FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION
General Knowledge and the Ability to Research
The most imaginative game designers are those who have been broadly educated and are interested in a wide variety of things. It helps to be well versed in such topics as history, literature, art, science, and political affairs. More important, you must know how to research the subject of your game. It's tempting just to use a search engine on the Internet, but that's not very efficient because the information it presents is haphazard and disorganized and might not be reliable. The encyclopedia is a better place to start for any given subject. From there, you can increase your knowledge of a particular area by moving on to more specialized books or TV documentaries.
A professional game designer actually spends most of his time writing, so a designer must have good writing skills. This means being clear, concise, accurate, and unambiguous. Apart from having to write several detailed documents for each design, you might be expected to produce the story narrative or dialog—especially if the budget won't stretch to include a scriptwriter.
Design writing comes in several forms:
■ Technical writing is the process of documenting the design in preparation for development. The essential mechanisms of the game have to be answered unambiguously and precisely.
■ Fiction writing (narrative) creates the story of the game as a whole—a critical part of the design process if the game has a strong storyline. Some of this material may appear in the finished product as text or voiceover narration. The game's manual, if there is one, often includes fictional material as well.
■ Dialog writing (drama) is needed for audio voiceovers and cinematic material. Dialog conveys character, and it also can form part of the plot. A class in playwriting or screenwriting teaches you a lot about writing dialog.
A designer must be able to convey the details of the design to the rest of the team, create the textual and spoken material that appears in the game, and help sell the idea to a publisher. Good writing skills are essential to accomplish these things successfully.
Some skill at basic drawing and sketching is highly valuable, although not absolutely required for a designer if you have a concept artist to work with. The vast majority of computer games rely heavily on visual content, and drawings are essential when you're pitching a product to a third party. Game-publishing executives are interested in a hot concept, a hot market, or a hot license, but only pictures really excite them. The images remain in their memories long after they forget the details.
