For Game Design, we were assigned a textbook, The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses by Jesse Schell. The first chapter discusses the skills a good game designer needs, emphasizing that there are two different kinds of skills: skills that one is good at (the minor gift) and skills that one loves doing (the major gift). This blog post will be about analyzing my own skills, which category they fit into, and what I need to work on to be a better game designer. The book lists many of the skills a game designer needs, and I will do my best to go through most of them.
Talents: These are the skills I think I'm good at, more from practice than from natural ability though. Though I only have basic knowledge of it right now, I think I am pretty okay at animation. Yes I still have a lot to learn, but with the knowledge I currently have, I think I do pretty well. This will be good for games with cut scenes, or just for running animation and such. I'm not too bad at brainstorming either. I can usually come up with ideas fairly quickly, or at the very least build off of what other people have come up with. This is useful for conceptualizing, and changing things when they don't work. I've had a lot of practice with creative writing from trying to write a novel and greatly improved over the years which should help when coming up with a plot. I think I am good enough with basic mathematics to consider it a skill since I can work pretty quickly. This is good for calculated formulas in games. Weaknesses: I have almost no knowledge of how business works at all which could be bad for selling the game. Though I don't mind public speaking, I appear incredibly nervous (even though I don't feel that way) making me not so great at it. Also, despite being confident in my mathematics skills, from the little bit of game design I've done in the past, I've found myself to be terrible at designing a balanced system where neither the player or enemies are too over-powered. Love: I am very interested in learning more about animation because it fascinates me. Hopefully, this will help me stick with it and learn it for better walk cycles, cut scenes, and just making the world look alive. I'd want to learn more about cinematography, which would be good for cut scenes and presenting the world to the player in an interesting way. Creative writing is something I've been doing for a while, and that I find really enjoyable, which is good for coming up with a game's plot. History is very interesting to me, and though I need to learn more about world building, it could be very useful for that. Psychology is so cool, I just love thinking about how the human brain works. Psychology is good for trying to figure out what the player likes, how much you need to instruct players, and what the player will do. I really like visual arts, even if I don't always make very pretty pictures. This is good for graphic design, game covers, player models, and story-boarding. I'm also pretty interested in programming, which is good for designing the rule system of the game. Dislike: I am not particularly interested in the business or economic aspect of making games. I know it's important to get the game to sell, but I am not personally very interested in it. I like listening to music, but sound design is also something I think I'd rather leave to someone more passionate at it, and who has more talent with it. As I said before, I'm bad at building balanced systems, which is partially due to me not really liking the technical aspect of game design. My brain is not wired for it, and it isn't really interesting to me. I think I could become interested in it if I saw how it actually affected some games that I like, but for most part the example technical systems are for FPS games and other games I don't really play. Overall, I think I'm more suited for the story-boarding and conceptualizing aspect of game design that the technical side of it, but who knows, that could completely change as I learn more.
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AuthorHi, I'm Abi, a DSA student who likes games, drawing, writing, and acting. Archives
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