So I’ve Disillusioned you…
I’ve given you some Professional Habits…
Now it’s time for your Secret Missions. And first I’ll tell you why. Because here’s a thing that keeps happening. People get into the games industry, they learn their trade, they ship a game or two, maybe get promoted even, and after three years or so…they leave. They’re burnt out. Burnout is a thing.
They’ve lost all that precious passion and they’re just Done. Used up. Their game industry career is over.
This is wrong on so many different levels. You are here because you want to have a career in the industry. You want it to last. So you HAVE to find a pace you can sustain. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Look after yourself. So here’s your secret mission…
Mission 1: Be A Good Animal
I tell everyone I manage: your secret mission in this job, your covert number one priority, is to look after your physical and mental health. Because I want you to have a long, successful career. And, selfishly, if you burn yourself out, I’ll need to replace you, and hiring is a pain in the arse, so I need you happy and productive long term.
I want you to start this Secret Mission now. Get used to looking after yourself. Get into those good habits. Get help. Make use of healthcare opportunities.
This could be the point in your life when you get a medical or mental health diagnosis that suddenly makes sense of your life, and will help you take charge of your future. It took me decades to realise I have depression and anxiety. I got stuff done, but it was exhausting. Now, with medication and therapy, things are much easier, and I’m much more myself. Please, don’t take as long as I did to find if you need help.
Make sure you’re doing different kinds of things. If you only do virtual things, do physical things.
If you have subsidised leisure/exercise opportunities at university, use them. Exercise is The Best Habit.
If you smoke, quit now, before you do your intensive coursework and final exams. Future You is already thanking Present You.
Mission 2: Feed Your Brain
Your brain needs a varied, balanced diet, ot just from only one food group. Don’t Only Play More Games You Already Like because you’ll be restricting your creative and technical vocabulary.
Acquire the habit of regularly reading and learning and listening to good new stuff. There’s loads of great brain food available for free. I’ll put a list of some of my favourite things at the end of this page but please, if there’s only one thing you take from this talk, please go watch Brenda Brathwaite’s GDC talk “Train (or How I Dumped Electricity and Learned to Love Design)”.
It’s the best, most inspiring thing I’ve seen on what games can be and mean. Brenda Brathwaite is now Brenda Romero and she’s one of the most inspiring game developers out there.
Don’t be an un-critical fan of anything or anyone. Find out how it got made, by who, for what audience. What was the budget, what were the compromises, how different was it from the original vision?
The people whose work you’re into, find out what they were into. Ask your heroes which books changed their lives.
Go to Art Galleries, go to the Theatre, go to Movies older than you are. Hell, older than I am. Don’t just binge on stuff you already know how to absorb. Why am I banging on about this? Because you need a life outside work.
Work-Life Balance
You’ve heard the term Work-Life Balance, right?
Here’s the thing about Work-Life balance. It’s easy when you have no life. For a bit. But doing nothing but work, not having a life outside work or friends outside work will kill your career and ultimately damage your health.
And, as I said, I want you to have a long, happy, successful career, not leave the industry burnt out after three years. I’ve very nearly burnt out permanently several times, and I’m not sure I can do anything else at this point. You need a life that isn’t just about work. If you don’t have a life outside work, get one. You’ll need it.
In Conclusion…
By doing stuff, you’ll find out who you are.
You got this.
Whoever you are, whatever you find yourself to be, I wish you nothing but luck.
You are sufficient. You can do this. Go make great things.
Links and resources
As I said before, look up “Liz England Door Problem”. It’s the best description I’ve seen of game design, and what all the different game dev specialities and disciplines actually do.
The best book about game design I’ve ever read is John Rogers’ “Level Up!” (2010) — full of things that look really obvious once someone else has written them down. And it’s one of your set texts! Good.
Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics isn’t about games (obviously), but so much of it applies not just to game art but to game design as well.
If you want to know how AAA games actually get made, read Jason Schreier’s collection of journalism Blood, Sweat and Pixels (2017).
I mentioned it earlier, but can’t say enough good things about Brenda Brathwaite’s GDC talk “Train (or How I Dumped Electricity and Learned to Love Design)”. It inspires me every time I watch it. Look what games can do.
If you want to know why no studio on earth lets documentary film crews record how games get made, watch the incredible DoubleFine Adventure documentary from 2015. It’s the only portrayal of game dev that is even slightly true to life. Update: OMG, they did another one.
It’s not about games as such, but the amazing How Star Wars Was Saved In The Edit video is one of the best examples of how things get made, and how ideas change in the making. It’s worth your time.
The Game Design Round Table podcast is tremendous, with more of a focus on game design mechanics.
The VGC podcast does an excellent job of tracking industry trends and explaining the changes in economic climate rather than just the weekly weather.
I’m a big fan of the Crate And Crowbar podcast because it’s funny, good company, and it’s consistently fascinating to hear experienced game journalists talk about game mechanics from their reviewing end of the process.
Regular C&C member Tom Francis used to be a game journalist, now he’s an excellent game dev. Read his “Pentadact” blog where he shows his thinking making Gunpoint, Heat Signature and Tactical Breach Wizards. The best inadvertent game design cover letter I ever read was his post where he came up with an alternative ending for the first BioShock game that required no new game assets, and actually fitted the gameplay mechanics and themes of the game better.
Twine is a free text game engine. It’s ridiculously good, both for making games and for rapidly sketching and testing game flows — lots of studios use it as a prototyping tool. Twine games are an amazing world unto themselves. The excellent Emily Short (who has forgotten more about interactive fiction than I’ll ever know) curates lists of the best twine games. Check out Tom McHenry’s Horse Master, and Jedediah Berry’s Fabricationist DeWit Remakes the World (2015).
Even if you’re mainly into mainstream AAA games — in fact particularly if you’re mainly into mainstream games, check out the world of experimental indie games, like the excellent Liz Ryerson’s amazing Problem Attic (2013). It takes familiar game elements and makes them startlingly rich and strange; it’s one of the most deeply unsettling games I’ve ever played.
Check out Game Jam entries/Best Ofs, where you’ll find convenient collections of ingenious, eminently makeable games. A personal favourite is Sophie Houlden’s The Linear RPG, which still makes me laugh every time I play it.
Spider: Secret Of Bryce Manor (2009)is one of the most ingenious touchscreen games I’ve ever played. It’s also one of the best bits of narrative design ever. And there’s no dialogue or text.
Vectorpark’s Windosill (2011)is probably my favourite ever puzzle game. It’s beautifully made, wonderfully strange, and full of things I’ve never seen in a game before or since. Also, bloody hell, those animations.
Playdead’s Limbo (2010) and Inside (2016), both in their unique speciality genre of Hapless Left-To-Right Child-Murder Scroller. No dialogue or text, but amazing narrative worldbuilding and tone.
Take a quick tour through the 1980s interactive fiction games published by Infocom, particularly Steve Meretsky’s extraordinary A Mind Forever Voyaging (1985). Because they couldn’t show things graphically, they could make games about Any/Everything.
Black Isle’s Planescape: Torment (1999) A classic, taking the fantasy RPG genre places it hardly ever goes. I’m not sure there are many better conceived or better written games.
Lucas Pope’s Papers, Please (2014) and Return Of The Obra Din (2018), fascinating games each exploiting a single, simple list of people/personal details but with tremendously effective, emergent results. Check out this interview with him, particularly how he learned from The Sea Has No Claim, which he made for a game jam in 2014.
Mike Bithell’s Thomas Was Alone (2010) is a textbook example of making simplicity eloquent. Think of all the things it doesn’t do, and how well it does the things it does.
Adam Saltsman’s Canabalt (2009) single mechanic, single control, just perfect.
Kairosoft’s Game Dev Story (1997) part parody, part industrial history sim. The more games you’ve worked on, the funnier/more painful it gets.
Subset Games’ FTL (2012) and Into The Breach (2018) are both sort of perfect. Simple mechanics, simply presented, but amazingly deep emergent gameplay.
Douglas Cowley’s Hoplite (2013), so simple it could have been created decades ago, but it’s a roguelike like no other.
Frank Lantz’ wonderful Drop 7 (2009). A stone cold classic, up there with Tetris.
Six to Start’s Zombies, Run! (2012) manages to be an immersive exercise game.
Valve’s Half-Life (1998)and Half-Life 2 (2004). Half-Life has what might be the worst game tutorial ever, and Half-Life 2 the best tutorial ever, so much so that players don’t realise it’s a tutorial. Also Portal (2007) and Portal 2 (2011) are still probably the best-written games ever made, and feature an antagonist so brilliant they remain a dominant voice even when they’re turned into…well.
MegaCrit’s Slay The Spire (2019) is an intriguing deck-building card combat roguelike. It’s very good, not least for what it’s done with the mechanics of Magic: The Gathering and Android: Netrunner. Great interview with one of the designers here.
Terry Cavanagh’s Dicey Dungeons (2019) does things with dice that dice do not normally do.
ZA/UM’s Disco Elysium (2019) : despite all the people calling it a masterpiece, it really is a masterpiece. A point-and-click problem-solving adventure game/RPG that manages to be a feature-length parody and critique of RPGs. Every stat is a voice in your head. It’s full of things I’ve never seen in a game before.
Worldwalker’s Wildermyth (2019) not only manages to be a really good fantasy turn-based tactics RPG, it does so with great writing yoked to a properly procedural narrative/content system, attractive comic art, and a fully featured content creation toolset.
