Besides, it's pretty much the central tenet of this argument. The "idea guy" has a grand vision and it's left to the artists, programmers, etc to get on with the boring and menial task of turning the Best Game Idea Ever ™ into a reality.



Hell, in this topic, the programmers and artists don't even rate as hired help, they're "the manufacturer of the paint"

Even in this case, the artists, programmers, and composers still have a great deal of room for artistic interpretation (except when in comes to core gameplay stuff, such as the game mechanics). And even still, this would be far less boring and less menial than just about every other job on the planet (does a desk job leave much room for artistic interpretation?) But yes, you're right - the OP's analogy is unfair and undermines the amount of work that everyone else puts into a project. A much better analogy is that the production team is like a group of painters working on a single, huge painting - and the game designer is the artist who has drawn the composition in pencil on the canvas for the rest of the team to follow.

Just as an aside, many of the Old Master painters created their own paint by purchasing the ingredients and doing all the crushing and mixing by themselves. Many artists still do this today.

Have you ever heard a painter/writer/photographer/director/sculptor say "I have a really great idea for a painting/story/photo/movie/sculpture" and then expect someone else to do all the work for them?



No, you have value when you produce something.

Actually I have heard of artists doing this. A lot of sulptures are created this way. Examples would be Banksy, Damian Hirst, Tracy Emin and lots of other artists who design large sculptures. That isn't to say that these aren't all very accomplished artists. Just that once they make it big enough to run their own studios they can take a step back and just make the initial design.

Another example would be fashion design. I really don't think Stella McCartney or Vera Wang actually stitch the dresses together and in the case of some celebrity designers such as Kate Moss or Victoria Beckham I doubt that they even have much input in the actual design.

Closer to the games industry there are designers who, once they have made it big don't actually do the design work. An example is that I worked on a high profile game that said it was designed by Hideo Kojima and developed by Kojima studios when in actual fact the game contracted out with an initial idea and then designed and developed by a small independant team in the north of England. The only other input from Kojima studios was QA support.

I am just trying to play the devils advocat here. I don't personally think there is much room for the ideas guy. And I guess from these examples above the the thing that these ideas people are bringing to the table is finances and a trusted brand name.

No plan, no matter how detailed, will survive contact with reality.

If you are not willing to adapt, you will perish.

That is a very old wisdom, and I don't really think you need to say more in this topic.

To me, a game designer who cannot create a working game on his own is like a composer who cannot play an instrument and thus cannot play his own pieces. Just as it's necessary to be able to play music in order to compose good music, it's also necessary to create games in order to design good games.

Orchestral pieces require many different instruments all working together simultaneously. Even the most skilled musician can't play an entire orchestra by himself, he needs some help.

FWIW I don't object to the idea of prototyping up front. In fact I think it's very important. But I'm of the opinion that you choose the best man for the job for any given task. Why shouldn't the designer work in collaboration with a couple of developers to get a much better prototype in a shorter space of time?

On this thread it seems there are many people who are staunch defenders of the way games are currently being developed. I merely suggest a different way that games could be developed - whether or not it would actually work is debatable, but would at least need to be tested for any informed conclusions. Do not forget that video games are a very new medium. Who's to say that we've already found the best way to create video games?

The thing is, what you are describing has already been tested. It's how pretty much all software was developed, until people began to realise it was a horrible way to develop software and switched to more iterative approaches.

There will always been unforeseen circumstances that crop up during development, however detailed your initial plan. Well, unless your initial plan was a complete development in it's own right. Software development processes need to be flexible enough to adapt to these issues.

Why does everyone here always focus on monetary value by the way?

Maybe because for many of us, creating games is what pays our bills and put food on our table

But thats not all the meaning of "valuable". Your life is quite short, you have to carefully consider what you spend your time on.

A very detailed design that hasn't gone through any prototyping and has been dreamed up without any input is most likely a waste of time you can better spend on creating a better game.

And if you involve the team in the creative process, they will feel an ownership of the ideas, and be more passionate about them.

You can't create great works without a passionate team, that do MORE then just what you tell them to.

From The Trenches.

The reason why the 'go away and write a document that describes fun' isn't used is because it simply doesn't work - what seems like a good idea on paper does not always transfer to game play.

A few years ago I was working on a game which was made up of a series of mini-games; each game had to last no more than a couple of minutes at best.

Someone sat down to design one of those mini-games. He thought out the game, the mechcanics, mocked up screens, and gave all the details needed to make it happen. The myself and an artist sat down and implemented this plan.

Two weeks later, when all the work came together (bugs cleared etc) myself and the artist sat and tried the mini-game out properly and realised something; it wasn't fun.

We called the designer over, showed him what was done and let him have a play and he came to the same conclusion we had.

We tried fiddling with the pacing, the interaction, some of the core elements to it... nope, nothing doing.

The mini-game got dropped.
(About the only thing of value to come out of the work was an upgrade to our scripting system.)

By contrast we had another mini-game which turned out to be more fun when implemented than even the paper design led us to believe it would be.

Both mini-games were implemented by the same designer, artist and coder group.

The take away; a grand vision thought up as an idea isn't fun until it is tried in the wild and found to be fun.

Secondary point; the moment you start implementing something to test out the game play etc you are no longer an 'idea person'.

The premise of this thread greatly undervalues the editing process.

I think I've read it here, but I'm not exactly sure where, that one of the most important skills for a game designer is knowing when something doesn't work and being willing to throw that part out. In a world where it's ultimately important to maintain the purity of the original concept, that just doesn't happen.

Editing is valuable pretty much everywhere, not just in game design. Sure, you occasionally hear about an album that gets recorded because the musicians just hit the studio one week and everything clicked. That's pretty rare though.

Painting, writing, heck, even manufacturing new equipment, everything needs editing. There is no such thing as the awesome perfect master idea that needs to be preserved.

There's a different consensus in the forums of www.gameideaguy.net

There's a different consensus in the forums of www.gameideaguy.net

I am tempted to start that site. It would be the most hilarious pile of fail ever.

Seriously, are we really spending this much time debating this? If the waterfall process were truly the best method it would have risen to the top over more agile and iterative processes, rather than being relegated to the annals of history. Believe it or not, there are some companies out there that want to make fun and artistic games, and there are designers who have great ideas. Some of these even have the money to push their vision. Very, very few of these (I would put my money on "none" personally) are diva-run dictatorial regimes built to serve the demands of a single designer with great ideas. If this were a valid paradigm, there would be more money in it. (Yes, money is a good indicator of the quality of a game development paradigm. It's really the only concrete qualifier we have to judge things by, at any rate. If you can come up with a good mathematical model for "fun" or for "artistic integrity" I'd be delighted to see it so I could ridicule it and point out its flaws.)

For better or worse, agile practices are here to stay. They are proven to help fallible humans create better products. If humans were good at building the best possible product (creative, engineering or other) on the first try then we would all still be driving Model Ts because there would have been no point in iterating on the automobile any further.

I understand that it just chaps some folks' hide that they can't be little mini-dictators handing out decrees to see their pure, untainted vision be given life in all its splendor and wondrous magnificence, gracing the world with a grand and spectacular artistic endeavour. Tough shit. Learn to iterate and listen to your specialists unless you want to turn out shitty, unfinished games. It's the real world we live in, not some little artists' utopia.

Orchestral pieces require many different instruments all working together simultaneously. Even the most skilled musician can't play an entire orchestra by himself, he needs some help.

No, a musician may not be able to play every instrument in the orchestra by himself. However, the composer of that orchestral piece had to learn how to write music for each instrument. This requires learning about what each instrument can do, what they sound like, and the technical limitations of each instrument. As a composer, there are few things worse than the violist coming to you after the first rehearsal of your new piece, with the sheet music in hand and sternly saying to you "this note is not on my instrument".

The thing is, what you are describing has already been tested. It's how pretty much all software was developed, until people began to realise it was a horrible way to develop software and switched to more iterative approaches.

Then perhaps the reason why this approach does not work is simply due to the current state of knowledge about game design. The solution could be that we need game designers who are more knowledgeable about design - as well as a general increase in knowledge about design by all people in game development. This will happen, as we try more and more to approach game design in a scientific and analytical manner. This will lead to the identification of common patterns in design as well as naming standardization for those patterns. As this happens, game designers as well as all the other developers will be able to grasp and put together high level designs that work - and they'll be able to do so very quickly and efficiently, as well as being able to communicate these designs among each other - all because these patterns of design will be a standard part of their vocabulary.

This is precisely what happened in music with the development of music theory. By learning about music theory (which is a standard part of music school) one learns about all of the guidelines about how to compose music that sounds good. One learns about all of the patterns in harmony, voice leading, chord progressions, structures, and the like. By using a set of rules which consist of patterns that have been time tested, this takes away a huge amount of guess work in the process of composing a piece. With music theory, it's possible to compose a piece that sounds good without ever needing to sit down at an instrument to hear it. When the same thing happens to game design, it will take away the need for all of that guess work, trial and error, and iteration that happens in the studio. It will be possible to put together a detailed design document of a game that works great before even needing to step foot in the production studio. This process of developing game design theory is already happening, with the help of people such as those at Extra Credits, and Errant Signal.