Anatomy of a Game Designer:
Imagination:
The
imagination is like a muscle; with regular exercise, it grows
stronger and easier to flex. Imagination comes in various forms:
- Visual and Auditory imagination enables you to think of new buildings, trees, animals, creatures, clothing, and people – how they sound and their strange ways of speaking.
- Dramatic imagination is required for the development of good characters, plots, scenes, motivation, emotions, climaxes and outcomes.
- Conceptual imagination is about relationships between ideas, their interactions and dependencies.
- Lateral thinking is the process of looking for alternative answers, taking an unexpected route to solve a problem.
Nor
does imagination consist only of the ability to think of things that
are completely new. It's also valuable to be able to look at an old
idea and apply a new spin to it, to breathe new life into it with a
fresh approach. Too many people in the game industry see something
old and familiar and dismiss it. Instead they should think, “How
can this be made better? How might this be more interesting
Technical
Awareness:
Technical
awareness is a general understanding of how computer programs,
particularly games, actually work. It isn't necessary to be a
software engineer, but it is extremely valuable to have had a little
experience programming, even if only in Blitz Basic (www.blitzbasic.com) or some other simple language. A computer game designer's delivery
medium is the computer, so it behooves you to know how computers do
what they do and also to have a general idea of what they're not good
at doing. A designer with entirely unrealistic expectations of what a
computer can do isn't going to get very far. For example, computers
do not understand English well. If your game design requires that the
machine be able to interpret complex sentences typed on the keyboard,
your programmers are likely to throw things at you.
You
must also have a basic knowledge of the technical capabilities of
your target platform. At a minimum, you need to know whether you're
designing a product for a home console, desktop computer, handheld
platform, or more than one of these. Every feature that you specify
must be possible on the machine that you're designing for. If in
doubt, ask the programmers. Knowing the limitations imposed by the
selected platform will result in an achievable design.
Analytical
Competence:
No
game design is perfect from the start. Game design is a process of
iterative refinement, which progresses from a rough draft to the
finished meisterwerk. Consequently, you must be able to recognise the
good and the bad parts of a design for what they are. This requires a
keen logical and analytical mind, and the ability to manipulate
nebulous concepts with a high level of mental agility and critical
analysis.
It
is very difficult to effectively criticise your own work. You can be
excessively hard on yourself and become convinced that all your work
is worthless, or you can be blinded by familiarity and unable to
analyse your own work in an unbiased fashion. Inexperienced designers
often err in both directions, swinging wildly from one to another.
There
is no easy solution to these problems. Good self-analysis skills come
with practise. As a reality check, you can try peer reviews (which
are always a good idea anyway). See what your colleagues and
co-workers think of your design. Try to choose people who are likely
to give you an unbiased opinion. Friends and family are usually not
good choices. They will be either too easy on you – after all, they
are close to you personally – or too hard on you because they don't
want to be seen as biased and, consequently, overcompensate.
A
specific example of when analytical skills are particularly useful is
in detecting dominant (that is, unbeatable, or nearly unbeatable)
strategies at the design phase and weeding them out before they get
into the code, as in the infamous Red Alert “tank rush”. The tank
effectiveness in Red Alert was so out of balance that an experienced
player could dedicate all production to cranking out a few tanks and
then immediately storm the opposition base before the enemy had a
chance to get a production line set up.
Mathematical
Competence:
Designers
must have basic math skills (particularly statistical math skills)
because balancing a game is largely a matter of math and can be a
difficult task. In the case of a real-time strategy game or a war
game, the apparently simple problem of ensuring that there are no
dominant strategies or fighting units to unbalance the game is
actually quite math-intensive.
Aesthetic
Competence:
Although
you need not be an artist, you should have a general aesthetic
competence and some sense of style. Far too many games are visual
clones of one another, depending on stereotypes and clichés rather
than real imagination. It's up to you (along with your lead artist)
to set the visual tone of the game and to create a consistent,
harmonious look.
Suppose
you're designing a clever and calculating female assassin with nerves
of steel. Many designers would clothe her in skin-tight black leather
and give her a big, shiny automatic pistol; in other words they'd opt
for the stereotype, the easy way out. A slightly more imaginative
designer might give her a miniskirt and a crossbow – still
male-fantasy material, but marginally more interesting. A really good
designer would realise that an assassin needs to blend into her
surroundings, to look like anybody else, yet still be visually
identifiable to the player. He would think about her personality and
create a unique visual style for her that is distinctive yet
unobtrusive. Lara Croft is a good example of this kind of thing.
Despite her ludicrous proportions, she's dressed appropriately but
quite identifiably for her role as an explorer: shorts, tank top,
hiking boots. More important, her shirt is a particular colour that
nobody else in the Tomb Raider games wears, which makes her stand out
on the screen. If you're seeing that colour, you're seeing Lara.
General
Knowledge:
Some
of the best game designers tend to be ex-programmers or people with
at least some formal scientific training – as long as they have
broadened their sphere of knowledge outside of their narrow field of
specialist expertise. A base level of general knowledge is valuable
for a game designer, as is the ability to research what you might not
know. It helps to be well-versed in mathematics, logic, history,
literature, art, science, and current affairs. The more source
material a game designer can assimilate, the better the final game
design will be.
Make
sure you watch a lot of movies and documentaries. Read books, too,
both for direct research and background material. The encyclopedia is
a good place to start for any given subject. However, a game that is
too true-to-life (and hence, is likely to require specialist
knowledge) will disappoint its players. For example, if you're
designing a game based on piracy on the high seas, then exact
historical detail isn't going to be what they expect – a game based
on venereal disease, scurvy, maggot-infested food that has to be
eaten in the dark so the crew can't see what they're eating,
starvation, brutality, and the “consequences” of dark and lonely
nights on a female-free boat won't make a particularly interesting
(or even tasteful) game.
On
the other hand, if you have a game design featuring colourful,
eye-patch wearing, wooden-legged pirates, gold, running deck battles,
the Black Spot, the Jolly Roger, and buried doubloons secreted away
on remote desert islands, then you probably have the seed of an
entertaining game.
Writing
Skills:
The
professional game designer must have good writing skills. This means
being clear, concise, accurate, unambiguous, and, above all,
readable. Apart from having to write several detailed documents for
each design, you might be expected to produce the story narrative or
dialogue – especially if the budget won't stretch to a
scriptwriter.
Writing
comes in several forms, and we briefly discuss some of these here:
- Technical writing is the process of documenting the design in preparation for development. All possible questions on the game have to be answered unambiguously and precisely. For example, if a farm with on peasant produces one unit of food per week, does a farm with five peasants produce five units, or do the additional peasants consume additional food? Is the peasants' own food factored in? What is the maximum number of peasants that can work on a given farm? If all the peasants are killed in a raid, what happens to the farm? If it is not immediately destroyed, can the empty buildings be reoccupied by new peasants? How do farms get built anyway? Where do peasants come from anyway? At what rate? Does the player have to manage the farming process, or do the peasants just get on with it? Can peasants fight? And so on and so on.
- Fiction writing (narrative) is useful for the manual, background material; character descriptions; introductory, transitional, and finale material; as well as other bodies of text, such as mission briefings.
- Dialogue writing (drama) is needed for audio voiceovers and cinematic material. Unfortunately, in most games the dialogue is even cornier than 1970s television shows, and the acting is as bad or worse. Try to avoid clichés, and use grammar and vocabulary that match each character's personality. If you have an ear for regional dialects, it can add real variety to your game, but again, avoid stereotypes such as “dumb rednecks” or “brassy New Yorkers.” The game Starcraft made excellent use of the subtle variety of southern American dialects, including proud aristocrats, gruff old generals, obnoxious bikers, and cheerful mechanics.
The
greatest game design acumen in the world will be useless to you
unless you can effectively communicate your ideas. As a designer, you
will often need to evangelise your design at several different
levels. In the professional setting, you will initially need to
present your design to a publisher. Following that, you need to
obtain buy-in from the team that will develop the game. This can be
done in person or in writing, but the result is the same. You will
need to be able to transmit your enthusiasm for the game as well as
go into mind-boggling detail of its finer points to allow the
development team to be able to create a game from your vision.
Drawing
Skills:
Some
skill at basic drawing and sketching is highly valuable, although not
absolutely required for a designer if you have a concept artist to
work with. The saying “A picture is worth a thousand words” is
never more true than when you are trying to impart a game idea. The
vast majority of computer games rely heavily on visual content, and
drawings are essential when pitching a product to a third party.
Game-publishing executives will be interested in a hot concept, a hot
market, or a hot license, but only pictures get them excited. The
images are the hook on which the executives will hang everything else
that they hear. Otherwise, you can talk about concepts forever and
they won't remember a thing when you leave the room because they
don't have a visual hook to hang it on. The images will remain in
their memories long after they forget the details.
The
Ability to Compromise:
Probably
the most important skill for a professional game designer is the
ability to compromise on details and integrate a variety of opinions
while preserving a consistent, holistic version of the game. In an
ideal world, we would be able to design whatever suited us and never
have to worry about the demands of a publisher or the interests of
the customers. Unfortunately, these external needs and interests do
have to be considered, and, more often than not, the game designer is
constrained by genre or license.
Different
people on the development team and at the publishing company will
have concerns about their own areas of expertise (programming, art,
music, and so on), and their opinions will pull and push the design
in different directions. As the designer, it's tempting to seek sole
ownership of the vision, to argue that things must be exactly as you
imagined them and to ignore other considerations. After all, there
are plenty of other voices in your company advancing points of view
about other areas. But you must resist the temptation to do that, for
two reasons:
- First, you must allow your team some ownership of the vision as well, or its members won't have any motivation or enthusiasm for the project. No one builds computer games solely for the money; we're all here so that we can contribute creatively.
- Second, a designer who gets a reputation as a visionary but who can't deliver a buildable, marketable game doesn't stay employed for long. It's your job to deliver an integrated design.
In
many cases, you'll be given a brief that limits you to designing a
genre clone or a heavily restricted licensed property. Being able to
work within these limits to the satisfaction of the customer, whether
your customer is the publisher, license holder, or end user, is
essential. Unless you are one of the famous game designers who can
guarantee success with your name alone, you are unlikely to be given
a completely free rein. You may have designed the best text adventure
game since Colossal Cave, but if the style of game is out of favour
with the public, you're probably not going to get your game made –
let alone published.
Ideally the hypothetical “perfect game designer” would possess all of the above skills, but the following are the specific skills which I would like to focus on for the dissertation module:
Imagination
Drawing Skills
Aesthetic Competence
The Ability to Compromise
Analytical Competence
Writing Skills (especially fiction writing and dialogue writing)
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