10 Misconceptions You Have About Working In The Games Industry
6. Its Not Just Having Ideas
YouTubeThis is an old chestnut thats particularly likely to stick in your craw if youre a game designer. Its always tricky to explain your day-to-day responsibilities when youre part of the games industry, particularly if youre working on something that hasnt been announced, but a designers role is so varied and multi-faceted that even gaming enthusiasts usually get it wrong. Most people think a designer strolls into work on a Monday morning, gathers the team together and announces their latest amazing idea: its a first-person shooter set inside a giant shark, and you play as a sarcastic cowboy in a wetsuit. As the Giver of Ideas, the designer can then sit back and relax while the concept artists prepare a dazzling array of possible sharks to choose from and programmers get to work on the tail physics. The first thing people learn when they actually land the job is that everyone in the company - being creative and intelligent people in their own right - also have amazing ideas. Whether youre working on a team of hundreds or heading up your own indie project, the key to realising them will be to communicate clearly and efficiently, and thats where the designer expends most of their efforts. How big is your shark? Is it a cute, cartoon shark or a gargantuan monstrosity? Is it an open-world shark or split up into levels? What are the cowboys abilities? All of these questions will need answering, probably all at once, and youll also need to be able to justify your decisions. After all, every piece of art or line of code created as a result of something you said takes time, costs money and has someones hard work invested in it. Yes, you need to have great ideas - but youll need to be persuasive, passionate and incisive to make them come true.
YouTubeThis is an old chestnut thats particularly likely to stick in your craw if youre a game designer. Its always tricky to explain your day-to-day responsibilities when youre part of the games industry, particularly if youre working on something that hasnt been announced, but a designers role is so varied and multi-faceted that even gaming enthusiasts usually get it wrong. Most people think a designer strolls into work on a Monday morning, gathers the team together and announces their latest amazing idea: its a first-person shooter set inside a giant shark, and you play as a sarcastic cowboy in a wetsuit. As the Giver of Ideas, the designer can then sit back and relax while the concept artists prepare a dazzling array of possible sharks to choose from and programmers get to work on the tail physics. The first thing people learn when they actually land the job is that everyone in the company - being creative and intelligent people in their own right - also have amazing ideas. Whether youre working on a team of hundreds or heading up your own indie project, the key to realising them will be to communicate clearly and efficiently, and thats where the designer expends most of their efforts. How big is your shark? Is it a cute, cartoon shark or a gargantuan monstrosity? Is it an open-world shark or split up into levels? What are the cowboys abilities? All of these questions will need answering, probably all at once, and youll also need to be able to justify your decisions. After all, every piece of art or line of code created as a result of something you said takes time, costs money and has someones hard work invested in it. Yes, you need to have great ideas - but youll need to be persuasive, passionate and incisive to make them come true.