Game designers are protocol droids, not Jedi

As a game designer and a teacher, I spend a lot of time explaining to people what game design is. And it's very interesting how most of this time is spent explaining what GD actually isn't.

I recently started using a geeky light-hearted metaphor that I'd like to share with you folks, and especially designers, whether seasoned or junior:

Hey there fellow designers! I know we like to think of ourselves as Jedi masters: wise, powerful, mysterious and indispensable. Well, if creating a video game is anything like saving the galaxy (and it's certainly close), I posit that we are more akin to C-3PO.

Disclaimer 1 (the usual one): I myself am a game designer. This is not meant to insult designers. After all, we like Threepio, don't we? (We do from a certain point of view.)

Disclaimer 2: My goal is not to create an entire comparison between Star Wars characters and game devs. The idea crossed my mind but I got a bad feeling about it. I can feel the disturbance: you’re wondering who Jar-Jar is? But this is not the allegory you're looking for. My focus will be on Threepio vs. the world.

Disclaimer 3: I refer to the game designer as ‘he’ to maintain the comparison with a robot that is characterized as a male (as weird as this sounds). This does not mean that all GDs are or should be men.

Enough with the disclaiming already! Here are 10 similarities between a game designer and C-3PO:

01. His main purpose is communication.
Beginners in GD tend to focus on technology, game culture, gameplay systems. These all matter indeed. Yet in fact the main challenge for the designer is to explain, convince, listen, uphold.

02. He acts as a translator between people.
Good designers speak many forms of communication: design, gamer talk, technical, art, sound, business, management, software, hardware, and more. In short, one of the reasons why GDs exist is that an engine developer should never be allowed anywhere near a client.

03. If he doesn't listen to other people, he will end up walking alone in a hostile desert.

No designer can afford to be stubborn. When a whole team is against a creative choice, you should follow them. Any colleague, playtester or even friend can bring new insight into the conversation.

04. He can't do much on his own.
Very few people can make ambitious games all alone. And why should they? A healthy team is made of focused yet open-minded people. Being a designer is being dependant on others. Admittedly, being able to code is a great advantage for prototyping and scripting, but your typical GD probably cannot optimize the game's physics engine.

05. If he does nothing but talk, he will become a pain for everyone around.
Nobody enjoys having a know-it-all scribbler on one’s back. Writing boring documents and talking about what should be done next is a pain, especially for busy people. Designers need to get their hands dirty.

06. He sometimes has to work for vile gangsters.

I really hate the cliché of the good developer vs. the evil publisher. It is outright silly to discard all big companies as being nasty and greedy. But it is equally stupid to deny that some clients, managers or other decision-makers have no love for games and are just in for short-term profit and ego. But if you want to make a living creating games, you cannot always pick and choose with whom you work.

07. Weak minds treat him like a god.

There are not many video game stars, but all of them are seen as ‘game designers’ (even when they are really producers). It conveys the idea that all the creative decisions are taken by a single all-encompassing genius. This is far from the truth. Again, most games are not crafted by a single person, nor should they be.

08. He is very useful at certain moments, but a waste of space at some others.
Even if a designer knows about level design, scripting, QA testing, writing, proofreading, game submissions, etc. There comes a time where he feels… so helpless. A time where the project’s fate will depend on the true Jedi: programmers.

09. Sometimes people switch him off so that they can get things done without being interrupted.

This is a corollary to the previous one. Idle game designers can become a pain: stalking around asking for a release date for Feature A or B. In those cases, close down for a while before your angry teammates pull your plug.

10. People are not really interested in his opinion about everything.
Designers are experts in gameplay and user experience. Their input should often be welcome on many topics. A GD could give a very useful opinion or gut feeling about art direction, for example, just as an artist could criticize gameplay very fruitfully. But some of us tend to give our opinions extensively about everything and we should sometimes remain focused on our own area. (But in all fairness, that could be said of all trades.)

Aaaand... back to disclaimer 1! Are you disturbed by my lack of faith? I meet kids wanting to become GDs all the time, and I think it's very useful to point out that the famous designers who inspire all of us didn't get there by bossing people around or working solo (or Chewie for that matter).

So kids, don't get cocky and you'll become more productive than you could possibly imagine. And may the... well, OK, you get the idea.

Cheers,

Eddy

All my thanks to Alicia for proofreading this post!