The Games Game September 2011

Each month, industry veteran Tom Sloper provides career guidance to game biz wannabes, newbies, and junior professionals with the goal of helping them break into the industry, and stay in. Submit a question to Tom for developer-oriented advice in this column (IGDA members only).

Disagreement by design

Hey Tom,

I've seen your forum posts and your site, and I have a bone to pick with you.  You are always advising aspiring game designers to get a degree, when I can tell you for a fact that 50% of the game designers at my company here in the UK don't have a degree.  And you are all the time making a distinction between "game design" and "level design," but our company requires all design applicants to be skilled with level design tools and scripting languages.  You are always talking about design documents, but everybody knows that documents are falling out of style.  You seem to be a dinosaur, out of touch with the way things work in the real game industry today.  Perhaps it would be better if you would stop writing about the industry, since it has moved on and left you behind.

--Bone Picker

Dear Bone,

Practices and job titles vary widely from company to company, and they can vary with time at a given company.  The title "game designer" means a different thing in Japan than it does here in the United States (in Japan, it means "artist," and game designers are called "planners" there).  Perhaps the title also means a different thing in the UK.  And this isn't the first time that I've observed someone from the UK disagreeing with my advice that aspiring designers get a degree; perhaps UK companies don't value degrees as much as US companies do.

When a US company puts out a call for game design applicants, so many come in that filtering criteria are necessary.  I consider local applicants, with professional job experience or at least with a degree, first.  I would consider non-locals with professional job experience too, if not enough viable candidates emerge from the pool.  But I've never had to go so far as to consider applicants without so much as a degree.  Maybe that's because I'm in L.A., a huge hotbed of game companies.  Perhaps experienced designers and degree-carrying designers are hard to find in your area, or perhaps the managers at your company didn't have degrees themselves, so don't value them in inexperienced applicants.

Writing a good design doc requires different skills from building levels in a level editor.  And holders of degrees usually have better writing skills than those who've matriculated no higher than high school.  Numerous studies have shown that degrees increase earnings potential.  (See http://www.incontext.indiana.edu/2009/mar-apr/article1.asp for example.)  And a degree has workplace applicability beyond the game industry; a concern for those who might not stay long in the industry, or who might not gain a game job. 

I agree with you that it's very useful for aspiring designers to be facile with level design tools.  And I grant that level design is a great pathway to game design.  And I have worked with others who, like you, did not believe in GDDs.  But depending on the company's business model, GDDs may be a requirement.  A GDD may be required by a platform holder, publisher, IP owner, or investor. 

So given the foregoing, I will not stop advising that aspiring designers get a degree, especially if they live in America.  And I will not stop distinguishing between game design and level design. 

Please note that there is no guarantee that Tom will be able to respond to all the questions he receives. It is up to his discretion which questions he uses for this column. For further advice and resources, check out the IGDA's discussion forums, the Breaking In web site and the Students & Newbies Outreach section.

Tom's Bio

Tom Sloper's game biz career began over twenty years ago at Western Technologies, where he designed LCD games and the Vectrex games "Spike" and "Bedlam". There followed stints at Sega Enterprises, Rudell Design, Atari Corporation, and Activision. In 12 years at Activision, Tom produced 36 unique game titles (plus innumerable ports and localizations), designed four games, and won five awards. Tom worked for several months in Activision's Japan operation, in Tokyo. He is perhaps best known for designing, managing and producing Activision's "Shanghai" line. He is currently consulting, writing, speaking, teaching, and developing original games. Find out more at Sloperama.

© 2011 Tom Sloper. All rights reserved.