Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

Building Game Worlds 254
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U L T I M A T E G A M E D E S I G N
Don’t get me wrong; a handful of developers have made quite a bit of money. This
too is relative. I know plenty of developers hard at work on a wide range of games for
every platform you can name who don’t stumble over large piles of cash in the garage
while strolling to the Ferrari to play golf on a summer’s day. Game development is
hard work. If one of the “handful” owns a Ferrari, they often drive it to the office to
work for 14 hours straight on a tighter BSP parser or some such thing. If you want to
stay competitive in the game industry as a developer, you can’t be neglectful.
Keep in mind that as a game designer or in any other game development role, you
are offering your skills, services, and abilities to a game development studio (whether
they are affiliated directly with a game publisher or not). Your fate is largely
connected to their own. If a game studio loses a development contract for whatever
reason (and there are many possible reasons), the funding covering your position flies
away with that contract. In an industry as volatile as gaming, this can happen in rapid
succession.
I’ve known developers who have worked on three cancelled games in a row. If this
happens to you, it can be problematic, since other developers who now become your
potential employers begin to wonder what went wrong (if anything) on the titles you
worked on that were cancelled. Oddly enough, they begin to transfer some of that
blame to you, even though you may have had absolutely nothing to do with any of the
reasons, motivations, ego-clashes, or simple business decisions that led to your title’s
cancellation.
At some point, despite your own best efforts, you may find that your ability to deliver
the best quality work possible is negatively affected, even ended, by any number
of decisions made around you. Again, this is where you must strive to remain flexible
to survive. I’ve known a few game designers who are now quite happy in other fields.
Others will ride the game industry out wherever it might lead. For them, a day came
when the minuses simply outweighed the pluses. It’s hard to be 40 and living like
you’re 22. Even if you can handle it, no one around you can. This should not imply
that you can’t be way over 40 and a successful game developer. You can be, but there
will be sacrifice involved.
Here’s another factor to consider. It’s no secret that independent developers working
with tight budgets have little left over to spend on training. In many cases, if
you’re going to keep your skills current and competitive—and you had better if you’d
like to stay working—it’s going to cost you personally. Hold off on the sports car,
and put that cash from the garage into a T-bill. You better set something aside for
training and evolving your own skills.
What’s it like to work as a game designer? It means different things in different
places. Some teams run smoothly, with confidence that their designers will provide
all mission-critical design details in a timely matter. Other teams run by having team
members “own” more of the design details individually, and the designer becomes
more of a design facilitator between having other responsibilities. Development