Pursuing a career in game design?

[Cinderwild]

Are any of you pursuing a career in game design, or have already successfully started on the path to game design?

Its something I'm considerably interested in and I'd like to hear from other people who are much further down the proverbial road than I am.

If you are pursuing such a career, what are your goals and what kind of education have you taken?

If you're already in the profession, do you have any tips for getting into it? Are there any particular skills that are vital to getting noticed or any parts of the trade that are currently oversaturated or undersaturated?

Thanks to anyone for their time, any constructive input is greatly appreciated.

EDIT: To clarify, I'm currently considering a Computer Science major with an English/Writing minor.

[eilios]

I'd advise against it unless you're really passionate about it. Game design is not the easiest field to get in, it's highly competitive, and a lot of good game designers end up getting shafted to cult status because they're not able to get a large enough audience. There's a ton of work that goes into it, too. As a person who plays tons of indie flash games, I can drop a huge list of fantastic games ruined by mediocre ideas and vice versa.

[Hyperion5182]

Are any of you pursuing a career in game design, or have already successfully started on the path to game design?

Its something I'm considerably interested in and I'd like to hear from other people who are much further down the proverbial road than I am.

If you are pursuing such a career, what are your goals and what kind of education have you taken?

If you're already in the profession, do you have any tips for getting into it? Are there any particular skills that are vital to getting noticed or any parts of the trade that are currently oversaturated or undersaturated?

Thanks to anyone for their time, any constructive input is greatly appreciated.

EDIT: To clarify, I'm currently considering a Computer Science major with an English/Writing minor.

Depends on what you want to do. If you're talking about actually designing games. Yeah the above post is dead on the money.

After doing my own work i've come to like 3-d animation and graphics development. I dont have the artistic tallent that some have in that field but i love the 3-D modeling i'm working with. If you want to work for a gaming company, pick a field and shoot for it.

[Cinderwild]

As a person who plays tons of indie flash games, I can drop a huge list of fantastic games ruined by mediocre ideas and vice versa.

What do you mean when you say they were ruined by mediocre ideas?

[eilios]

What do you mean when you say they were ruined by mediocre ideas?

Good game mechanics, bad concepts or level design. Think of it like Xen from HL1(if you've played it). Nothing is essentially wrong with it, it's just not that interesting. For example, look at this game. While not the most inventive game, it has a nice soundtrack, and pretty fun mechanics. The problem with this game, though, is that the lack of numerous mechanics makes the levels(while individually designed) after a long period of time to feel repetitious.

I'm not insulting this game. It's a good game, it's just missing that "oomph" a game needs to really be special. This is a common problem with games all over the place. While the games aren't badly made, they're just not outstanding enough to get a ton of appeal and fans.

[ShadowBlade]

I'd advise against it unless you're really passionate about it. Game design is not the easiest field to get in, it's highly competitive, and a lot of good game designers end up getting shafted to cult status because they're not able to get a large enough audience. There's a ton of work that goes into it, too. As a person who plays tons of indie flash games, I can drop a huge list of fantastic games ruined by mediocre ideas and vice versa.

The same could be said of music careers.

Truth told I think you get out of life what you put in really, if you're serious about game design (or anything) and you put in 200% 100% of the time, there's no reason you can't become successful. No matter how competetive the industry is.

[Cinderwild]

Good game mechanics, bad concepts or level design. Think of it like Xen from HL1(if you've played it). Nothing is essentially wrong with it, it's just not that interesting.

Sorry to sound like a broken record, but what do you mean by concepts? As in, story design? You said 'good game mechanics' and then 'bad concepts' so I presume you mean they are two different things.

[eilios]

Story design, world building, what you can do, etc. If you're playing a game and you're thinking "okay, what's the point of all of this" there's a problem. The game could be perfectly fun, but if it doesn't hold your interest...

[Ramaniscence]

I'd advise against it unless you're really passionate about it. Game design is not the easiest field to get in, it's highly competitive, and a lot of good game designers end up getting shafted to cult status because they're not able to get a large enough audience.

Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath & Psychonauts are probably 2 of my favorite examples of this. Both were EXCELLENT games, however the former was single platform, so EA refused to do heavy marketing for it, because they weren't going to make the maximum amount of money off of it, so it more or less tanked, and the latter couldn't get a real publisher to save their lives because of the same problems, which resulted in limited exposure. Even so it was able to get some good exposure, especially once they got it on steam.

The other end of this spectrum is equally tragic: Good game designers end up having to put neutered versions of good ideas into otherwise good gamings, MAKING them terrible.

I'm going to sanitize this story as much as possible for the sake of the parties involved but I like to tell this story whenever I get a chance:

A friend of mine was a developer at a major game company. This company was tasked with developing a sequel to an A list franchise. I was a huge fan of the franchise, and I knew his company had been working on a sequel for quite some time, so I asked him what the issue was once he had moved on to another company.

It'd been some years since the last game in this franchise came out, and while the previous iteration was not without it's flaws, the fan base would've been more than satisfied with a version of the previous game with competitively improved graphics, a solid story line, and maybe a few minor gameplay elements from some more modern games in the same genre. Easy, right? You have a name to sell, a mechanic that works, put a good creative story behind it and bam. Block buster.

Everything started out well and good. Everyone was motivated and excited. Moral was high. Suddenly another in the same genre was released that was a similar but used a slightly different camera angle. The higher ups saw the success of this game, and wanted their game to have this angle too. All well and good, right? Take the camera, move it, done, right? Wrong. All the levels had been designed for a totally different vantage point. now that you've moved the camera the context is changed, objects and holes are visible that were not intended to be. Everything has to be redone, rethought, recreated, right down to the art concept level.

While they're working on all the changed to fit this change, yet another game came out in a different genre, but this game had open environments. The higher ups saw this, and liked that idea. So now instead of having a linear gameplay element, they wanted the game to have a more open, sandbox kind of environment. Again, everything has to be redone, rethought, and recreated, right down to the art concept level.

At the same time all this is happening, a team of designers is working tirelessly to try to add new things that make the game feel unique, mostly in the form of "mini-games", but mini-games like say...hacking in Bioshock. or Lock Picking in Oblivion, or something along those likes. Micro-mini-games.

Mind you, this franchise stems back for decades and doesn't really have a "solid" or "canon" story line. There are very few elements that need to go into this game to make it feel like it belongs to the franchise. There are very simple, tried and true concepts you can use to build on that, and again if you had a solid storyline to pull it together, then there'd be no problem.

Finally, they've made countless changes, the game has gone through complete overhauls over the course of years, to the point now to where it's completely different from any previous concepts. ANOTHER game in a similar genre comes out...I really can't go into detail about this one, because it'd blow the roof off the whole "not mentioning specifics" thing, but this game had a very interesting mechanic, that worked pretty specifically only in the context of this game. Higher ups saw it, and thought hey, we need to have a mechanic that's similar, but not the same, and we'll make it the premise of our game.

Now...we have 1 things here now. A is a game that just came out, with a very specific, excellent, fresh new game mechanic that..doesn't really translate into anything else. B is a game that, from the beginning, was an entirely different concept, had gone through multiple iterations, and was almost complete, but facing a complete overhaul once again.

It was at this point that my friend decided this wasn't the job for him, and went on to another studio to make an even cooler game, and at the time of telling me this story, he didn't know the status of his previous employers game.

Years later the game did come out, WITHOUT the final change. What should've been an excellent next installment to an excellent franchise, came and went without a thought to anyone. It disappeared from existence, and now probably sits in bargin bins somewhere.

Years following THAT, his company was able to take that last, absolutely ridiculous idea, and flesh it out into it's whole OWN game...which did even worse.

The moral to the story is...if you love video games, and think you have great ideas for video games, don't go into production for video games unless you want your hopes and dreams smashed. Make games for yourself, and don't quit your day job. If you make a hit, make some money, and game some attention, then you can start looking to go pro when you have some weight. Until then remember that good ideas are a dime a dozen, and good ideas don't sell copies of games.

[hobostev3]

my brother went to full sail university and got a masters degree in graphic design for video games, but has nothing to show for it. he said that he didn't make enough connections while he was there because the masters coarse was too extensive and that there were a lot of uptight a-holes there, though my bro says that about everyone that doesn't agree with him on 100% about everything. anyways, my point is that is a pretty overcrowded business, so you better make sure that is what you eat sleep and breathe, because if not its gonna eat you up.

[sephfire]

I've heard some negative opinions of Full Sail's curriculum from industry folk. I don't know how much of it is just opinion, but I'm a bit wary of the place.

That aside, there are some careers out there which pretty much require passion for the job. If you go into a field like game design expecting to have a job handed to you right out of school and coast by on minimum effort, you're guaranteed to get nowhere.

If you're looking for same basic '101'-style tips on game design, we've done a few Extra Credits episodes on the subject. Maybe those can be useful.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2443-So-You-Want-to-be-a-Game-Designer

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2713-Playing-Like-a-Designer-Part-1

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2738-Playing-Like-a-Designer-Part-2