Hard Truths About Game Design

It sounds like a riddle: “What job pays less than minimum wage, but everyone wants?”

Sadly, the answer I’m looking for is Game Designer.

You might eventually be able to find a high paying job as a game designer for a video game company, but if you want to design for any other field, you won’t be a millionaire. (And if you do video games, you’ll probably be doing stuff other than pure design work.)

Very few designers have become millionaires from their games. Understandably, most are reluctant to disclose their finances. There’s only one that we’re sure of, and trust me, you aren’t going to design the next Magic: The Gathering (at least until our economy picks up significantly.)

He sure doesn’t dress like
a millionaire…

Even Alan Moon, one of the most prolific game designers working in boardgames, has admitted that if Ticket to Ride hadn’t won the Spiel Des Jahres award, he’d probably have to get another job.

(While I’m at it, you won’t design “The Next Monopoly” either. Not only does it have a lot of problems as a game, you’d have to have there be an event like The Great Depression and capitalize on it. Then live another 100 years or so.)

Also, everyone makes games. Rappers, investors, you name it. For whatever reason, people make games all the time, and then throw money at it to make the game materialize. They don’t, however, play other games in the market, do market research on how well a game will sell, or design good games.

Not only that, but if you tell people you’re a game designer, they will tell you their ideas. Sometimes those ideas have merit, but more often than not, you’ll hear something like “Why don’t you design a game about nunchuk-wielding midgets against eskimo barbers?” They’ll give you some theme they’d like to see, because “it’d be hilarious”, but nothing resembling actual mechanics.

And if they do provide you with mechanics, you’ll have wished they didn’t. “See, you just roll a die and move your eskimo along the track, and if you encounter a midget, you draw cards.” If you try to use your experience and training to disagree with them, they aren’t very well inclined to listen.

(If you’re an aspiring game designer- and I’m hoping to have scared some of you off by now- listen to your playtesters. It is one of the most important skills of being a game designer. Especially listen to your playtesters if they tell you the game sucks.)

So why be a game designer?

Most of the professionals that I know get a warm feeling out of seeing other people play their games. The fame that comes with it can be nice too. Like most creative fields, it’s nice to see your ideas form into a finished product, and then be appreciated.

And for some of us, we just can’t help it, so we keep trying. And trying. And trying. Many rejection letters later, we’re still trying. I have one or two games that I know are publishable. They’re good games with interesting choices, yet deals for them keep falling through for one reason or another. Do I quit, and start working hard at my day job that actually pays me? Heck no. I keep trying, and even though I have yet to see any of my products be published into a full release, I still am filling up word documents and pads of paper with ideas.

That’s why I’m a game designer: not for the money, not because there’s no one else doing it, but because I just can’t stop.