To err and err and err again, but less and less.
—PIET HIEN
A work is never completed except by some accident...
—PAUL VALÉRY
Writing a conclusion for a game design book, especially a conclusion for a book such as this, seems inappropriate. A conclusion is supposed to wrap up the topic. However, if I was successful here, you should not feel like you are ready to wrap up anything. Instead, you should be inspired to learn more about all the possible areas of knowledge that a designer can leverage. For practical reasons, this book could not cover all the areas of interest to a designer. As a result, its mission was destined to be incomplete. Hopefully, I have been able to help cultivate the curiosity you need to become a successful game designer.
The thesis of this book has been to open your mind to all the disciplines of knowledge in the world. For that, our education is never complete. As we end here, I wanted to point out a few avoidable dangers that can keep you from success in this area:
• CONFUSING “WHAT I LIKE” WITH “WHAT IS GOOD”—This is so universal that I see it in myself, in students, in new professionals, and in established game design veterans. Your taste is a useful barometer for directing your focus. It’s easier to make something good if you can use yourself as an infinite playtest loop, judging every design decision upon your own personal subjective metrics. But what you like is not necessarily what is best for the game. For most people “This game is good!” is an equivalent statement to “I like this game!” Many design arguments end up boiling down to “I Like X!” versus “I Don’t Like X!” That cannot be resolved. As an example, I find Minecraft incredibly tedious. But it is undeniable that the game is good in myriad ways. The Dark Souls games I find to be painfully unenjoyable. Yet I can admit games like these exhibit masterful cultivation of “fiero.” Dead Rising is one of my favorite video games of all time, but I can admit that it makes dozens of design mistakes along the way.
Instead, use a framework that lets you focus on the design goals of the game that you are designing and let that line of thinking guide you. I may really enjoy collection mechanics, but is that necessarily appropriate in my arcade shooter? Possibly. Do I want to include it because I like it or because it will be best for the game?
I see a lot of the games designed around the “retro” visual and gameplay aesthetics of the late 1980s and early 1990s as an expression of this. The designers likely grew up with games of that aesthetic and since they were foundational for them, they end up expressing that through their design, whether or not it’s needed to solve the problem statement of the game.
This problem also exists when discussing game design itself. Much of what has been written on the topic can be distilled down to “I Like X, so X is good game design.” Be wary of that. I tried my best to avoid that in writing this book. The risk is that you limit your craft to an echo chamber of possible design ideas. There is nothing wrong with considering the things you like. After all, you picked up this book, so you have marvelous taste. But do not consider only the things you like.
• DRAGGING DOWN INSTEAD OF BUILDING UP—Crabs reportedly exhibit a bizarre behavior. If you put one crab in a bucket, it will easily climb out and escape. Put a bunch of crabs in a bucket, however, and they will pull each other down in their own efforts to escape and none will be able to climb out.
In my early years as a designer, all I could see was poor design everywhere I looked. My newfound skills helped me determine rough edges to which I had previously been oblivious. And so I was noisy about them. This can be for spiteful reasons (“I don’t know why people like this, it is so broken! I’m so much smarter than they are!”) or for helpful reasons (“Your game would be better if you did this.”). Regardless, in both cases, it serves as criticism. Jean Sibelius is credited with the quote that “a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic.”17 Although not empirically true and likely too extreme of a position, Sibelius’ point was to discount critics as unworthy of giving meaningful feedback. If you act consistently as a critic, you will likely also be seen as a naysayer or as unhelpful.
17 De Törne, B. (1937). Sibelius: a Close-Up. Boston, MA. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
The fear of this criticism keeps novice designers from releasing something until it is perfect. They toil to buff out all the rough edges in an endless stream of perfectionist busy work and end up never releasing anything. Designers who do not fear the crabs pulling them back down release, even though it may not be perfect, and they constantly get better because of it.
Remind yourself of the beauty that is found everywhere. What is markedly harder to do is to celebrate the things that are great instead of pointing out the things that are not. This is especially true because of my final point.
• THE “INDUSTRY” IS RATHER SMALL—LinkedIn recently released a report that showed that the industry in which it matters most to have a network of people you can trust in order to find a job is “computer games.”18 When LinkedIn users started a new job, it was more likely in computer games than in any other industry (almost twice as likely as in the average industry) to already have been connected long-term to someone at the hiring company.
18 Rigano, P. (2015, March 9). “Industries Where Your Network Matters More Than You Think.” Retrieved July 21, 2015, from http://blog.linkedin.com/2015/03/09/industries-where-your-network-matters-more-than-youthink.
When I was a sophomore in college, I got a job in a dorm as a resident assistant. I really did not like the head RA, who was an upperclassman. He represented everything I disliked about college, and so I was an insufferable jerk around him and actively worked to undermine him with the residents every chance I got. At one point, our feud got to be too much, and one of the professional staff pulled me aside and told me that although it was obvious we had a dislike for each other, I needed to step back and consider what this acrimony was doing to my ability to be trusted as a leader and to get things done in the community. That, of course, is a sanitized version of it. In reality, he told me what a jerk I was being and told me to shape up. Something about that intervention really clicked with me. When I acted more like an adult, I became much more successful at getting events organized and buy-in from other people because I stopped radiating jerk particles.
I see students going through this transition (both successfully and unsuccessfully) all the time. Convinced they are “right,” they do everything they can to prove it, regardless of the collateral damage. In proving they are smart or right or clever, they ruin their relationships with their peers and signal to others than they are not a positive force to work with.
The professional community talks with each other at conferences and online. Designers get reputations. But do not focus just on the “torpedoed career” end of the spectrum. The designers who get reputations for being awesome, positive people are in high demand. Would you not rather be that designer? Those who believe that they will work solo forever and never need another human being are living in a fantasy that ignores the fact that even solo developers need others to get the word out to create a community and for financial or critical success.
When you consider all the terrible, back-breaking labor that the world employs to prosper, making games for a living has to be seen as a good way to spend that time of your life that you designate as “career.”
I cannot image myself doing anything else. Even when my career shifted away from making games to teaching others about making games, I kept making them. There must be something deep inside me now that requires me to do so. I cannot put that genie back in the bottle. Why would I want to?