Game Designers

Thats just what is in the minds of many people, game design or development is putting in as many ‘cool’ game play features as possible, all the fun and playing games throughout the day! Suggest this, get people to do the stuffs, and you have a new feature! Then you just need to test it, play it, and of course, get many others to play it in the famous play testing process, where you get anyone from the street, toss him an endless supply of tidbits and drinks and ask that someone to play the game until he finish up the questionaire… basically get everyone excited, and the game would, and must be fun. Talk and Play, the 2 great character qualities required to make a game designer!

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GAME DESIGNERS – FLEXIBILITY AND FIRMNESS

Actually, the character qualities I feel that game designers really needs are flexibility and firmness. They need to be both flexible and firm at the appropriate times. Flexible enough to accept new ideas and suggestions, even critics from the person you dislike, and yet, firm enough to stand against peer pressure, the group mentality, to be like Lone Wolf, if so it must be. Game Designers need to be firm because they have to things to protect. The Game and the Team.

WHAT GAME DESIGNERS DO?

Game Designers design games, maintain the fabled game design documents, and do some levels to test the game play. Is that it? Of course, it is almost impossible that in a perfect world, a game designer who has to work on a multi platform game with an engine that is also in development, to have to handle things like all game design, game design documentations, game assets planning, game design related issues, (example UIs, controls mapping, stats…etc… ), level design, level design documentations, level assets planning, all game and level assets coordination, creating test levels or white boxes, integration of assets into levels, bug reports and feature requests for game and engine, learning and exploring new features, control and prioritization of assets so requirements do not get out of hand, tying everything up, jumping to different tasks because of the need to progress the development even with late assets, and tons of other different tasks… with deadlines looming … with the producer chasing and asking about if everything will be ready for the deadline, and who could not understand why the game designer needs to use so many of his leave days within half a year. ( Sounds like a much better job than game design!)

PEOPLE HAVE GAME DESIGN IDEAS TOO, WHY NOT INTEGRATE THEM?

Many a times, people have new ideas, and will start to offer game design suggestions. (Which is a pretty good thing actually.) But that would depend on the stage of production that the game design suggestions are given. The issues that we have to take care of is that, those suggestions may,

  • widen the scope of the game,
  • increase the workload of everyone, (game designers included!) or
  • increase the game asset required…

… unknowingly, because sometimes they do not know, they do not agree, they do not understand, or in some cases, they just feel that they have the best game design.

The ideal game development environment that is in everyone’s mind, (from reading, hear-say, interviews, previous game development job and from popular knowledge) the game must always be constantly in review, be evolving and improving.

Sometimes things may not go smoothly, and the development gets stuck. Why? Every game design feature requires certain amount of relevant assets to support and a certain number of team members to create them. The game assets must go through the interpretation of the members creating the assets. If the assets do not convey the game design concept, then it does not pass the game designer’s test. Thus the game design feature is not ready to go for further review. Then the game’s development will stay stuck in asset development.

Sometimes, people do not understand what is going on, so…

GETTING THE NEXT GREAT GAME IDEA

… a few start talking about the greatest cool new ideas that should be done to make the game a success… and then more and more new ideas surface (the great brainstorming session! Which should be done over food and drinks, and amongst good friends, the birthplace of the great idea! To the hell with the game designer that did the designs for the past few years!) the flames of enthusiasm starts growing. Talks about the coolness of this new feature grows, the group mentality forms… then, they talk to the game designer… it must happen, since so many people are talking about it, the game designer, who must want to be part of a group, would agree with them, and allow the feature to enter the game… (feature creep at its best!)

THE GAME DESIGNER

Lets go over to the hypothetical game designer targeted by the group above, the person which the team members do not understand. Why is the guy sitting so silently in the corner, ignoring them, the “big shot” game designer who can simply ignore everyone… when they are talking about their latest big idea that will make the game much much better… Of course, its always easiest to be part of a group than to be a Lone Wolf (hehe can’t help adding this in…).

Sometimes, the group may not know whats best. The best things to do, and the best time to do things. Prioritizing. In order to prioritize, you need to have a vision of what is going on and what is the target. This is where democracy do not work and where it might cause more harm than good. Which is why organizations for not work with democracy but with hierarchy where everyone is responsible for certain duties.

GIVE UP… GAME DESIGNER… JOIN THE GROUP

Of course, the easiest thing to do, the game designer thought, why not join the group! No worries! Just be merry and happy everyday! Brainstorm and shoot your ideas out with everyone else! The game would definitely be great! With such a great atmosphere, nothing would go wrong! We could produce the game for years and everyday would be a great day because creative juices are flowing freely! Great day at work everyday! If he becomes part of the group, would life be easier on him? Yes. Would it help the game? Maybe. Would the game be completed? hmmm…

WHAT IS THE GAME DESIGNER THINKING?

Which comes to these things that not many people knows, even people who may have experience in games development but in areas other than game design. There are many issues to consider with each game play feature or mechanism that is developed other than how good or cool it would make the game. Issues like team size, team capability, team experience, engine capability, state of engine, allowance of time for fixing bugs that arises from feature integration, complexity of feature, assets required from every team to support feature, relevance of feature to core game concept, compatibility to controls mapping concept, fun versus development time, relevance to story, target market’s acceptance and ability to handle the new game play element, quality versus quantity, and more… and of course, not forgetting time, the non-adjustable, uncompromisable variable in this mess… depending on the size and experience of the team, some issues would take priority over others. Its not just planning for the sake of planning, but rather many decisions and thoughts would have to go into each and every game play feature.

A SIMPLE GAME DESIGN EXAMPLE

Now, lets just give an example of how, one… just one game design feature could explode the asset requirements. If you have 10 categories of weapons, and you want to have synchronised animation for combat, example, specialised killing, that would mean 10 specialised animations on the npc and the player, 20 extra animations. Multiply that by the number of npcs, lets say, we have a small game, 5 npcs, 10 (just for the npcs, we are more practical than that, right?) x 5 = 50. Multiply it somemore by more suggestions that there should be more, lets say 1 more for each, 50 x 2 = 100, oh they forgot, some single handed weapons could be combined, lets say 5 categories of them… I don’t even dare to count… of course, there would still be ways to reduce them, but then, shit, the team is too small and the deadline is 1 month away, the assets produced do not even fill up half the current requirements, not just 1 category of assets, there are others! Example, animations, models, sounds, particles effects, lighting, game play assets, game play tweaks… And they are not yet polished to support the game features we have yet, oh yah, we forgot we still have other things to do also, the level is not yet completed, no artists to support anything else! The interface is not completed, the assets for all the game play in the level have not been done… the story goes on and on… so should we do it? Not now. In the future? Depends on the situation.

MAKING A DECISION FOR THE GAME PRODUCTION

In the end, what would make the game better? Having less features but polished implementation? Or having more features but so-so implementation? Having more would benefit the game designer definitely, but would it benefit the team, or the game?

The game designer job could be the easiest if he wants to. He could just shoot his mouth off, without caring about stupid things like asset requirements and implementations. Get the team to implement every feature that he thinks of, so that everyone would think that he is the cooless guy ever, the waterfall of cool game play ideas.

Many in this industry are gamers, no doubt, and everyone has ideas, about what they feel should be or should not be done, likes and dislikes, but why is it that not every game can be finished, and why can’t everyone become game designers… I don’t know.