Last week, we introduced you to our game designer Tristan Angeles (That's him on the left, with our programmer Marnielle) and his path to becoming a game designer. There was so much interview content that we decided to break it up into two parts. If part 1 was about his path to becoming a game designer, then part 2 is about practical tips for aspiring game designers.
1. Learn how to code
Or at least learn the basics of coding so that you can understand what the programmers are talking about. Knowing how to code also lets you make your own games and join game jams even with ugly programmer art.
2. Read Lots of Books
Read as many books as you can about any topic that you find interesting. Recently I heard a podcast interview with Sid Meier, he said "The challenge of game designers today is to bring things outside of the gaming world into gaming world."
3. Enjoy using spreadsheets
You will be using them a lot when it comes to game economy and balancing. I used to hate using Excel until I of my QA friends gave a workshop on how to use it for games. Since then I've found it to be both an enjoyable and indispensable tool.
4. Join Game Jams
One of the jams I joined was The Experimental Gameplay Project. It happened once a month, and you'd have to think about weird ideas and make games about the month's theme.
5. Learn to Compromise
Always be open to the possibility that you can be wrong. Ask for ideas from your team mates. These are the things I constantly keep on telling myself. Everything you think you know while designing is just your hypothesis or assumptions, and can only be validated once you start playtesting.
6. Find an Experienced Designer and Ask Them Questions
I once bought a book called Challenges for Game Designers by Brenda Brathwaite and Ian Schreiber. I emailed Schreiber to ask how he would approach some of the design challenges I had at Gameloft, and he responded. I think the best advice I got from him was about deconstructing games. He told me when tackling a new mechanic the question to ask was why? Why did the game designer introduce this mechanic? This allows you to make a hypothesis why a certain mechanic was put into place.
7. Watch the Extra Credits Videos about Game Design
These videos were my Saturday morning cartoons when I was getting started. These videos cover a broad range of game development topics from basic game design, to more advanced topics like game economies and balancing.
There was no elegant way to transition between the tips and this last segment, but hopefully it will also provide some more insight into practical game design:
What Resources Were Used While Designing Political Animals and Academia?
Social media was a very good resource when we were developing Political Animals. People would post news on Facebook, and it seemed like there was always something we can use or put in the game as events or a feature. In fact, when we released the game and people were posting about it on Facebook, one of the best parts for me was when people 'got' the game by relating it to things they knew or experienced in real life. For some of the mechanics like concerns, voting and bribing I based the mechanics on how I understood this paper on Vote buying by Eddie Dekel, Matthew O. Jackson, Asher Wolinsky .
Getting ideas for Political Animals I believe was the easy part since the team followed Philippine politics. Also, it seemed then that every person I asked knew something(or was an active participant) or had experience with cheating in elections in their home town.
In designing Academia, I'm trying to keep a balance between using school administration textbooks, and entertainment. I've been watching a lot of TV shows lately about or set in schools. Currently, I'm being entertained by Boston Public, just a few episodes of this series gave me respect for principals. Running schools is a hard job! I've also been watching documentaries about schools so that I can get ideas about the challenges faced by school administrators.
Thanks for reading! You can read more of Tristan's thoughts on his old game design blog (which he unfortunately no longer updates) If you're interested in learning about our latest game, Academia : School Simulator, please sign up for our mailing list, join the Facebook group, follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to our Youtube channel! !