The gaffer doesn’t start out as the gaffer. A gaffer is head of the electrical dept for a production. But you are right that a director generally has an understanding of what the others do, or at least what the desired result should be.

One of the main problems with the term designer is it covers a huge range of jobs (level design, scripting, game systems design, balancing, etc etc etc) and isn’t applied consistently from company to company. We call the guys that build our levels level designers, Bioware calls them world builders, IW calls them designers. Here the scripting and encounters in the world are done by the script dept, at other places it’s the responsibility of those who build the levels. Where I work I’m a gameplay programmer, if I worked at Epic doing the exact same job I’d be a designer.

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If I remember correctly Halo 2 was given roughly six months of bug fixing. This stage seems to be where crunch mode sets in for most games. Yet, with Halo 1, I heard someone go off record that Halo got half of everything done in the final month (probably when crunch started); short-term crunch. If my assumptions are anywhere in the ballpark, why did Halo 2 have perhaps as many bugs and maybe several bigger one that were never hammered out in time (the infamous cut-scene pop-ins, that map unlocking glitch)?

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I will remove Apple from my earlier list – while they do have certification requirements, by not telling you what they are they’re basically shooting themselves in the foot. I can’t believe they’re that cack-handed about managing a fantastically successful digital distribution system…

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Man, that prototypes article is missing the StarFox 2 prototype! It is not only awesome but features some really surprising features for a SNES game. There’s a whole meta-game strategy map thing going on, where you can encounter other ships for skirmishes or approach the various planets for missions.

Most surprisingly the game seems entirely complete aside from an end boss that’s just a cube. I can’t imagine why they didn’t release it, it would have been legendary. I guess a few of those features ended up in the DS game at least.

The BioShock prototype was the most underwhelming there. Basically: “they made some concepts they didn’t use and also they had some art that wasn’t in the final product.” Well, duh, that’s every game.

Although I do like a concept I saw of the little sisters as these hilarious little squirrel dudes in jumpsuits.

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90% of what they ‘require’ you to do is branding. I.e. the ‘x’ button must be called the CROSS button (Sony), not the ‘X’ button.

That’s not really branding, it’s consistency. And consistency is very important. When a player learns stuff from one game, he/she should be able to carry it over to subsequent games he plays.

When I was working on DUOtrix (xbox community game) Microsoft provided a very basic TCR which was entirely optional, but I followed all the points anyway. Stuff like my menu system looking like every other Arcade game (with “Help & Options”, “How to play” within that, etc), “Press A to begin” to determine what the active controller was, B to go back up a menu (this isn’t as common as you’d think), etc, etc.

All of that doesn’t seem very important, but it all helps to create a consistent, frustration-free experience which can be carried across many games on a single platform.

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And you can’t replace artist by procedural generation. You can create a continent by a algorithm, but It will be uninspiring, withouth memorable areas. Artists add to whatever you have, and often, validate what you have… so even having a artist look at your work with a smiley and a nod, ..make games better. (note: IMHO).

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“Consider disabling player damage during a cut-scene so that players don’t inadvertently lose units when they aren’t actively in control.”

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As someone who’s done both DevSupport and Localization for those companies, 90% of what they ‘require’ you to do is branding. I.e. the ‘x’ button must be called the CROSS button (Sony), not the ‘X’ button. Loading Screens between eachother must only be ‘x’ seconds, even if you only have a few screens. This seems smart, until you realise that having two screens with a 10 second wait between each is far more preferable to 10 screens with 5 seconds between each. So often developers have to fudge stuff around to meet often arbitrary numbers.

If you look at any company doing cross platform work, about 60% of their bugs are TRC issues, which while important, are literally ranked about ‘a’ class bugs (I.e. crashes). For example, if you were to have something not ‘German’ enough (I.e. you referred to a gun by it’s english name, or use MPH instead of KPH) you’d be fined. Heavily. And this is more important to these companies than having a backend screen crash the game 25% of the time.

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You don’t have to agree with said opinion, of course, but Kriss Daniels’ rant just comes across to me as someone who feels that the opinions of a certain subset of people are worthless and if we remove them, then only people deemed more worthy by him are allowed to judge the work. Which is a madness.

It doesn’t seem to be especially aimed at the IGF in particular, more a complete handwavey dismissal to imply that these people, bolded on the list, don’t have a worthwhile opinion on anything. I’d argue “bollocks” to that.

Doubly bizarre when listing Jon Blow in the exclusion list who’s responsible for one of the most deftly designed games I’ve ever had the pleasure to play. Arguing that he knows nothing about games and would only be interested in a book deal about poetry is neutered by the very existence of Braid, surely?

Whilst I’d like to see more leftfield judges included in the IGF, as a panel of people I’d be happy for my work to be judged by, I really couldn’t knock it in that regard.

And of course, if Simon culls the writers – then what do we replace them with? Does a coder really have any more insight or worth of opinion? Truly?

I’m not convinced.

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i was thinking at least partly of the eskil steenberg thing the other week

Yeah, but he’s partly a designer himself as well, so he’s obviously not opposed to game designers. But some of his blog posts did rant against “pure” designers. Or at least, designers who felt it would “ruin their vision” to *learn* other skills. As I understand him, it’s not that he’s opposed to game design, or designers, but rather a belief that having a knowledge of all the disciplines involved will make you a better designer.

You need an understanding of all of this in order to ensure that your ideas will actually work in practice.

About the film industry, you’re right, not everyone starts as a gaffer, of course, but I think there are two important points there:
First, a director may not start out as gaffer, but he sure as hell is taught some of the basics of the other disciplines involved. He does know a bit about how to make stunts look realistic, he’s done a bit of acting, he knows what it is cameramen do and so on. Similarly, a game designer needs an understanding of programming and other disciplines involved, even if he’s not primarily a programmer. Even in the far more mature movie industry, the director still has to have an *understanding* of the mechanics, even if they’re just background knowledge for him, and not something he has to work with.

And second, I’m not so sure that the comparison is valid, or that the title of “game designer” really makes that much sense. It’s a job that overlaps a lot of others. There are some elements of the director role that movies have, some scriptwriter as well, there’s some high-level conceptualizing and coming up with ideas, and a lot of low-level making said ideas actually work. And finally, what education is required to become a game designer? Is a designer someone who comes up with ideas, or who does all the legwork to make those ideas *work*? To become a good designer, should I study storytelling? The rules of Ludo or Monopoly? Something more visual/presentation-related, like a director?

I’m not really convinced that the role of game designer is the focal point that everything revolves around, or that it’s the role we should keep an eye on to see the evolution in the games industry, the way the director’s role has worked in movies. A “game designer” seems more like an ad-hoc collection of different skills mashed together, even though they may not have much in common. Perhaps the next step in the evolution of game development is not to allow “pure” designers, untainted by programming like you suggest, but rather that the role of designer goes away and is replaced by more specialized and well-defined roles.

Perhaps I should mention that I’m not (yet) a professional game developer, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I have been involved in making a couple of small games though. But it’s been my experience so far that the role of designer *is* often overrated. It’s not some arcane art that requires years of training. It is mostly a matter of empathy, of imagining “what would it be like to be the player under these circumstances?” I’m not sure that “game design” schools have anything to contribute in this area, and the people from such schools that I know, or have worked with, have not convinced me otherwise… Obviously, game design is important, and obviously someone has to do it. But I also see it as an ad hoc role It’s not a case of “we need a designer, let’s put up an ad to get a certified Designer from the Guild of Game Designers”.

About the “tedious functionalism”, I think you’re misinterpreting a bit. When programmers say “burn the designer”, that doesn’t mean they want design to go away. They just think they (or the rest of the team) are just as able to design the game. That’s not “functionalism”, it’s just a reshuffling of responsibilities. An interesting point here may be that many of the clever indie games we’re all praising for being innovative, were largely designed by programmers. ;)
Imagine if the film industry had a role for “people whose job it is to chat to the scriptwriter during his lunch break”. Would you get better movies by having such a role, than if it was removed, and the job was done by whoever just so happened to be in the vicinity around lunchtime? Would it be “tedious functionalism” to argue that this role should be removed? The job might well be important (it might help the scriptwriter come up with new ideas), but it’s something anyone could do, so why not let anyone do it?

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