Hey guys,
This week, we have annoyed our game designers for some answers to the questions you may wonder about their job. With three on-going projects at the studio
, our dear designers have been very busy. They work under the supervision of Spacetroll, the creative director: Meedoc (Maxence) on Endless Space, Mysterarts (Arthur) on Dungeon of the Endless, Kaboomer (Benoît) and Chronodrax (François) on Endless Legend. What's nice is that they get to interact with each others' projects when they need an external point of view.
THE GAME DESIGNERS
Tell us about your background as a game designer.
Benoît aka Kaboomer:
Like many of us I guess, I have a passion for the video games industry and video game experiences. Yet, I started my studies just before any Game Design schools or any degrees in Game Design even existed in France. Therefore, I did a 2-years degree in Multimedia (University of Technology Degree called “DUT SRC”) and even tried to get into a cinema school after... which I failed to achieve. So, finally, I decided to enter the video games industry through a business school. I did an internship and really started working on video games as Associate Producer at Ubisoft for 3 years. At this time, I was deeply involved in the game design and more generally in the content of games I was working on, such as M&M Clash of Heroes, Heroes VI, so I naturally ended up designing games… which sounds pretty natural and is still so exciting to me today!
Maxence aka Meedoc:
I studied at a French school called Rubika Supinfogame. I had classes in game design, production management, but also graphic design and programming. During my studies, I had the opportunity to do internships in several French companies, and not only as a game designer. I have done Q.A. on “Mushroom Men DS” and “I Am Alive” and those experiences allowed me to get a nice overview on the production of a game.
Besides those internships, I have also participated in many creative events such as game jams (Ludum Dare, Global Game Jam, etc.) to improve my skills, but also work on personal projects or with friends.
Arthur aka Mysterarts:
I’ve always wanted to be a game designer. But before starting a specialized course, I followed several trainings in order to have the most comprehensive view of the different jobs in the video game industry. As Kaboomer, I pursued a 2-years diploma in Multimedia (DUT SRC), where I studied graphic design, computer sciences, audiovisual and communication. Then I decided to improve my developer skills by pursing a Computer Sciences bachelor. Last but not least, I entered ENJMIN (the best video game school in the world ^^) to do a Game Design Master’s degree. The great interest of this school is the high number of projects which I make in 2 years (alone, in a team, with a big studio like Ubisoft, contests etc.). In fact, the school has students for several jobs: graphic designers, sound designers, developers, producers etc. That’s why it’s very easy to make a team. Amplitude is my first “real job”, but I’ve done 4 internships in small video game studios.
In addition to the games created during these internships and for my scholar projects, I made small games on my free time (I started when I was 8, with paper cards, Power Point and Excel ^^. I learned my first programming language – Lingo – when I was 10 in order to create games). I particularly like the events like Ludum Dare (48 hours to make a game on your own) or the Global Game Jam (48 hour, but as a team this time) because they are really motivating. If you want to work in the video game industry or are passionate by games, try one of these events, it’s very instructive and rewarding.
The community feedback: how has the Games2Gether improved your interactions with players?
Meedoc:
I must say that the Games2Gether is a very nice opportunity for a game designer: we get to interact with our players pretty often. What’s difficult is to keep an overview on the whole game design process and try to stay objective to find the best solutions possible, by taking the player base’s opinion and not only the most active users on the forums. Actually, one of the most difficult tasks in our job is to meet the players’ expectations, and we’re lucky to have the forums and the G2G votes for that! So guys, we really appreciate your criticism!
Unfortunately, we don’t always have the time to reply to all of you but we always keep an eye on the forums for your feedback and great ideas. We consider the changes and suggestions and then try to implement them in our development plan. The ideas you submit in the Game Design Proposal section of the forums may not always be implemented, but they are still interesting for us when we try and think of content for an add-on, expansion packs or new games! Kudos to our modders for making awesome stuff, even if I do not necessarily have the time to try them all: it’s also a way for us to understand what you expect of the game.
As for the community/developers interaction, I highly encourage you to discuss on the forums and give your feedback on some aspect of the game: the “Save the Sowers” movement led us to reconsider our changes and we repeated this recently with the Harmony because you guys pointed out their weakness. I have been enjoying the occasional multiplayer games with you; it’s a nice way for me to test some mechanics and observe how imaginative you are when creating your custom factions.
TLDR: the Games2Gether greatly helps me in my job!
[FromMTB-Fritz] What "other" areas does a game designer has to be experienced with? Does actual programming fit in? Do you guys even design your own source code these days? Need business skills to sell your work within the own company?
Meedoc:
As a game designer, you don’t have to master all the other aspects of the development of a game, but you still need to understand them to be more efficient. You need to be familiar with programming, 2D/3D and sound design. Game Design is already a big field on its own, so it’s important for us to work as a team: we interact with the AI or gameplay programmers, we talk to the business team to make sure our improvements go accordingly with their communication plan, etc.
Mysterarts:
For me, it’s very important for a game designer to have a good knowledge of the other video game jobs. Each day, we write documents and attend meetings with graphic designers, developers, sound designers etc. The more we can put ourselves in their place, the more the communication is efficient. When we imagine a new feature, it’s always helpful to realize the production load needed to do it. Of course, we all have our own job: we don’t write the code of the game! But we do have knowledge in computer sciences that allows us to be comfortable with scripting tasks (which often use simplified programming languages) for example. The useful skills to be a game designer are very varied: graphic design for mockups and level design, UX for controls, programming for scripts, writing for scenario and quests, mathematics for probabilities and balancing etc.
NEXT WEEK
We will discuss the Rogue-Like dimension of Dungeon of the Endless. If you have any questions, shoot: we will reply to the most interesting one.
Thank you!
