When I was a child, a theatre manager took me backstage.
I was curious, and I asked him: "Why do people come in through the front door?". He smiled and answered: " To not break the magic". Many years later, I realized that so it is in games; the design work is invisible so the magic veil can remain intact. A Game Designer who only focuses on ideas is like an aspiring actor stuck between the front door and the theatre's backstage. He can't decide whether to become a professional or keep dreaming.
So, if you are serious about becoming a Game Designer, here is why ideas shouldn't be your focus and what you need instead.
Having Ideas Is Not Your Job
Everyone can have ideas, even good ones.
Having ideas is not a skill but an inherent capacity of the human being. That’s why employers and clients will pay you to execute ideas and not to have them. No matter what people tell you, the Game Designer’s job is not to generate ideas.
There is neither a job title nor a role for the so-called “Idea Guy”.
If you are the one with lots of ideas but don’t know how to execute them, don’t worry; we’ve all been there.
Reset your brain and focus on how to filter the best ideas. It’s your responsibility as a Game Designer to know what to keep and what to discard from an idea. You should avoid those who don’t follow the Game’s Direction, choosing ideas that align with what the game wants to communicate.
The purpose of a designer is to create experiences, not random cool things.
Ideas can come from everyone.
Back in 1999, during the development of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Hideo Kojima asked each team member to think of an idea per day to add. The most interesting ones were discussed, filtered, and shaped by the design team and then implemented. If you remember, the “Freezing Spray” is one of those selected ideas.
So a good designer can have ideas, but his focus is on evaluating and filtering them.
But how you can evaluate an idea?
You have to judge it in relation to a specific context. This includes a few elements:
- What do you, as the game designer, want to communicate with the game.
- The feasibility of realizing it with the resources you have (technology, money, team members’ skills, etc.).
- Possible conflicts with any elements you have already defined or produced, in case it’s not a full game idea but just an addition.
- All the effects that realizing the idea will have on the work of other team members (for a practical example take a look at The Door Problem)
Let me reveal to you a little trick to greatly improve the evaluation of what comes to your mind.
Break your idea down into as many components as you can identify and ask yourself “What’s the purpose of any individual element?” and “Does it make sense to keep it or eliminate it? Why?”. Maintain a critical mindset towards what you think and don’t take for granted things that “are so because they have always been so”.
It seems obvious but it’s not; the way you think, and not the ideas you have, is what sets you apart as a game designer.
If you generate ideas, you’re a functioning human being. A Game Designer must step higher by judging, filtering and executing the best ones.
The Power Of Feedback Is What You Need
Ideas are important, but they are only the beginning.
An old gardener once told me: “What makes me a gardener is not having plants, but taking care of them every single day”. For the Game Designer, ideas are seeds to plant; they need care and attention to become flowers. If you think the flower will sprout by itself, you’re wrong.
You have to get your hands dirty to grow it.
For Game Designers feedback is an invaluable resource.
A designer that doesn’t listen to feedback is making two mistakes. First, he‘s missing out on great opportunities from all around him. Second, he’s not having a constant process of peer review for his ideas. Avoid feedback from people who are too close to you, such as relatives and close friends. Since they are in a relationship with you, they cannot be direct because they are afraid of hurting you (even if they say otherwise, trust me).
Use social networks, online forums or groups, subreddits or even friends of friends who don’t know you directly.
Make no mistake and ask for feedback whenever you can.
Receiving criticism is hard, so pay attention to not getting attached to your ideas.
Sometimes we are so in love with our ideas that we are blind to them. Discovering that they are bad, either through testing or feedback, hurts, but we better follow that pain. Because if we pursue something that doesn’t work, the pain will increase exponentially in the future making more damage.
Be ready to kill your children if you have to.
Asking for feedback on a game idea is like releasing the supporting structure of a newly constructed building. If it collapses, you know you need to rebuild it; if it stands on its own, you can build an entire quartier around it.
