Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

scripting skills. They will write a complete game design document specifying all relevant
design details and production considerations for any given game title.
A level designer focuses on creating levels as opposed to creating support structures
for entire games. This is not to say that they can’t create complete support
structures. Typically, they are plenty busy creating and managing the multiple details
associated with building great playing levels.
Some game designers come from a hardcore programming background and prefer
scripting and design detailing. Others come from a more arts-oriented background
and prefer environmental modeling, character design, and writing.
A few things are fairly certain these days: You’ll need basic drawing and design
skills. You’ll need solid writing skills. You’ll need a thorough understanding of
“play” and “feel” dynamics. You’ll need to understand prop, character, and item
staging in a layout. Knowing some scripting will be of huge benefit as well.
How do you build up some of these skills? It doesn’t happen overnight, and no one
ever stops learning or trying to improve their skills. I’m always trying to build my
game skills further, and I always feel behind. Every game developer, designers included,
is constantly hard at work building their skills. It never ends. I want to pass
on to you some of the areas of study and focus that I’ve found useful in trying to build
game-oriented design skills:
� Industrial design
� Writing and presentation
� Scripting
� 3-D modeling
� Leading teams
C H A P T E R 1 0
Industrial design emphasizes the development of visual concepts that optimize
function, value, and appearance. Coincidentally, this is exactly what you’re trying to
do when building game props or objects to populate your game scenes. I tend to try to
collect books with industrial design components. There is more information on this
area of study available at the web site for the Industrial Designers Society of America
(www.idsa.org).
The now classic Star Wars Sketchbook, by Joe Johnston (Ballantine, 1977), is one
of my own favorite titles relating to industrial and vehicle design. Fortunately, there
are many more reference books of this kind available today, and most of them are extremely
useful.
For the working game designer, writing and verbal presentation skills are very important
tools. As discussed earlier, part of being an effective game designer requires
the ability to synthesize large amounts of verbal and visual design information into a
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Getting Started in Game Development