Reality Check 05.28.09: Coding Games
Posted by Alexandra Pusateri on 05.28.2009
411's Alexandra Pusateri explores more game careers this week with game designers.
Ready for your reality check this week? Your insurance's deductible was just lowered and now you don't have to move to Canada for free healthcare. I'm Alexandra Pusateri, your guide through all things game-related in the world out there, and I'm here to slap your Master Chief with a reality check – that is, with an original IP. This week, we're diving into the world of game design. Game design is a well-known, but not thoroughly explored, career.
Video game design is an umbrella term, used to cover an entire area of producing a game. In video game design, there are various tasks: music, story, dialogue, development, art, and that's only scratching the surface. Some have to multitask.
Chris Lamb has been working in the industry since 2005, when he started off as a freelance game tester for a New Jersey game company. After that project was completed, he ended up at Pop & Co., now This Is Pop, who has done flash games for Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. His boss and producer approached him after completion of their project and asked him if he wanted to try game design.
He didn't turn it down: "Game design sounded like a great opportunity to try something new, and I'd been doing this thing for a while where I said ‘yes' to pretty much everything that came up just to see where it would lead. It wasn't until [later] that I started to realize that not only was my brain already kind of wired for this sort of thing, but I'd sort of been making up games all my life. I love systems and thinking about how they work, and I love solving problems, even if I'm the one who made them up in the first place."
He now designs Nintendo DS games at Powerhead Games, who has released such games as Catz and CSI: Dark Motives. Lamb has done everything from creating game design documents (or GDDs) to last-minute tweaks on gameplay. "Basically, I do a lot of writing and problem solving, which is good, as those are two things I very much love," he says.
Lamb's projects are usually based on licenses, not that he's complaining: "I genuinely enjoy working on licensed titles for the most part, as it's a very unique challenge in terms of game design. Not only do you need to come up with a good game that's fun, you also need to get to the heart of what makes the license cool and popular to begin with."
His workdays depend on what stage the project is on. New projects warrant research, brainstorming, and writing proposals. In early production, aspects of the game are written out on paper and talked over with the team. Further in production, Lamb may be required to write dialogue or build levels.
Lamb develops games for the DS, like Imagine Movie Star.
For those wanting to have a career in game design, Lamb has some suggestions. "Learning to work with others and make concessions for the good of the game is one of the best things that can happen to you," he says. While this may sound like a no-brainer, being creatively attached to your work may leave you a bit hurt.
"There will be times when the design you're so very sure of will have to be changed in some way due to the say-so of someone else, be it a person on your team, your producer, your boss, a publisher, the licensor, or some other involved body," he says. "It's a very hard lesson to learn, and can be immensely frustrating, particularly when the change they've asked for ends up being for the better."
Even though game design is meticulous, even heartbreaking sometimes, those who do it for a living are doing it because they live for it. Game designers have a passion for games that not all gamers can handle. Game design is centered around math, code, and coffee – so if you're interested in a career, grow to like these three things fairly quickly.
A degree in computer science rather than game design might be more useful to a prospective game designer, although DigiPen students are usually picked up by game companies before they graduate. Do your research, talk to some game designers – they're more willing to open up than you think!
What's something unexpected about game design, Chris? "Oh, in the Latin alphabet, ‘Jehovah' begins with an I. That comes up way more often than you'd think."
