Love of Games
A successful game designer, LOVES GAMES, plain and simple. A great amount of a game designers time is focused on all aspects of game play. This may include testing competitor games, trying to come up with new game ideas, etc. Therefore at the heart of a good game designer is a true love for games.
Game designers can have specialties and genres that they prefer over others. This is totally acceptable. Game designers that are new to the profession should not limit their opportunities to only game genres that they have interest in. There is a lot of value in creating games across a wide array of genres and the experience gained can add a lot of value to a designer's skill.
Play a lot of games
As a game designer, you will spend a lot of time playing games. There are several ways that this may take shape.
Testing Ideas. A game designer spends a lot of time testing their own unproven ideas and concepts. As they are tested, they may need tweaking or adjusting to make them smoother and more natural to players.
Learning from Competition. A savvy game designer will always be up to date on what the competition is doing. Playing games created by other designers can help you approach problems in different ways and give you insights into industry movements.
Validating Design Requests. If you are working on a large team, that means a lot of other people will be working to bring the game designs that you have created to life. There will be a lot of differences in how your originally conceived the idea versus how it is starting to take shape. You will need to constantly play and review your games and features as they are being built. Look for opportunities to provide constructive feedback while also looking for opportunities to expand your design with the ideas from others.
Creating Ideas
The most challenging aspect of your job as a game designer will be coming up with creative ideas to add depth and challenge to your game. Develop a strong relationship with the business analysts, product managers, customer support reps and any others that analyze the success of the game and work closely with the players. Work with them to better understand what the game lacks or fails in. Strive to understand frustration points for your players and come up with ideas that smooth things out for them.
In many regards a game designer has a lot of parallels to a successful entrepreneur. An Entrepreneur looks for opportunities or gaps in the market where they can bring a product or service to fill that gap. A game designer strives to do the same in understanding what the gaps and opportunities are in a game and works to create features or mechanics to fill that gap.
Work with Others to Get Critical Feedback
A successful game designer needs the support of different functions within the game team. If the engineers and artists can’t understand what the designer is trying to accomplish, then they won’t be able to build the game the designer is trying to create.
As a game designer, it is critical to understand and respect the different skills that each member of the team brings to the table. Often when an artist is providing feedback on a proposed character or style, it is with the intention of making that element resonate better with users. If an engineer wants to alter a feature to make it more performant, it may result in users interacting with the feature more. These team members want a successful game as much as anyone else.
A strong game designer listens to the feedback provided by their team and strives to understand why the feedback is being provided. Don’t take feedback personally. Instead try to find a middle ground that solves goals from all the viewpoints of all team members.
Refine Ideas
What does a designer do when a feature or game launches and the game or feature isn’t a success. The designer should strive to understand why and create fixes to address the problem. Sometimes this might be straight forward, other times it might surface a fundamental flaw in the overall game.
A successful game designer understands that it is easy to get stuck in this state of design paralysis. It is possible to refine an idea too much. It is very possible for users to simply not like your idea. If you are presented with a scenario where your idea does not find success - consider removing the feature and move on. It’s perfectly ok to have an idea that doesn’t work and just move onto the next one. Just be sure to learn from it for the future.
Keep in mind that the game or feature design might be a great idea – but some unforeseen item may be prohibiting its success. For example, if you want to create a game that requires users to be connected 100% of the time, what happens when users lose internet access? (see Game Modes) Are they dropped from the game or is there a disconnected play state they can interact with. If you drop users from the game, then your design will actually prevent a lot of users from playing if their connection goes in and out.
It is critical to followup on your ideas and look for areas of refinement. Don’t get stuck in this phase as it is possible for some ideas to simply be a miss. Instead learn from the good and bad ideas and continue to incorporate your learnings into future ideas.
