Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Education of a Game Designer

Game design legend and CGDC founder Chris Crawford explains the optimal way to get into the computer game industry as a game designer. And although he later reconsidered his position on studying game design in college in light of the various programs that are now available, I still think the original advice is essentially correct.

Here’s how it works. First, get yourself a real education, not some one-night-stand training. Go to a real school and major in anything except games. Almost anything will do: biology, physics (that’s where I got my start), art, literature, history, psychology, linguistics. Just make sure that you get what used to be called a “liberal education”. Take lots of courses outside your major. And yes, you should probably minor in computer science.

On the side, you should be experimenting with building games. Don’t go for the snazzy graphics just yet – that can always be slapped onto the design. You want to concentrate on the guts of the game, the architecture and game mechanics. How do the little gears and levers inside the game operate? Don’t try to build games that are just as good as the commercial games – for crying out loud, those games have dozens of people working on them; anything that little ole you can do will look pretty pathetic next to those extravaganzas. Think of your process as rather like building a car. Don’t worry about the chrome and the paint job just now; you want to concentrate on learning how to put pistons together, how the valves operate, what the carburetor does. You want to build little go-karts, not shiny Rolls-Royces. They’re all experimental; you should never think that your designs have any commercial potential. Build them and throw them away. Creativity requires you to murder your children. If you are so enthralled with your designs that you can’t let them go, then you’ll never have the hard-bitten creativity of a truly good designer.

Meanwhile, keep building the intellectual foundations for your creativity. There’s no way you can compete with the formidable creativity of a seasoned game designer, so for now, concentrate on building your strength. Hey, even Neo couldn’t take on Agent Smith until he had spent enough time building the foundations of his skills. Learn everything you can. Do not graduate without having examined every bookshelf in your library; you’d be surprised what interesting things you will stumble on in those dusty aisles.

Once you get out of college, don’t rush into the games biz. Get a real job at a real company and earn some money, but keep expanding your education. You’ll learn a lot about organizational behavior and how to handle yourself in a corporate environment. You’ll learn how and when to stand up to your boss – which is rarely, by the way. And you’ll prepare yourself to swim with the sharks when you do enter the games biz.

But continue to work on games in your spare time. Build lots of different games go-karts, trying out each one for its handling, its speed, and its other characteristics. Once you’ve gotten six or ten games built, you might want to think about putting together a substantial project, but still on your own. Recruit a few like-minded folk to help you out, and build something really impressive. Show it off to the world. Then you can use that game as your resume when you do apply for a position in the games industry. If your game is good enough, you’ll get a job as an actual game designer, not some dime-a-dozen minion. You’ll still be a junior assistant to the assistant game designer, but you’ll be in the right place, and if you work hard and do your job well, you might actually have a future in the games biz.

I realize that this is not what you wanted to hear. What you want to hear is a quick fix. Take such-and-such courses and you’ll be guaranteed a high-paid job with a big office, all the best computers, and complete creative control. Sure, everybody wants that – but nobody gets it. Anybody who tells you that kind of story is a shyster trying to get your money. The sad fact is that the pioneering days of game design are over and it’s now a big industry; nobody gets “discovered” and turned into a superstar overnight. It’s a long, long slog for beginners.

That is pretty much the way that I got into designing games myself, although I went directly to lead designer courtesy of starting my own company with my best friend after studying economics and history, then spending two post-college years in the graphics hardware industry. The point is that having a base of knowledge that is broader than a player's perspective on the most popular games is vital for learning the holistic view that is necessary if you're going to design anything that is more than a slavish copy of a game whose mechanics you don't fully understand. 

3 comments:

  1. The essential advice is correct, though I strongly disagree with most of the majors he suggests. History is a noble hobby and useful for a game designer, but it's a hobby. If the only way you can figure out how to study history is to pay someone $50k...

    As far as breaking into the business as a designer, Vox's path is probably the only likely way - start your own company and design your own game. It's such a sought after position, you won't get hired to do it unless it's your uncle doing the hiring (and even then, he'll probably hire you as a Tester and maybe promote you to Associate Producer a few years later).

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  2. What great advice. I wish someone had told me this when I was younger.

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  3. This is still sound advice.

    My 2 cents:

    Original game play design is about trial and error, so picking up the tools and learning how to prototype is crucial. It's also easier with all the resources available. Bite the bullet and use an existing engine - as a programmer, I made the mistake of trying to roll my own engine without having any idea of the pains involved and I still have no product to show for it.

    With the wide variety of paths in the industry, I would probably focus on other design/production areas when not working on games. Theater production has a correlation to level design. The designers I talked to were constantly going to the movies and trying to figure out how to emulate what they saw. Music production is a niche field but it still plays a big role in game development.

    If you're a programmer, tools is a great way to get in. You learn how the game development process works, you learn how to communicate with the team, and you make the products that make designers lives easier. It gives you an insight to the mindset of the designers. If you go to school for game programming, computer science is the way.

    But as Chris said, make games on your own!

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