Talking with a friend recently, the topic of designer identity came up. More specifically, the topic of who I am as a designer, what do I stand for and want to make of this career. I think this is a critical question for anyone that wants to be successful in this line of work. By successful I don't just mean employed, either. It's (relatively) easy to drift along in a design role, taking whatever projects you can find and making ends meet. You can work at a port shop or shovel-ware factory, still get paid, still call yourself a designer. Don't get me wrong, I'd take any game design job over almost any 'normal' job that people do.
What I'm talking about is a focus, a
raison d'être. Artists of any medium develop a voice in their work, and game design is no different.
My initial response was sort of knee-jerk. I stated I was about player choice and expression, falling more on the interactive side of the continuum where procedural narrative and simulations lie as opposed to linear narrative, cut scenes and point to point gameplay. Games are about player interaction, and the bias I chose epitomizes the very nature of our medium.
After the conversation ended I began to think about this response and how it rules out a lot of experiences I've enjoyed when playing games as well as experiences I'd enjoy crafting myself.
Looking at my project idea database, only 13 of the roughly 70 games fit the "simulation aided narrative" description, where the player can sort of sculpt the story to their liking. A large portion falls into the "player exploration" category where there's some large world(s) or system for the player to wander around in and discover. Then there's the "experimental" category, ideas that are just different from standard assumptions about games specifically and interactive systems more generally. Last are games that follow fairly conventional mechanics but have some specific theme I find interesting.
Looking at some of my favorite games, a lot of them don't really have player driven narrative or much player expression* at all. The short list: Psychonauts, Shadow of the Colossus, Braid, Portal, Mega Man, Zelda, Knytt. None of those even have as much as a branching ending. Some are exploratory, some are linear while others are less so. They are all fairly artistically cohesive and respect the player by providing well communicated design and few character stereotypes.
I'm discovering that I don't have as much focus as I think yet. I think focus comes in progressively narrower stages. In the beginning, 2nd to 4th grade all I knew was "I wanna make games! I wanna make games!" Now that I've been a designer for a few years I have the opportunity to step back and ask what kind of games I want to make, how I see this whole thing panning out over the next several years. I definitely know what I enjoy playing and things I'd like to see our medium accomplish. I want to be on the forefront of advancing our medium beyond the stereotypical teen male power fantasies and narrative drivel that stigmatize it. I want to see art asserted over profit.
Art over profit is tricky when you do this for a living. Side projects are a good way to vent creative energy in a risk averse business, but I think lessons learned there can be brought into the commercial endeavors. I also look forward to more exploratory experimental design in the mainstream, hopefully curbing the self-fulfilling cycle of games for male teens drawing the male teen demographic so we then focus on male teens ad nauseum.
* Player expression being the player's pseudo emergent use of granular systems to solve problems with their own 'voice' instead of enacting explicit solutions to problems and paths through environments. You could argue that anything interactive supports expression since a player can choose to jump over Goombas instead of jumping on them in Mario, for example.Labels: game design, meta
2007-2010
