The Games Game

Designing Beyond Your Playing (October 2007)

Dear Tom,

I am a student in the process of completing a four-year college degree. I am in my 20s. I understand that game designers rarely get to begin their work with their own ideas, instead often working on projects conceived by superiors. My question is this: do designers often get themselves in the position to work on projects that they like?

To elaborate, I am prepared to put my own ideas aside for the sake of doing good work on projects to which I am assigned. However, I don't think that I would enjoy working on the sorts of games that I don't enjoy playing, such as sports video games or MMORPGs. I would much rather help create the sorts of games that I love to play, such as The Legend of Zelda or Sonic the Hedgehog. As with most parts of life, one must naturally take the good with the bad. But if being a designer means routinely being asked to design games that don't excite me, it doesn't sound like a rewarding career.

Alex S.

Hi Alex,

The easy solution to possibly being required to design sports games or MMORPGs is: "don't apply to companies that specialize in sports games or MMORPGs." Since you have done some research on the job of game designer, you should already know that you'll probably have to work at some other game-related job for some years before you can get the game designer title. A lot of that work won't exactly excite you either.

Most of us who design games don't get to pick and choose what kinds of games we're assigned to work on. There are a lucky few who do - I'm sure you've read about them. For the most part, we are given an assignment, and our job is to create a game design within specific guidelines. For example, we might have to design a game based on an upcoming movie (based on reading a script). Or we might have to design a sequel to the employer's previous product. Or we might be told to create something that will sell, and that can be made using the company's existing technology base.

In my experience, it's a fun job. No matter what the game is, the designer's job is to create a new fun experience, and sometimes to create a world and a set of characters. That's pretty heady stuff, even if it isn't exactly something you would have chosen to work on, if left to your own devices. It may not be "exciting" all the time, but it's a lot more interesting than selling hamburgers or sorting mail or driving a taxi. If you approach it with an artiste's attitude, only interested in working on games you yourself would buy, you're not going to make a good employment candidate. And I don't know how you're going to find a "rewarding career" if you take such an exclusionary approach to life.