The Qualities of a Designer

Your life as a game designer will inevitably be filled with unimaginative and uncreative tasks. Do not confuse unimaginative with unimportant. The day I spent opening every level file in Chains of Olympus, finding every fight encounter, writing down what enemies were used, how many were used, and then painstakingly transcribing this information back into excel was eye-gougingly and soul-suckingly boring – I would be lying if I said otherwise. But, it was necessary. Though this task failed to utilize a single creative bone in my body, I was working towards the game’s benefit.

That is only one example, and there are many more examples, such as the days I spent describing needed features to programmers, the days I spent acting out special case animations we needed to the animators, or the days I spent bashing my head against the monitor wondering why my scripts wouldn’t function. Rarely will your tasks involve being creative; and yes, some of it is glamorous, like the day you first see your level come to life, but most of it is tedious, like the day you must salvage your level after half of it was cut.

If all of this unimaginative, tedious work is not creative, then what exactly makes up a good designer?

A designer is comprised of four equally important pillars:

• Creativity
• Clarity
• Adaptability
• Wisdom

Creativity

Creativity in this context refers not only to ones ability to create fun ideas, but also ones ability to recall fun ideas. True creative inspiration is neither reliable nor controllable, but what you can control is the identification of fun when you see it; not just that something is fun, but what makes it fun, and then to recall those moments at a later date.

This concept, if you will permit the sidetrack, draws a lot of parallels to comedy. Notice how one person can say something to make you laugh, yet someone else can say the exact same words and nothing – no response.

Comedic timing is not just a part of what makes something funny, it’s a critical part, just as two games with similar mechanics can be totally different experiences. There is even more to the comedy analogy. It showcases the double nature of creativity as I define it: both creating fun ideas and knowing fun ideas when you see them. Even the best joke is not funny when told at the wrong time.

Fun and creative gameplay experiences, like any good joke, are tools, and recalling just the right mechanics to fit the timing of your game is just as important as having brilliant ideas off the top of your head.

Clarity

Having good ideas is the first step, but if you cannot cleanly and clearly explain your ideas, in a way that is relevant to your audience, then you’re dead in the water.

Clarity for a designer is not only about aural and written communication, but also about understanding your audience. Most designers have a decent command of speaking to others, some good designers can write clean documents that are well formatted, but it is the really great designers that write their documents with an eye for who is going to be reading it.

There are lots of great articles, written by smart designers, expressing the importance of clear writing, so what I would say about writing has been said better, but designers don’t just write documents. In fact, if all you do is sit at your desk and write documents you are doing it wrong.

Let’s say I have just finished a very important document, which details a new enemy for the game. A short while later I get an e-mail from an animator asking for clarification on a move. Don’t click reply — don’t even think about clicking reply. Get the fuck out of that chair, get away from that keyboard, and just go act it out for her. You’ll notice I did not say “explain” it to her, or “describe” it to her. No, I said “act it out”, because damnit that’s what you need to do. Expressing the idea in a way that is relevant to your intended audience is critical.

Brevity is also a strong component of understanding your audience. You must always strive to avoid overwhelming them with information they don’t want or need. Avoid constructing monolithic tombs of incomprehensible density. What is the point of information if no one wants to access it. If you have any aspirations of someone other than you reading a massive document containing all relevant information about your game, then you are going to be disappointed.

Adaptability

Shit gets cut. Deal with it. The next quality of good designers is the drive and ability to maintain the experience you want despite a constantly shifting feature-set.

Let’s say you are working on a level, and it was going to contain the introduction to Monster X. One day we discover that the previous few levels of the game are lacking in big monsters, and to enliven the experience as a whole, we move the Monster X intro to another level. I don’t give a flying shit if your “vision” for the level was to have a grand reveal of Monster X – deal with it.

You must adapt, and hopefully you will find a way to maintain the experience. Maybe Monster Z would work just as well? Who knows — certainly not the player. The game is not going to ship with an extra piece of paper: “We’re sorry that the Ice level is a little bland. It was supposed to have this monster intro, but it got moved. Sorry!”

Not happening. The adaptable designer wouldn’t even waste the braincells it takes to feel sorry their level was altered, because they are already busy solving the problem. They can handle the change.

A key tool in helping you navigate the twisting changes of development is a process I call the System Designers Checklist, and I recommend checking that out, after you've been through some other concepts.

Wisdom

You must be the kind of person who invokes and appreciates good ideas, you must be the kind of person who clearly expresses those ideas, and you must be the kind of person who handles things changing at the drop of a hat, but all of that is moot if you are not the kind of person who recognizes an idea is either too much work, or that it overcomplicates the core experience.

It is rare to find people that not only know when but also where to say no. To be a game designer you must be a dreamer; you couldn’t do the job otherwise. We are explorers on a quest for awesome, but never forget that old saying, “too much of a good thing”. Just because you can add something doesn’t mean you should add something. The wise designer knows when to make this call.

Wisdom is also the ability to see the big picture; to see beyond your tasks, and understand how it impacts everyone around you. Do you keep loading constraints in mind when you design your levels? If you are making a fixed camera game, do you keep camera placement in mind when you design your levels? You can have a fun, brilliant, never before seen idea, and you can do an amazing job pitching it, but if three months into its construction everyone realizes it is going to take far too much time to implement you have done a disservice to the game.

You cannot design in a vacuum. The wise designer knows to seek feedback from their team, and is always seeking to find not only if an idea is fun, but also if it’s feasible in the time allowed.

Growing Your Qualities

Creativity

The quickest path, besides being a creative savant, is to inundate yourself with quality cool ideas to steal: books, movies, games. . . anything really. Every experience you have is a chance to store something for recall. If I had one bit of advice to my younger self it would be to open my mind to what you can learn from other industries. Great insight into game design can be seen in furniture design, iconographic design, concept art, and lots of other fields. A designer should be a sponge. You must absorb everything, you must absorb. . . life. Every experience contains some element that will be useful.

Clarity

For Clarity the answer is simple. I wish all those years ago someone had forced me to read books like Elements of Style. Maybe I would not have been ready, but at least I would have tried. It’s hard to grasp the importance of words and conveying messages clearly until you are in a situation where you must actively communicate on a daily basis.

Adaptability

Adaptability is a tough one. As I stated, this is not only the ability to think on your feet, but also the ability to handle having ideas torn apart in a group setting.

The closes example I can give of what this is like is trying to be a Dungeon Master in D&D.

Players will never do what you think they will do, and the need to constantly keep the campaign running smoothly will stretch your improvisational (and project planning) abilities to their extreme. You would be surprised how quickly you can find those skills being applied to your life as a game designer.

Wisdom

The path to wisdom is simple: make games. Design and play the kind of games you want to make, so if you want to make FPS games, then design FPS mods in your spare time. If you want to make action adventure games work on those kinds of games. Wisdom does not come from reading a book (or this website).

At best, if you cannot make them, the next best thing is to find horrible, shitty, travesties of games. You can not believe how many crappy games I have played in the holy quest for what “not to do”. Because while it can be easy to “feel” that you are not having fun, it can sometimes be hard to understand the “why”. Knowing what, exactly, is causing you to not have fun is an invaluable skill, and it will help you to quickly become the wise designer you want to be.

In Life...

The four pillars of game design are key components in being the best designer you can be, but they don’t make you the best game developer you can be. Taking pride in your work, working well with others, understanding a programming language, or being able to draw anything other than stick figures are important, if not directly related, attributes of being a critical member in a functioning team.

You must have a thirst for the process. If you do not try and understand code, then how can you expect to make reasonable requests for features? If you do not try and understand art, then how can you expect to make reasonable requests for levels? If you do not try an understand concept design, then how can you expect to make reasonable requests for monsters? Be all of these things, be hungry for knowledge, be respectful of your coworkers disciplines, and most of all...

Try not to be a dick.