have 20 points to allocate
to strength, dexterity and intelligence. You can't have it all."
-- Cliff Bleszinski

Question: How big of a role does the available technology play in the execution of a game design? Can you give us some specific examples?



Chris Avellone: Well, technology facilitates design and
storytelling. Just like design, there are only so many programming
resources to devote to tackling design issues, so you have to choose
your battles and scale back your design so it falls within the
technology requirements for your platform (console or PC) and your
programming resources (it's great to have a 50-page spec on how
radiation will work in a game, but it's much better if you leverage the
existing code for poison and save the programmers two weeks of work).
Also, there's the temptation to throw every fun element you can think
of into a game, and this just isn't feasible. You need to use all your
programming assets to reinforce the fun factor and the key design
elements of your game (preferably combat and gameplay), or focus on
tools that allow more people (especially nonprogrammers) to implement
content without taking programmers down.
If I had specific examples, I suppose one I would use is the
ability of lightsabers in KOTOR2 to emit dynamic light. So if you were
in a darkened cave with your green lightsaber, your character and the
cave walls would have a faint green light cast on them, which we
thought would look cool. Examining it realistically, however, we
discovered problems.
One is, you could have three characters in your party all dual-wielding
lightsabers (that's six colors that could be cast at any one time). The
number of possible lights becomes an issue. To fix that, we would have
had to rip out the renderer from the original KOTOR and make one that
does multipass rendering, like in Neverwinter Nights 2 (no small task).
Also, the lack of per-pixel lighting wouldn't have made the environment
look too good, which was the effect we were striving for in the first
place (environment wasn't tessellated enough). With a small team of
programmers in the time allowed, it would have taken much more
resources than the feature warranted, and there were bigger issues to
tackle in the meantime.
That said, technology, in my opinion, has never gotten in the way of
game design. Infocom games are still fun, even without graphics or a 3D
engine or multiplayer. Technology, however, is there to enhance the
design and player experience (facial animations, voice acting,
animations, fully realized world, scripted reactive elements,
physics-based engines, etc.).



Ken Levine: It's critically important, and becoming more and
more important all the time. We've centered a lot of our development at
Irrational around Unreal. That technology is great for first-person and
third-person action and RPGs. I imagine it would be ill-advised to use
it to build a turn-based strategy game or a flight sim, unless you were
willing to make a significant investment in tools.
System Shock 2 was a good example of a title that well-leveraged its
technology. When we started the project, all we knew was that we had to
reuse the Thief engine for the game we were working on. We knew that
engine wasn't as strong as Quake or Unreal in the visual department, so
we decided Shock 2 would focus on character growth and mood.



Akira Yamaoka: More memory allows faster stress-free access to
data, which we owe a lot to the advance in technology. Also, a wider
range in color for the graphics is one of the key factors of bringing
the visuals closer to real life. On the negative side, more capability
also means more-time-consuming labor for the developers. In the future,
we need to figure out a solution for this negative side of advances in
technology.



Question: How has your approach to designing games changed as you've gained more experience in the job?



Avellone: It hasn't really changed. You learn to edit yourselves
more. And the more you get exposed to people who play games and other
genres, you gain a larger perspective on what's fun for everyone. And
interfaces tend to get a lot cleaner. But beyond that, it's just a
refinement of what I started doing from day one.

Bleszinski: I've really seen the value in
iteration. Fun is the sum of its parts. It's hitting the button and
feeling the responsiveness and seeing your character move and jump.
It's pulling the trigger and seeing the nice muzzle flash. It's seeing
the enemy react when you shoot him. It's seeing the enemy react to the
fact that you're trying to shoot him and seeing the AI dynamically
adjust. All these things coming together.
These days we plan a lot more because it costs a lot more. So if I
start out going, "oh we want a character that's a giant pterodactyl,"
then later I say, "no, let's make it a T-Rex." Then thousands of
dollars have just gone out the window. You have to be careful when you
change direction in this day and age. Doing more planning is the most
significant difference in design methodology between being young, and
now having a larger team and more experience.



Levine: I've grown to trust those around me more. I remember I
once heard a designer say that he wished they had a machine that could
literally transform thoughts and ideas into game designs. To me that
would defeat the purpose of working in games: collaboration.
The market has also changed. Certain genres that were around when I got
my start are pretty much gone now, and new ones have evolved. Game
designers who don't obsessively play games are not game designers.



Yamaoka: My approach has changed from creating a traditional
"video game" method to creating content on an interactive media system.
In today's world of gaming, the range of age and type of players has
broadened, so greater creativity is required from the game designer.
One single approach will not be enough. You have to go beyond the
traditional approach of creating video games [by], for instance, making
it into a joint project with other media, like with film and music.



Question: What types of games do you enjoy developing most?
Is it easier to work on certain genres than others? What about licensed
properties, as opposed to original properties?



Chris Avellone: I enjoy working on RPGs, hands down, mostly
because the story and world and characters have a higher importance
than many other games (this trend is changing, however). Any genre is
generally cool: sci-fi, fantasy, postholocaust. I've worked on them all
and enjoyed them. I wouldn't mind doing a modern-day RPG, however.
I think it's more likely you'll be working on licensed
properties in the industry than original intellectual properties.
Obsidian's been lucky in the licenses we've been able to work with
(Neverwinter and KOTOR2), and licenses carry the advantage of having a
tone, world, and parameters established for you from the outset. The
advantage of IPs is you have your own sandbox to play in, and the
approval process is your own.


Ken Levine: If the brand is great, like System Shock, it's a
thrill to work on it. If it's something I'm less excited about, it can
be limiting. I think strategy games are generally the easiest to
design, primarily because you have a mouse, a keyboard, and (most
importantly) a cursor, which makes interface challenges a lot easier.
Deep first-person shooters, like BioShock, are always going to be
challenging to design, because you're trying to cram a lot of
expression into very tight input space.



Akira Yamaoka: I enjoy creating complicated and twisted games.
:-) Games that are, in a way, not suitable for the general
public--[because they're too] surreal and artistic--are very fun to
work on. Licensed projects have restrictions in artistic freedom, so
it's not really enjoyable as a game creator.









"In today's
world of gaming, the range of age and type of players has broadened, so
greater creativity is required from the game designer. One single
approach will not be enough."
-- Akira Yamaoka

Question: How would someone go about becoming a
game designer today? What advice would you give an aspiring designer?
What skills or personality traits are ideal for the job?



Avellone: Here's some general advice on getting into design from
Obsidian Entertainment. Note that this may have been used in past
interviews, but it's our response, because we get this question a lot:
First off, if you're interested in story and world creation, I would
recommend trying to get established in the pen-and-paper game industry
or in books or novels. Game design requires a love of game mechanics,
lists, and tons upon tons of rule sets. If you're interested in
computer game designing, then here's what we look for/what you should
focus on:
1. A love of RPGs.

2. A critical eye for RPGs (and, preferably, other games as well),
including feel, interface, pacing, weapon balance, level design, and so
on. Play a lot of them, and be able to tell what you like and don't
about each game. The more-specific, the better.
3. Good design skills. Not only do you notice the elements mentioned
above, but you can also implement them well. Know and recognize game
clichés.
4. Good writing skills. When not actually arguing and throwing feces at
each other through our cage bars, a large portion of a game designer's
job is design documentation or writing 5,000 e-mails. That means you
need good technical writing skills and an ability to organize your
thoughts. You need to be able to pass a document off to audio, QA,
marketing, the programming staff, and an artist, and they should be
able to find out whatever information they need just by looking at the
document.

If you want to prep for a job in the game design field, I'd suggest the following:

1. Play a lot of games, and analyze what you like and don't like about
them. If you interview for a game company, that'll always be part of
the interview questions. And having smart answers ready beforehand
helps them determine if you'll be a good developer or not.
2. You should play a lot of games, but just as importantly, watch a lot
of other people play games. Pay attention to how the game is played,
especially the interface and menus and the means by which the player
interacts with the game. When you do, you'll quickly start seeing what
irritates players and what they enjoy. Keep a running log in your head
of successful ideas used in games, and what made them work.
3. If a game comes with level or map editors, play around with them.
Try out levels or scenarios with your friends, and use that as an acid
test for your work. There are tons of editors out there, like the level
editors for Warcraft, Arcanum, Neverwinter Nights, or any others you
can get your hands on. Put your levels or mods up on the net, get
critiques, and try to make a name for yourself as a good level or map
designer before you even go to a game company. It helps when the
interviewer's already seen your work on the Internet and has perhaps
even played one of your levels.
4. Persistence and enthusiasm mean a lot in the game industry. So if
you get knocked down once, just get back up and try again. You'll get
noticed.
5. If you're looking for college classes to take, I'd suggest some
programming courses and creative writing courses, maybe a little bit of
art, and any classes that deal with interface design or layout for
computer programs. Learn how to write critically and technically, and
become familiar with Microsoft Word. Programming classes are a bonus,
because they help designers understand how computers "think," and they
give them better avenues of communication with programmers in general.
6. Game development is a very team-oriented process, so we'd also
recommend taking as many college classes as possible that reinforce
teamwork and communication (or, if not in college, finding the
opportunity to work with teams). If you have difficulty with working in
teams or with communication, your job in game development will end up
being more difficult for both you and the people you work with.
7. A lot of designers did not start out as designers. If you want a
door into the game industry, try manual writing, Web design, quality
assurance, or any of a bunch of other jobs in the game industry. Make
your interest in becoming a designer known, and if you have the skills,
somebody should give you a chance.
Then there's the application process. A lot of this information
you can find on the Web. But it can't hurt to stress it a little more:

1. Always include a cover letter with your résumé.
"Get a
job in quality assurance. Unlike most industries, the gaming equivalent
of "starting in the mailroom" actually puts you in the thick of the
action."
-- Ken Levine




2. Spellcheck and proofread anything you submit. Ask your friends to
look over your cover letter and résumé, too. Obsidian has rejected
numerous applicants because they don't proof their work. In the game
industry, that kind of attitude creates bugs and makes people mad.
3. Research the company to which you are applying. If possible, address
your cover letter to the specific person who will be reading it.
Customize your resume and cover letter to suit that company and the
position to which you are applying. You don't have to know everything
about the company, but know enough so you speak intelligently about
what they do and why you're interested.
4. Carefully read and follow the company's submission criteria. For
example, if they ask for a writing sample, be sure to include one.
Again, we have rejected numerous applicants because they can't follow
directions, which, again, is a bad thing in game development, since it
causes bugs and makes people mad.
5. Touch base with your references before you give their contact
information out. Sometimes relationships sour or dim with perspective.
Or, in some cases, [references] aren't even there anymore.



Bleszinski: You need to understand most of the disciplines that
are involved. You need to be an avid game player. You need to be a big
picture guy, as far as paying attention to pop culture and
relationships, and life, in general. Real life experience does make you
a better game designer. If you go skydiving or scuba diving that will
make you a better game designer.
But you also need to put yourself in the right position to get a design
job. If you're working as a programmer on a project and your lead
designer is expecting you to work with him on coding systems, then talk
with him about the design. Show others that you have a thirst to get
into design. If that lead designer quits, then you'll be in a good
position.

Understand that it's also your job to sell your creative vision. It's
not just enough to come up with it. You're the one who's going to be on
the press tour. You're the one standing on stage with an executive at
E3 trying to sell what you made. It's a multifaceted job.
The ideal traits include a good balance between logic and
creativity. Be artistic and open minded. Be focused. Charisma doesn't
hurt either, because you're selling the game to your team members. If
they buy into your vision, they'll work hard and try to help you make
that vision a reality.


Levine: I wouldn't count on lucking out like I did. The way into
game development is very clear, however: QA. Get a job in quality
assurance. Unlike most industries, the gaming equivalent of "starting
in the mailroom" actually puts you in the thick of the action. There is
no better way to get an understanding of what makes games tick. There's
no better place to observe design elements that read brilliantly on
paper but turn into crap when they hit the screen (which happens more
often than not). And there's no better place to figure out how to fix
those design elements when everything goes pear-shaped.

In terms of skills and personality, I'd suggest the following:
Learn how to write a document. I generally structure all my docs
in a reverse-pyramid style. I start at the top, with a single sentence:
"Freedom Force is a real-time heroic tactical RPG which allows players
to grow and manage their own team of superpowered heroes." Then I
expand that thought out to a paragraph. Then a page. Then two pages.
And so on. Write a document assuming that no one cares what you have to
say. The reader is not in your head. They will not come to you. You
have to bring it to them. How? Be clear. Be concise. Be entertaining.
Keep your concepts based on things they understand and relate to. And,
for God's sake, watch those proper nouns. Nobody ever liked a game
design document because the designer had worked out the family tree of
the villain back 27 generations.
And play a lot of games. Even bad ones. In fact, especially the
bad ones. If you can't find one useful idea from every game you play,
you're not looking hard enough.



Yamaoka: The skill to communicate with others is very valuable,
because you have to cooperate with a lot of people to finish a project.
Creators often have egos that they need to control in order to go in
the same direction with the team. Also, being aware of content on other
media is helpful as a game creator.

GameSpot: Thanks very much for your time.








"Persistence
and enthusiasm mean a lot in the game industry. So if you get knocked
down once, just get back up and try again. You'll get noticed."
-- Chris Avellone







"Get a job
in quality assurance. Unlike most industries, the gaming equivalent of
"starting in the mailroom" actually puts you in the thick of the
action."
-- Ken Levine



"The skill to communicate with others is very valuable, because you have to cooperate with a lot of people to finish a project."
-- Akira Yamaoka