Once Upon A Time...

There was a dream of a game studio.  Before the indie game scene really took off, before Epic made the Unreal Engine open to everybody, before Steam Greenlight and Kickstarter, there was a college kid who read an article in PC Gamer and thought, "This could be interesting."

The dream never really went away.  It's been almost 20 years since that dream first took shape, but it's stayed with me this whole time, always that one thing that has tantalized and called to me, whispering, "You can do this." 



For some people, the only path to get into game production and design is to be a coder, to learn programming languages until your eyeballs bleed and then maybe get picked up to be a code monkey on a big project where the credits roll for ten minutes.  I've never understood that mindset.  Not because programmers aren't important people to have on a project, but because programming is only one facet of the process.  John Carmack and John Romero are both pretty good programmers, but Carmack has usually been focused on the technology, while Romero has been interested in the game, the story, the parts that get people to play.  You might be a code god whose talents are such that you can wring out obscene levels of performance from the simplest code blocks, but none of that means a damned thing if you can't come up with a premise that engages people.  

Somebody says, "You have to be a programmer to work in the games industry," and I want to knock their teeth in.  Nobody plays games because of well written code.  People play games because they want to conquer a nation, or a world, or a galaxy.  They want to fight dragons.  They want to win the championship race.  They want to unravel the mystery.  They want to solve the puzzle in the fewest number of moves.   They want the high score.  And anybody that tells you otherwise, that there is only one path into the games industry and that's by being a coder, is not somebody you need to be listening to for the simple fact that they are wrong.  It is the obvious path.  It is not the only path.

A good designer should have, at the very least, an understanding of the following components:

• Code - I know, I just got done railing against people who think code is the One True Way, but having an understanding of code is useful.  If you can work up simple scripts and modify more complex ones, you're in good shape.  Just don't slack off.
• Systems - Another way to put this might be "rules."  Games operate on certain rules, depending on the type of game.  Understanding how to craft those rules, how to adjust them, and even how to break them, will serve a designer in good stead.  Rules for a puzzle game like Tetris are deceptively simple.  Rules for an RPG like Skyrim can be downright mind bending.  Learn how to cover the spectrum.
• Story - Not every game requires this understanding, but having it in your mental toolkit is a good thing.  Learning what goes into a good story will certainly help for those projects where it is required.  Just don't try to build stories where there's no need for one.
• Psychology - It's not enough to know that players want to play.  A good designer understands why they want to play.  You have to know how to keep the player hooked, how to keep their interest through the power of "the gotta" (as in "gotta finish this level," "gotta beat this boss," "gotta capture that objective") and how to give players a good exit point for the day.

All right, so why go through all this?  Why bother putting it up?  Because the dream still calls.  Because as crazy as it is right now in my life, it's time for another run at this.  Because it's worth trying again, even if I fail again.  In between freelance writing, job hunting, future job holding, and all the other things going on with me right now, I'll be making a concerted effort to update this blog at least three times a week.  Sometimes, it may be about a project I'm in the midst of.  Sometimes, it might just be about a news item I ran across.  Sometimes, it'll be my thoughts on theory and practice.  But getting into the routine is going to be important.  Maintaining the routine will be important.  Rome wasn't built in a day.  Neither will the weird things I come up with.  It's a process.  One step at a time, brick by brick.