I was heading out of high school at the onset of the internet boom and didn’t have much access to information about getting into the gaming industry. Nowadays there are videogame degrees offered by every private university that has popped up around the country. There are exclusive websites dedicated to the industry. There are small companies emerging all throughout the states and around the world. At night commercials about creating the next great videogame air on television, attempting to recruit more students. In all that there exists an overwhelming sensation about videogame truly being mainstream. Yet, I cannot help but think that perhaps we all are being misled to a certain extent. The videogame industry going mainstream has its consequences. For the game designer it has been the equivalent to a catastrophic meteorite on dinosaurs.
A long time ago in a place forgotten by history game designers existed and they made videogames. They came up with ideas and implemented them into interactive little hobbies that can be enjoyed by others. They dreamed of spaceships and aliens, adventures into unknown worlds, epic struggles of war and peace; videogame was a brave new world with infinite possibilities and dreams held only by the realm of technology. Most importantly it held the hope of a world in which man can truly call his own. These game designers helped create an industry.
No one would recognize such a game designer today. They are an extinct breed. Videogames today do not adhere to man’s creativity and attempt to harness the heart of why videogames were produced in the first place: interactive entertainment or in gamer’s term gameplay. Along some point in going mainstream the gaming industry moved towards economic principles of minimal cost and maximum profit. Videogame became another medium in the eternal struggle for fortune. Any successful game would be reproduced and copied until it was milked dry. It was a safe route to keep a game company afloat and at the same time capitalize in on the profits by producing the special edition, champion edition, turbo edition, super edition, super champion edition, super special champion turbo edition ,I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, and so on.
The blatant attempt to mass produce whatever might sell tarnished the industry. How do I know? I am the market that videogame catered to its entire existence, I am those little boys that shared Nintendo cartridges with their friends from school, I am those kids that knew every pokemon by heart, I am those guys that lived rpgs religiously in a dark room for days, I am a child of the gaming industry. It’s no secret that if a small company is to survive it has to be led by an insanely creative game designer, producing an instant classic. It’s also no secret that to make profits you churn out a new edition of that instant classic every year. Eidos survived almost exclusively on the back of Tomb Raider. The next generation of game designers is the only remedy for an industry in which all games adhere to the following: if you played one game you played them all. This is especially true in certain genres. Cough, cough at Grand Theft Auto and its clones. You know who you are.
The next generation of game designers must be allowed into the gaming industry. If you’re not a programmer or a graphics designer you are of no use. Videogame is my blood and it is the most sorrowful emotion ever to realize that what you grew up on, what you know like second nature, what you aspire to become, has no place for you. I contend that all things would not exist without the vision to implement them, that creativity in itself is a skill far harder to obtain and even more difficult to refine. There can be no soldiers without generals, no government without politicians, no movies without directors, no society without laws and no existence without entity.
There is a glimmer of hope because while it’s a slow trend it’s becoming evident that nowadays a game designer needs to have OUTSIDE interests and knowledge. Why? It’s very simple. Videogames are about OUTSIDE interests and knowledge. Videogames have to be about something other than itself. It can range from race cars to farming turnips to killing a man. Beyond expertise in a certain field the most important trait that defines a game designer is the understanding of interaction between one individual and many. Videogame has to create a world in which expertise takes place. Thus, it comes as no surprise that many great videogames were headed by people with the understanding of a SOCIAL DYNAMIC. A perfect example is Shinji Mikami and his Resident Evil creation. He was heavily influenced by cult horror films and understood how to time and pace horror scenes much like a movie director. Alone in the Dark came out as the first horror game of the survival nature but it lacked that understanding. Another example, Hideo Kojima studied to be a film director initially. Many of his videogames deal with philosophical and social issues weaved into an intricate story. I have an inclination that Solid Snake is really based on Ernesto Che Guevara the famous revolutionary and not David Hayter best known for playing the Guyver before voicing Snake (joke). It would come as no surprise that movie directors and screenwriters will become an integral part of the development process in the near future. It already can be seen in games like John Woo Presents Stranglehold.
The reality is game designers cannot be the old lone programmer working in his free time. Neither can he be a programmer or graphics designer promoted from within the company. Game designers have to specialize to meet the growing complexity of videogame development. The problem is there is no definite route for aspiring game designers despite the obvious consequences of neglecting game designers while going corporate i.e. producing videogames that are exact clones of others that no one will want to buy or play. Being test boys doesn’t cut it. Game designers cannot program a code or produce a drawing or perhaps even budget the finances. Game designers do not have a technical skill that can be used mechanically eight hours a day. All they have are visions and a pen. Game designers seem unnecessary. Creativity is seen as an asset but not a skill. It’s the “fun part” for the development team and not considered work. Furthermore, companies do not understand social dynamics involved in videogames despite the most successful game designers proving it beyond a doubt. The result is up and coming game designers are not given the opportunity to create the next generation of videogames. Videogames become cliché and boring. It becomes a generic medium and loses those qualities that made us all love videogames in the first place.
Here is my proposal of a standard for aspiring game designers. This is their academic program for a skill like learning C++ for the programmer and Maya for the graphics artist; study liberal arts. Great game designers should come from philosophical, psychological, historical and english educational backgrounds. It is these that have the best understanding of social dynamic. It is actually men in these fields that have shaped the world in which we live. There is no better option than to go to them for creating a virtual world.
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