Notes from Jesse Schell

1)      “But many have a crisis of confidence, and feel stuck in a catch-22: If only game designers can design games, and you can only become a game designer by designing games, how can anyone ever get started? (Basically saying for many it’s a case of confidence boosting).

2)      “Game design is decision making, and decisions must be made with confidence. Will you fail some times? Yes you will. You will fail again, and again, and again. You will fail man more times than you will succeed. You will come to love your failures, because each failure brings you a step closer to a truly phenomenal game.

3)      Skills a Game Designer Needs? Animation, Anthropology , Architecture, Brainstorming, Business , Cinematography, Communication, Creative Writing, Engineering, History, Management, Mathematics, Music, Psychology, Public Speaking, Sound Design, technical Writing, Visual Arts.

4)      The most important skill for a game designer is listening. Game designers must listen to many things. These can be grouped into five major categories: Team, Audience, Game, Client, and self.

5)      You will need to listen to your team, since you will be building your game and making crucial game design decisions together with them.

6)      There are two kinds of gifts. First, there is the innate gift of a given skill. This is the minor gift. If you have this gift, a skill such as game design, mathematics, or playing the piano comes naturally to you. You can do it easily, almost without thinking. But you don’t necessarily enjoy doing it. there are millions with minor gifts of all kinds, who although gifted, never do anything with their gifted skill, and this is because they lack the major gift. 

I have no words, I must design: Notes

2   )They’re all games. But how to make sense of this amazingly disparate

fi eld? What is it about all these games that makes them interesting? Do they

even have anything in common, when you get down to it?

To understand games, to talk about them intelligently, and to design

better ones, we need to understand what a game is, and to break “gameplay”

down into identifi able chunks. We need, in short, a critical vocabulary for

games.

3  ) Almost every game has some degree of puzzle-solving; even a pure

military strategy game requires players to, e.g., solve the puzzle of making

an optimum attack at this point with these units. In fact, if a game involves

any kind of decision making, or trade-offs between different kinds of

resources, people will treat these as “puzzle elements,” trying to devise

optimal solutions. Even in deathmatch play of a fi rst-person shooter, players

will seek to use cover and terrain for advantage – ‘solving the puzzle’ posed

by the current positions of opponents and the nature of the surrounding

environment, if you will. You can’t extract puzzle from game entirely.

4  ) A light switch is not a game, obviously. Interaction has no game value in

itself. Interaction must have a purpose.

5  ) Aha! Now we’re not talking about “interaction.” Now we’re talking about

decision making – interaction with a purpose.

6   ) What makes a thing into a game is the need to make decisions. Consider

Chess: It has few of the aspects that make games appealing – no simulation

elements, no roleplaying, and damn little color. What it’s got is the need to

make decisions. The rules are tightly constrained, the objectives clear, and

victory requires you to think several moves ahead. Excellence in decision

making is what brings success.

7  ) At every point, he or she considers the game state. That might be what

he sees on the screen. Or it might be what the gamemaster has just told him.

Or it might be the arrangement on the pieces on the board. He considers his

objectives, and the game tokens and resources available to him; he considers

his opposition, the forces he must struggle against. He tries to decide on the

best course of action.

8  ) Some years ago, Will Wright, in a speech at the Game Developers

Conference, described SimCity, which he designed, as a software toy. He

offered a ball as an illuminating comparison: It offers many interesting

behaviors, which you may explore. You can bounce it, twirl it, throw it,

dribble it. And, if you wish, you may use it in a game: soccer, or basketball, or

whatever. But the game is not intrinsic in the toy; it is a set of player-defi ned

objectives overlaid on the toy.

9  ) A game without goals is a game that’s dead. Objectives, so interactions with a purpose à you can give yourself goals.

Struggle ----à something to overcome a way to improve & get better. Adds competition to games

Structure ---à shapes player behaviour

Endogenous meaning ---à things that are meaningful within the game.

Intro to Critical Games Studies Interview Questions

Q) What is the title of the book (fiction) I am currently reading?

A) Neuromancer, William Gibson.

Q) What is the title/topic of the book (non-fiction) you are currently reading (or the last non-fiction book you read)?

A) Challengers for game designers.

Q) What is the last live performance (music, drama or dance) you attended?

A) WASP

Q) What is the title of the last film you saw at the cinema / online or watch on DVD?

A) Fright Night

Q) How often do you read a newspaper? (Which one?)

A) Rarely (once a month) i, Independent, Guardian or the Times.

Q) Which art gallery / museum / exhibition did you last visit?

A) UCS Student Exhibition

Q) How many hours a week do you spend playing video games?

A) Five hours.

Q) How many hours a week do you spend playing games other than video games?

A) One hour.

Background Finnished

I have just finished the back ground for my individual project. It does't look as bad as I thought it would considering I'm rubbish at drawing organic matter. Plus I added a comical twist to it to make it slightly more entertaining.

New Character Design For Individual Project

This morning my lead character  it starting to take some sort of shape now. The profile of the head of the main token is complete (However I will let it be open to a redesign, I need to start drawing again). I am not correctly working on the torso and trying to make it look slightly humanoid.