[Becoming a Game Designer] Game Design: Raising the Bar

In this video various game designers talk about how game designers are innovating themselves and staying ahead of the competition. One of the things which contributes to being a great game designer is having an interest in many different subjects. If you understand subjects which are outside of game designing, such as: architecture, movies, physics, math, economy, philosophy, etc. You’ll be able to bring influences from these other subjects into game design and create more original and interesting games.

Something which gets mentioned a few times as an important quality of game designers is creativity. People get bored of playing games which are just knock offs of other games. In the indie scene, game developers don’t have big budgets to spend on marketing, so they need to discover another way to grab people’s attention. One method is to create a totally original game. Even if this is considered high risk for most people, game designers who know that they have a great idea and stick with it to end are usually the ones which have the most success. One example that came to my mind was the game Braid.

There are a lot of important concepts which are mentioned in the video about reaching a higher level as a game designer but aren’t discussed in depth. One of these is humility. I’ve personally seen many times humbleness being mentioned as quality which game designers need to have. If you’re creating a game and for whatever reason you have to let go of something which you have been working for many months because it is the best thing for your game and you’re not willing to let it go, it’s highly unlikely that your game will be any good.