Slashdot Mirror
So You Want To Be a Game Designer?
Gamespot is running a feature which talks to designers such as CliffyB and Akira Yamaoka on the subject of what it means to be a game designer. From the article: "No one just falls into the position. You claw, kick and scream and push your way into it. Most designers start off as programmers or artists. They understand gameplay systems; they live and breathe games. From my perspective, I was making my own games, programming them, doing all the artwork, the production, level design, and everything because I didn't have anybody else to do it for me. That background helped give me the perspective it takes to pull a product together and have a creative vision for it. Being a designer is about having a creative vision and adhering to it."
No.
Finally, something to give the idiots at school when they fantasize about creating the next Zelda game...
I wanted to be a game designer forever. Then I heard all of the EA horror stories. I'm glad I never went near it.
I have no desire to "claw my way" into a job that will make my life miserable
Being a designer is about having a creative vision and adhering to it."
Or you could do it EA's way and release the same title every year and change the nametag from Johnson to Jonson and people are still gonna buy.
After knowing about how the Game Industry is a sweatshop for video games, I figured I'd make games for my own good, if I made any at all.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
seems like some of those people were merely lucked out thanks to their previous hollywood careers.. of course some had done some pretty hard work, but it almost feels like it could turn into one of those fields like "communication".. you do a lot of work, and can't get shit worth of a job.. but i encourage it.. simply because I really need good freakin video games.. they are great works of art, and its a good outlet for their expressive minds.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
Another way to inadvertantly become a game designer is to design a franchise. Create a successful comic book, write a successful movie, or write a succesful TV series, et cetera. Or write a good sci-fi novel. If you create a fictional universe where games can take place, and if your fictional universe gets popular enough, you'll be consulted when games are designed for that universe!
I think I've fallen in love with that girl.
it's all about creativity you say? what job, regarding design ANY kind of software, is NOT about creativity? :~
me and my thinkpad, sittin' in a tree, c-o-d-i-n-g...
but I play one on the web.
.zip file, not just the one that looks neat.
I've been creating modules for Neverwinter Nights for the last few years and have had far more exposure than I would have thought possible to the world of game design. I've had teams of people working for me, dealt with NDAs and contracts, stayed up way too late debugging, and gone from extremes of giddiness to despair.
It sounds silly, but making games is a ton of work. Most of it isn't pleasant and it requires someone who enjoys creating things for the sake of the creation. The pay is lousy and you'll get hate mail no matter what creative decisions you make. Things will break and people will complain and ask for help. I find myself playing tech support to the world, explaining how you can't overclock your computer on a hot Summer day in Spain, or how you need to extract all the files from a
Still, I've kept it as a hobby for a long while now and don't plan on stopping any time soon. On the plus side, I've gotten some extremely uplifting e-mails from cancer patients, Israeli soldiers, and Peace Corps volunteers talking about how happy my games made them when all seemed bleak. As cliche as it sounds, it's that sort of thing that keeps me motivated.
I thought they just added some textures and models to a someone-elses/IDGames/Valve 3D engine , add in a movie franchise theme
Oddly enough I have a friend who works in game design and it was essentially doing that that helped break him into the field - way back when the original doom first came out he created the AliensTC mod for Doom by himself at home for fun. It had good enough artwork, level design and general atmosphere that it got him noticed in the gaming community. Since then he's gone on to various jobs in game design, including working for Valve on Half Life 2.
The article is right - the best way to get into the field is to just get out there and put in the hard work. If you're good enough and manage to prove yourself you can do well.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
...but according to the commercials on G4, all designers have to do is play video games all day! What gives?
Plenty do. It's just really hard to find the results in all the crap and rehashes that pass for games nowadays. One of the reasons downloading games is so popular. I hate spending US$50 on a game that sucked ass and wasn't nearly worth it, though that doesn't happen much since I'll wait and read reviews or ask friends about them.
"Being a designer is about having a creative vision and adhering to it."
and willing to work 90 hour weeks while getting paid squat by EA.
You claw, kick and scream and push your way into it.
no that would be trying to get whats owed to you BY EA.
No one just falls into the position. You claw, kick and scream and push your way into it.
Yeah sure. And how is this different from the rest of the jobs out there (e.g. neurosurgeon)?
You will never get the opportunity with CliffB to "scrape and claw to the top" if you dont:
"...stick with your first project and see to it that you finish it with the team. I've known many people who have jumped from company to company and never actually shipped a game, and their resumes look like a "who's who" of the gaming industry. I avoid these folks at all cost, as this is the primary indicator of a lack of finishing ability!"
(From BliffyB's own website How to get hired.)
Which for these people, no matter how talented, puts their future employment fate into the hands of the project manager, moving goalpost politics, and skittery publishers.
Well if CliffyB has anything to do with the hiring process.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
I am not a gamer. But I have been interested in the idea of using relational databases to drive and manage advanture games. Has anybody else explored this area? Drafted some schemas? The hardware is coming around to make game-driving DB's feasible.
Table-ized A.I.
Looking for ideas please regarding gaming. I am looking into starting a business that will require someone knowledgable about gaming. This is not the typical gaming as typically though of. My desire is to do every using LAMP. Appreciate ideas and suggestions.
It's interesting and depressing how many Slashdotters posting here think "game design" is the same as "game programming." But then, historically most people have never given a moment's thought to the idea someone actually invented the rules of the games they play.
I know for a fact this is changing, because I keep getting e-mail from elementary and junior-high school students doing assignments from their teachers. They're supposed to write to a game designer and get him to answer X number of questions the teacher has provided. For inscrutable reasons, when you type the exact term "game designer" into Google, my home page shows up on the first page, higher than any other individual designer. (Yeah, I know -- you've never heard of me.) Weird and unjust, but my penance for this fame is that all these kids write to me with their time-wasting questions. So I know at least some people are starting to recognize "game design" as a job, if not yet as a profession. Hope Slashdot follows pretty soon...
once you do get the sweet job... looks like youll end up making another violence centered game. we really need to flesh out some new ideas and maybe independent developers have a better edge at this?
I personally think that the most direct path to a job in game design is a job in game programing. Programming is the only other non-design job that interacts with all other apsects of the industry, and it's a good way to learn about the requirements and concerns of all the elements and people in the games business.
Also, when you are the guy working on the code, it's actually fairly easy to have a big influence on the design of the final product (as long as you are willing to do the work twice - their way and YOUR way - without wasting too much time, and without minding them throwing away your version in the trash).
Also, programmers are usually involved in design meetings. Designers are (usually) careful not to waste programmer time by asking for something that would take too long to implement, so you often get the oportunity to throw in your two cents.
I'd much rather remain a programmer, though. I like doing the work, not telling others what work to do.
for great justice, this sig has been moved
As for how competitive the job of programming games are, I can say this much. I had a roomate a decade ago. He was addicted to games, did not go to sleep at night because he could not stop playing. I think one of his games was Warcraft, I don't remember, but I used to hear him at 2am on the phone, giggling as he called up other people playing the game over the network. But the guy also was barely making "C" grades in his classes. I dunno what happened to him, he eventually moved out because he could not tolerate my drinking, and the fact that I banged his sister when she came to visit for a weekend. I guess he should not have ditched her to go play more Warcraft. I was more than happy to show her the bars, among other things.
I kept telling him, it is different liking something as the consumer and liking it as the manufacturer. I love sports cars, but the one summer I spent working in an automotive factory was pure hell.
Anyways, the ones that I think would make cool games are the story tellers. Who knows, maybe an english lit major would make a better game designer than a programmer or math guy.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
I think this is true. The people that ea_spouse was talking about are more or less the low level cogs in the machine, the nameless hord that do the bidding of the true designers/stars. But my guess is to become a designer/star, these are the positions that you must "claw, kick and scream and push" and back-stab through. My guess is that if you don't want to do these things, you really are not agressive enough to be a designer/star.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Want to make games? Learn a skill and come up with a game idea. Big news. Everything else is just self-congratulatory window dressing and delusion.
If more people treated it like a profession, the industry would naturally become more professional.
they didnt have to claw, or take degree courses in japan, or whatever.
Stay away from Hot Coffee while on the job.
Just remember that you don't want to claw your way to the top, only to be stuck working 20 hours a day on "Barbie's Fashion Adventure."
There are a lot of games on the market that are crap exactly as you describe... but there are some that are very playable and not based on any pre-existing hollywood franchise. Most of the good games are found on PC's, NOT on consoles.
Meh.
But I've never been a good programmer.
The game industry isn't ever going to really take off until you get past the stage where people who can't program but who have good story telling ability, have no chance to get into the industry.
And if I form a company it sure as heck won't allow sweat shop conditions like EA!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Did anybody else notice that Chris Avellone's bio included (under favorite movies)...
Porn's also good, but the acting is terrible and the premises are ludicrous.
hmm, working hard 16 hours a day .. ?!
I'd rather go for the job of "network specialist"
creating user account, reinstalling XP & reseting user passwords = IT job WIN
Arr, you could just start coding in assembly if ye want to be a big shot, er ya cuud just use Game Maker.
If you truly want to create games for the sake of creating them, then do it. There's many game creation utilities and moddable retail games out there, it's all a matter of learning how to use one. Just don't expect to have the production values you really want.
If you want to design games for the money, don't quit your fucking day job, and you'd better be very well trained and talented.
That's Michael Crawford, I believe, not Chris Crawford, who is a much better known designer. Which isn't to say anything against Michael Crawford. He designed entertaining (if maddeningly tricky) games.
So you want to be a rock'n'roll star
(The Byrds, 1967)Of course, I don't think most game designers have to worry about the girls tearing them apart ;-)
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
enuff said :P
Rejoice that FC has given you the honour of educating the infrared masses so that they may better serve FC :) Are you saying this doesn't make you happy?
1) Harbor an absurdly arrogant personality, enough to power a small city. Remember, you're a game designer now. You're better than everyone else in the computer industry. You may work in a cubicle in a nondescript office building just like anyone else, but dammit you're a game designer. You are special.
2) Develop an aversion to all forms of higher education. B.S. in math? Ewww, math. PhD in computer science? Pssh, you wasted your money on that? Wrote a Tetris clone in Pascal in your high school computer class? Whoa, you are young, edgy, and obviously too cool for school. Bonus points if you mentioned how much faster your program would be if you had written it in assembly. Uber bonus points if you started programming before the age of 9 because everyone knows that any decent developer started programming before they knew what their pee-pee was used for.
3) Research the many game programming flame wars so that you can be up to speed. Some places to start: C++ is slow, OpenGL/DirectX: Which one is better? (note: DirectX and Direct3D are just different names for the exact same thing, no difference...), Doom 3 has better graphics but Half Life 2 is the better game, Nvidia is better than ATI, etc.
4) Read everything you can by Andre LaMothe because he is the most relevant voice in the game industry...period! Oh, especially his "Tricks of..." series because everything when it comes to video game programming is a trick or a hack or the product of black fucking magic.
5) Know your video games! The only way to create a truly original video game is to know what's already been made. But if that doesn't work out, you can just create the umpteenth iteration of the same tired idea with better graphics and minor variations in game play and repackage it with CGI tits and ass and republish it at a higher price.
5a) There is nothing wrong with run on sentences. You're a game designer dammit! Time not grammar for!
6) Buy a Ferrari. Game designers make shit-tons of money. Heck, buy two. Use one during the week and the other one during all that free time you're going to have on the weekend...
7) Practice your deepthroating. You will need to fit John Carmack's penis down throat on a whim in casual conversation. This is sort of paying your dues to the gaming gods.
8) Game developers play lots of video games at work. In fact, on some days, that's all they do. So practice, practice, practice. You wouldn't want to get your ass kicked all the time by your co-workers?
9) Mountain Dew and bag of potato chips is a well balanced meal and you will suffer no ill effects in the long run.
10) Sleep is for the weak.
Okay, the fact is the gaming industry is fucking insane. You're working absurd hours to meet absurd deadlines so little Johnny can see the zombie's heads detonate in per pixel lighting only to get a memo on your desk that Johnny's parents are suing the company because they find the minor sexual content in the game to be offensive. And most game developers have earned advanced degrees in CS, Math, or Physics. They are smarter than you are. Go to school. Get a degree. Oh and avoid everything by andre lamothe, he only serves to belittle the accomplishments and hard work of very bright, very talented people in the industry. It is not black magic, it's just really fucking hard.
This brought to you by a frustrated RPI computer science major who realizes he's just too fucking stupid to make it as a game developer/designer.
btw, I think John is a brilliant developer, a nice guy, and I would gladly service him. Go spaceman, go...
i like grapes
they'll hire you if you can embed porn in your design.
Does anybody else smell a strategically-delayed yet feeble PR campaign from the likes of EA?
Sure smells that way to me. Is there anybody actually out there that still thinks the game industry is all peaches and cream? Jesus, I'd rather be working as an intern at Merrill Lynch...
-volve
flamebait? This is why I boost flamebaits +4...
This sig is false.
Seriously people, don't fall for the fool's gold of the gaming industry. It is long hours (ready for 13 hour days?), working on the weekend, becoming a stranger to your children and wife at least if you are a programmer (they always get it worst). I see this around me all the time and it makes me very sad for these people. Don't they deserve a normal life like everyone else?
The kids writing Allen most likely have no real interest in game design. They're writing him because they had an assignment (e.g., "What is your dream career?"), spent a week playing video games instead of doing any research, and then the night before the paper's due-date did a Google search and pestered the first guy on the hit page with questions.
Sorry, dude. You ARE a game designer. Live with it. You may not be a paid professional, but you are still a designer and the fact that people write and thank you for your work is a really good sign.
I don't play Neverwinter Nights, but:
One of my college professors had a cartoon taped to her file cabinet. It showed a badly drawn Charlie Brown sitting on a curb, chin resting on crossed arms, with a sour expression on his face.
In a thought balloon above Charlie's head:
"Getting a paper published is like pissing yourself when you are wearing a dark suit. You get a nice warm feeling but no one else notices."
I'm engaged in the game design version of this. I am writing INFORM text adventures.
I have one practice adventure finished; a haunted house adventure:
"Compiled" file for playing with Frotz or other Infocommish play engines:
http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones/Radley.z5
Source:
http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones/Radley.inf
I'm working on a much larger summer camp adventure. Actally had most of the text written, but put the files in a folder I didn't back up prior to getting this laptop serviced. Duh.
Stefan
Here's a game I recently designed and put up on the web just a couple of days ago - and it's for *real* money, not "virtual" money:
http://webpages.charter.net/rsdotson/
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
I have no idea how good it is, but Ferris State University's Grand Rapids MI campus launched a game-design program a couple years ago. For what it's worth, I (an employee of Ferris' art-and-design college) have just been assigned to take over tech support for them, so I'll be getting a better picture of the program in the coming months.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Uber bonus points if you started programming before the age of 9 because everyone knows that any decent developer started programming before they knew what their pee-pee was used for.
You mean it's not just there for show?
Take a look at the three major entertainment industries out there: music, movies and games.
Here's an interesting parallel: most of the "entertainment" they produce is crap.
Apparently, the big publishers profit just as much from crappy games/music/movies as they do from truly great, original g/m/m. It is not as if there is a shortage of good ideas, since even a highschool kid can come up with a great idea for a sequel to Zelda.
THE PROBLEM HERE is that the real consumers (us) know what we want, but we're not getting it because someone else is deciding what gets put out. At first glance, it appears that the crap they make is just a failed attempt at something good; but in reality, it was crap from the drawing board and they knew it.
THE SOLUTION is to tell all of your stupid relatives to stop buying you video games for Christmas/birthday/whatever because all they do is look at the label and think "Oh wow, this game is about E.T., my nephew will love it!"
And when you're watching TV and there's an ad for a movie that looks kind of good, ask around before you go see it because chances are the person who made the commercial is a better filmmaker than the person who made THE FILM.
And when you're browsing through the CD store looking for a good album to buy... go home and download it. And stop supporting bad music like Papa Roach or Fred Durst. Their melodies are simplistic and unoriginal. When you reach a point where RAP songs have more interesting melodies in them than ROCK songs then there is a serious problem with ROCK right now. F'ing idiots repeat the same three power chords over and over and call it rock and roll.
11) read gamedev.net regularly and believe that it makes you smart and informed. be sure to reference threads on the forums and quote from posts often.
SSIA, sorry for the troll but I'm kinda sick of these gaming nerds in my CS program.
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
Game design has little if anything to do with math. More writing than programming or algorithms.
Here's a good place to start if you're interested http://www.gamedev.net/reference/ Looks like it would takes years of dedication, but the payoff would be ... low wages long hours?
http://insomniacgames.com/Insomniac Games, creators of the R&C series, is the third best small / medium company to work for in America.
Actually, math comes in really handy. Your first pass at balancing anything will need to be a mathematical one. You'll need math and algorithms to create healthy systems.
Far more than anything, though, you will need economics. The feedback systems that economics focuses on are exactly the sort of things that you will need as a game designer, without the stuff like calculus and O of n.
Of course, you will also need a healthy dose of writing and management. Design is 1 part writing designs, and one part managing teams.
To counterpoint the original poster, things you will need as a designer:
1. Backgrounds in basically everything. This ranges from the history of 17th century naval battles to being able to name all modern men's shoe styles. Everything comes in handy somewhere along the line.
A. Take Art. If you're a bad artist, or not an artist, this is even more important.
B. Take Programming. If you're a bad programmer, or not a computer guy, this is even more important.
C. Take film studies.
D. Take management.
E. Take economics.
F. Take a little of everything else you can get your hands on.
2. Yes, know all of the games out there. Play them all. Try to avoid making the same mistakes that 30 other teams already have.
3. Be stubborn sometimes. Being a designer involves adhering to a vision doggedly, which can be hard after 13 months of development. Be flexible, but when need be stick your foot down to stay true to the experience of the game.
4. Stay focused on what you're making. Remember, while it may be 13 months to you, it's 4 hours to the player.
5. Become a good communicator. Design is to a large degree about communication. Learn how to tell someone that something they just spent 6 weeks on sucks without discouraging them.
6. Be aware of yourself and your experience. You know, that touchy-feely junk. You are your best laboratory. You're also not your only laboratory, so run playtest sessions, but you really do need to know how you're experiencing things at all time.
The ______ Agenda
First, I've worked for EA, and I work for Sony now as a game programmer, so I know something about this. In all my 10 years, I've only known one person go from programming to design. The reason? Who wants to take a huge paycut to be some creative director/execs lackey? Good programmers make 50% more than good designers. The gap is even wider between so-so programmers and so-so designers. Programmers get more respect with management, although they don't always get all the fame. So I guess if you want to trade a little fame for a huge chunk of cash, go for it. I'll take the cash, because I like my BMW, thank you.
I guess if you're a shitty programmer you can go into design and do better, but I think that's the exception and not the rule.
Remember, unless you're making your own game, you're somebody else's bitch.
That AliensTC mod was one of the best damn gaming experiences I ever had.
If you work hard at it maybe your first game design can be as good as a veteran game designers masterpiece like "Daikatana"
Unlike what Cliffy says, it's not about the hard work and the kicking and screaming to get to the top. It's really all about the bunny suit!
(Backup link incase the one above doesn't work)
-Through the server, over the router, off the firewall... Nothing but 'Net!
Yep, I occasionally still dream about being a game designer, even though I'm a professional game programmer. Unfortunately, much of the attractiveness of being a designer comes only if you actually had complete creative control, and this is most definitely not the norm.
While this may be the case with a handful of a well-known few, most game designers in the industry are handed a tight set of constraints for any game they are assigned to work on. They must endure a good deal of 'direction' from higher-ups within their own company and from the publisher (as well as justifying their design decisions). If they're lucky, they won't get forced to add features that end up destroying the game. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible for those in positions of authority to abstain from playing 'game designer' to some degree, even if they have no real talent for it.
Generally speaking, if you have some sort of 'I have The Vision and if you disagree with me, then you're a moron' attitude, you're not going to make it in this industry very far. If you know how to get people excited about your ideas... if you can build a concensus from among a wildly diverse set of professionals... if you can modify your ideas on the fly because the programmers or artists tell you your idea won't work... then you might just make it.
Anyhow, I still have a lot of creative input as a programmer. Any good designer is open to good ideas. Nearly all the games I've worked on have had a fairly collaborative design effort.
In fact, I had a lot of design ideas for the current game I'm working on (LOTR: Tactics for PSP), and it's been fun seeing those ideas coming to life. I can't tell you any more or EA will send their hit squad after me... Actually, kidding aside, EA has been pretty good about giving us enough slack to get this game done, so we're feeling pretty good about it so far.
The reality is, I'm pretty happy with my job as a programmer. One of the best parts of my job is that managers can't sit over your shoulder and say, "Shouldn't that bracket be moved a little bit to the left?" Programming to most everyone else is still a black art, so they leave us wizards alone... heh.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I just got offered a game design job last friday, and I didn't even ask for it.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
A few years ago I started a Myst-style adventure game project called Verenia. It's no longer active because it failed horribly. ;)
However, leading the project has given me an incredible amount of experience. At EuroMysterium 2005 (a convention for Myst fans) I gave a presentation on the subject of leading a project. It's aimed at doing adventure games, but it applies to most, if not all, game types.
I hope this is useful to anyone who has been thinking of starting a game project. :)
If you don't understand this book, time for a math degree.
... can't be THAT difficult: GarageGames.
Of course, it will take a few years and some buddies pithcing in at one time or the other, but in the end it isn't that much more difficult than building a good piece of software alltogether.
"You gotta be good at it, be patient and stick to it" - No, really?
If you wanna be a game designer, start now. Everything you need to build a game can be learned within a year by a skilled computer user and the tools nowadays cost a few hundred euros maximum. You won't build WoW of HalfLife3, because those need - most of all - huge man power. But you can build a good game. And have fun at it. You just have to do it.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Only way I can see doing it is coding up your own stuff. Corporations can't hire talent unless its visual artists.
A Game design document? What is that?
And who would I show it to in order to get some help going?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I got about half of the lights to turn off. I'll be getting my $500 in a moment, thank you!
Sure, you are getting a paycheck, but, what are you really contributing to society as a whole? Paragraph about me being one of the driven people, skip it, you already heard this a million times over. The next paragraph is about my philosophy on games and their impact on society. I actually was a hard core driven game player/designer for the last 25 years. Ever since I was 3. I can't tell you how many games I completely dominated, culminating with my #1 worldwide spot in Starcraft and Warcraft3. You can't argue with ladder ratings of 72-0, or 170-0, etc. Anyway I also spent hardcore hours in programming and design, literlly destroying years off my life with little done but programming and design. None of my games ever come out, but you can check out my weak site at www.jimsager.com
A game like PacMan has little impact on society except for an over used joke. But a game like GTA:San Andreas (NOT TALKING SEX GAME HERE), has impact. Rap lyrics have about the impact as GTA, advocating cop killing, drugs,prostitution, drugs, and other bad behavior. If you don't think rap or GTA has any effect on kids, just stop reading, because the rabbit hole is gonna get deeper here.
I was writing a 3d fighting game. Imagine Tekken, with a true 3d landscape, so you could fight multiple opponents, but still have the depth of combat. It'd rule over all other MMOGS in the market. I started by making 5 good and 5 evil classes. Then I realized that 2 of the evil classes had gruesome moves like Mortal Kombat style brutality. One of the wrestling fighters would do repeated slamming of heads off walls/floors and other enemies so it was simply brutal. The ninja would have extremely high level dismemberment moves, ala Time Killers. But I got to thinking: Does society really need more violence?
Back when Bruce Lee started making martial arts movies popular in the west, he was competing with an oversaturated martial arts market in his own home area. The movies were completely brutal with people losing guts and dying grotesquely. His movies were refreshing as they didn't focus on brutality as much as philosophy and tactics. Now maybe I could make my games 'clean', ala(the big blood debate of Street Fighter 2/Mortal Kombat for SNES), but at its core, you still have people beating the snot out of each other. Is that some message you want sent: Gain more power, and defeat your enemy!
I'm switching gears now, and I'm making a more innocent game. It will still have a sword and a berzerk style lazer gun beam, but the graphics will suck, and have no true plot. I just want to make a video game without running culture. Sure kids will want to play Cowboys and Indians or Cops and Robbers, but I don't want to get into that. Kids just think the tactical aspect is cool, but they get the culture all mixed up. What is a 9 year old going to understand about something that happened way back in history, and wasn't even a fair fight. No kid would think plaguing another people with disease is an even or heroic fight. I actually don't think many kids these days play Cowboys and Indians anyway, that was a fad back in the 50's with the prevailance of what was in the movies. Now its maybe StarWars, but you maybe are glimpsing into how people mimic their media.
Gangstas really live their media. They like to try and lead a life of bling bling, and control. A Gangsta maybe would still be the same without GTA:San Andreas, but it could fuel their Scarface dreams. A Gangsta doesn't need to be given queues on the ultimate fantasy life of a Gangsta, they shouldn't be fed anything giving a positive message on their way of life. Gangstas need negative repremands in the media and video games. Maybe thats what is needed to be studied... Instead of just beating down on Drug Dealers, the whole aspect of who they hurt is portrayed... Games are a lot like movies, and they can have social impact... But it'd probably be tough getting something that's fun as well as emotionally rivetting. I really d
God spoke to me.
That commercial went around the pro web boards causing great mirth. Most people thought it was a satire though!
Some jerkoff asks Tolstoy, "I want to become a writer, what should I do?"
Tolstoy says, "Write."
Play Command HQ online