Lone designers

#1 I think you've got a very narrow view of certain logistical realities. While it's true that no large project is going to get done with one person, the concept of a single game designer is not an impossibility. Love him or loathe him, Derek Smart has proven (for better or worse) that a single designer in charge of overall design and creative control can lead a project to store shelves.

Your definition of "designer" seems rather vague. If we're talking about the lead designer, the guy who came up with the idea and laid out version 1, revision 0, of a design doc, then I could point you to Peter Molyneaux, Warren Spector, Sid Meier, Roberta Williams, Richard Garriott, Dani Berry, James Dunnigan, and even Gary Gygax. All of those luminaries started out as ONE person who got an idea and roughed it out on paper. But "designer" seems to be a job title with numerous permutations, as shown below.

--Sound Designer: the person in charge of the sound effects. Doesn't sound that hard, until you remember that it isn't just about gather sounds, but also about how those sounds can be altered and how they can be used within the context of the game.

--Level Designer: person tasked with making a level or a game map. Very much an iterative process, with the level designer going back up to the lead designer for approval as much as ideas.

--Graphic Designer: sometimes listed as lead artist. The person who has the monumental task of putting together the overall graphic "feel" and styles that appear in the game.

Since the games industry is getting more and more like the film industry, it would not be an inappropriate analogy to liken the lead designer of a game to the director of a film. While there may have been a writer who brought up the original story from the ether, it's the director's job to translate that story into a two hour movie, and if the director happens to be the writer (Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Rodriguez, M. Night Shyamalan (sp?)), then they have the vast majority of creative control over the overall project. Of course, they have to hire (or have the executive producer hire) actors, grips, cameramen and others to do the bulk of the labor for such a project, and they need a producer to bankroll it as a general rule. Directors, however, are the guys who are in charge of that project as a whole. You don't hear about "the new film produced by Harvey Weinstein," you hear about "the new film directed by Quentin Tarantino."

I think also that you've missed the very spirit which GarageGames embodies. The concept of a small outfit, possibly even one guy working on a puzzle game, who can get a foot in the door and a game out to market. If it's three guys, one coding, one doing art and music combined, and one writing everything from game dialog to press releases, one of those three guys came up with the design and can rightly be called the lead designer. The fact he got his buddies to sign on as well is bonus. Getting ideas from the people who are laboring with you is one thing, and finding out the practical limitations of the initial design is going to happen. But to assume that you NEED two or three dubiously titled "designers" speaks to doubts about your own design. If you cannot design a game (even to a rough state) and believe in it passionately, how the hell do you expect other people to actually buy it, much less work on it? Speaking from my own experiences, I've known people who can code like demons and who can turn out skins for models that look pretty good, but without a project idea to act as a lightning rod, those talents will either drift around producing content of no specific use or will get used for corporate PowerPoint presentations. Occasionally, a coder will get an idea that overcomes a problem they run into while coding, or a modeller will say "This was just something I was playing with," and they might get incorporated into the game. Ultimately, however, thre has to be one guy leading the project to its end one way or the other.

#2 Sorry, but as you said, there is only 1 person who comes to mind who has done really good with a single designer. I say a designer as in, the overall designer, lays out all the ideas for the game. This is just my opinion, not hard facts, but most people who do post ads are aiming for a huge project that will change the game industry, i know this because i used to be the same, but then i realised the major disadvantages to only have one person designing it. The variety people who put input into it, the more of an audiance it will appeal to. Like you said, lone designers are good, but not for major projects, like they claim it to be. I know that there will be one guy leading the project, but i think the reason they dont hire other designers mostly, because they feel pressured that it ultimately wont be their idea anymore. But that shouldnt completely matter to someone who wants to make the best game for their target audience. Other poeple may have different thoughts on this, but my opinion wont change, "Lone designers" should look for other input in projects other than their own. It can only improve their ideas and make them into a great game idea.

#3 I think a lot of people are just concerned about dead weight on the team. The coders, the artists and so on are all going to have lots of good ideas. So why would you look for someone who 'only' does design?

#4 Back in the day, very successful games were done by a single person or a very small team in their basements. No, they weren't as complex or elaborate (or as pretty) as today's AAA blockbusters. But they were good games.

It really depends on the game. If you are creating an adventure game or RPG, or your designers are also literally building the actual game levels of a level-based action game, or they are designing the individual missions / scenarios in a massive strategy game - then yeah, you might need more than one person. It also depends on whether or not you are trying to make a AAA game that is supposed to compete head-to-head with a similar offering from EA or Sony.

But if you are talking more higher-level game design for indie games, my feeling is that if you have a team of three developers and five people on internal testing, you have a team of eight creative, game-loving people who are likely to have a bunch of GREAT suggestions - pulling from their own set of likes and dislikes. You definitely need someone to captain the ship in this aspect - filter through the suggestions, prioritize changes, and have a practiced hand at knowing the difference between what sounds good on paper or in someone's head and what will actually play well.

I will agree with you that a lot of people new to developing games have unreasonable expectations of the difficulty of game design. I do not believe that game designers belong in an ivory tower, dispensing specifications to the unwashed developers to blindly implement. Yet a lot of newbies and professional game development companies see it this way.

I see it more as a managerial role... like a creative director. Sometimes it can be like herding cats, and it COULD become more than one person to handle... especially in a very detail-heavy game. But especially on the indie level, we are often running with entire teams consisting of no more than two or three people to begin with. There's no way a team that size could even cope with the bandwidth of stuff generated by an equal number of designers working the same amount of time.

#5 Amusingly, we're currently discussing this exact same subject in gamedev.net 's design forum, the thread "Why won't designers cooperate?"

#6 I am not sure I buy the idea that up-front design is that large a part of the effort. Design is a process that takes place as much during development as before it. For a small game developement team the designer (or designers) will have to be the people doing the actual work as well. There is not a lot of value in having someone who only does design unless your team is very large.

#7 I second Paul. With TZ, I had a pretty solid idea what I wanted (keep in mind, that didn't require a huge design doc or anything - it's a pretty simple premise ;-) As the team members got into the project, we'd be re-evaluating things from time to time, adding features, tweaking game ballance, etc. (Though, the adding features part is a danger too) So techically I was the 'Lead Designer' - I got final say on what ended up in there. But the game design as a whole has deep contributions from most of the team members - and in an Indie situation, this is pretty much how it should go.

I can't say I'd NEVER hire a dedicated game designer - but if I did, he's have to be hot shit, it would have to be one heck of a project, and I'd have to have some much deeper pockets than I do no. As it stands, I've got a drawer full of design docs I've written up over the years - why do I need someone else to handle that? :-)

#8 Paul is VERY correct in saying that design is as much during dev as it is before dev. Take the following as an example:




The first image is, well, what it says it is. The second and third were drawn not too long after the first (about six months). This shows how much can change in just six months - on just vehicle designs. There are still similarities to the first two drawings in most of the vehicle designs I make, but they're subtle. This doesn't take into account changes that may be made when you model an object. Since I mentioned that, lets go there....


You can see how many changes were made just going from paper design to 3D model. BTW, I'm only ONE designer and I have about 100 pages of design text (descriptions, program procedures, stories, etc), 75 pages of design drawings, and 20 spreadsheet 'data' files. So yes, a game can be made with only one designer or head designer. The best thing I can say as to forming an "attractive" game idea is to pull many basic ideas from several of your favorite games, all in different genres of course.

But all of this is just an opinion from a "designer" with no previous game dev experience or published titles (yet).

#9 I agree with the majority here, who seem to agree that a designated "designer" is not needed with an Indie team.

I can see where Zachs idealism comes from, though. If his ideals aren't true, he's out of a job unless he holds some other valuable skills. Beyond that, his arguments quickly fall apart.

Indie teams are small by design, not because they lack the ability to recruit dozens people. With most Indie teams I have seen, everyone has a hand in the design of the game. In my experience, its far easier to find a designated "designer" than it is to find a decent Audio technician or competent coder. This is because everyone has opinions and ideas, but it takes a rare skillset to provide code, graphics and sound.

#10 Ya know... somedays I should't think too deeply about a post, but this time I did :-) Now, before you think I'm attacking you - I'm not. I'm pointing out some realities here:

Zack - You said:

Quote:I am a designer for a quite a few games right now, but i have looked for other work in the ads and the forums section below. What annoys me, is that the people starting the post, automatically thinks that they are the lone designer. I think that is quite short sighted, as they will end up needing to hire another designer sooner rather than later.

I looked at your profile, and the two projects you have designed. Note that there's a difference between "I am game designer for quite a few games" and "I'm a successful game designer with multiple Indie / Commercial games under my belt." Why do I make this distinction? Well, you've put up a couple of help wanted ads for these games, but provide no compelling reason for someone to join them. If you've had a successful design that made it to completion, be sure to tell people about it - it helps.

But I also mention it because this sounds a little more like sour grapes than anything else. You can't get a job helping design a game. Well, without successful experience, what compelling reason does an Indie team have for taking you on as a full time game designer? Because you have good ideas? Well, lots of people have good ideas - what makes yours better? Again - tell people why they need you, -vs- just using thier team. However, in an Indie community, you'll have a hard time getting in the door with an existing successful team. Some of the comments already presented explain why. I'm not saying don't pursue the idea, just that you are pickin' a pretty hard nitche to work with. I'd recommend pickin' on one o' your smaller projects, examining what skills are needed to complete the project, then start learning and do some of it yourself. Then you've got multiple skills to market.

Quote:Someone who thinks they are just starting up a "company", with no previous experiance in designing, and will come up with amazing ideas on their own is wrong.

I'm still paying some of my mortgage payments from games produced by my company, which started in exactly the same way you rally against here. Are they Amazing Ideas? Heck no. Do they make money? Heck yeah. I haven't updated one o' the games since 2000, and it's still getting sales to this day, and is about to go retail with some new enhanced graphics. Wait a minute... sounds like I had an amazing idea after all - if it sold this long, it at least wasn't a BAD game design, that's for sure. In fact, all the work I did - it was to gain experience. I knew some of the grandous awsome ideas I had would never be financially viable to complete, and how many holes in my plan would there be due to bein' new to game design & development? I built the company and gained the experience all at once using smaller games. Seemed like a reasonable course of action.

(Edit: Missed part of a sentence ;-)

#11 Paul hit the nail on the head.

At one point (back when I was doing games for major publishers for a living), I was kind of dual-tracking as a programmer and designer. Programmers make more money, so I was emphasizing that one. But working both sides of "the wall," so to speak, I took something of a programmer's attitude towards design... I wanted to optimize the design process. Clearly no design up front was a bad thing. But I was also of the belief that too much up-front design was ALSO a bad thing - for the simple reason that the average game developer's eyes glaze over almost as quickly as a marketing executive's when you drop a notebook with 500 pages of design doc in his lap. I also knew, from several projects, how no plan survives contact with the enemy, and no design survives contact with developers and players combined. What sounds WONDERFUL and EASY on paper often turns out to be the kiss of death in actual play, or consuming vast amounts of resources in development.

So... my question was... what is the optimum size of a game design document, and what is the most efficient way to communicate the design to its audience (the different branches of the dev team)?

I can't call this a detailed study... but based on anecdotal evidence from a couple dozen U.S.-published games (and a few that were never published), I found that the smaller the initial design doc, the greater the games' success. People at GDC asked the designers / producers of the top games about their design documents, who sheepishly replied something like, "Oh, yeah. I think I wrote a three page document at one point in order to pitch the thing." By contrast, the guys who were bragging about their gargantuan design documents either never saw their game published, or saw it fade into obscurity upon release because... well, it sucked.

Now, there's probably a zillion counter-examples... I can't imagine a Final Fantasy or Baldur's Gate II getting out the door without a mountain of (possibly virtual) paperwork flowing about its design. But my opinion on effective game design is this:

* It's a process that takes place throughout development, not a discrete event. When you deliver your design doc, your job isn't over... it's just beginning.

* Designing a game is like commanding an army, or managing a major enterprise. The most efficient managers / commanders don't micromanage every detail of the process. The best way to do it (IMO), is to surround yourself with competent people, give them their direction, and let them surprise you with their ingenuity.

#12 Well said Jay. As it relates to Indie development, my opinion is that a designer on the team must be either able to pull his/het weigth in other areas or have such a command of all aspects of the process that he/she has the knowledge to make good leadership decisions for the team.

An aspiring designer who thinks that having good ideas is all there is to being a game designer needs to rethink their preconceived notions of what a game designer does.