Art is an implementation, not an idea. Rembrant was not famous because of his ideas but of his execution of these ideas.

This is exactly why I said he needs to be really good. If his idea is dumb, he isn't a particularly good designer in my book.

The best designers almost universally agree that an iterative approach is most suitable for any non-trivial or non-clone design, precisely because they can still make mistakes or need to make many improvements along the way.

But the fact remains that they usually don't touch the heart of the game and merely provide the framework and tools the game designer can work with.

No... Sorry to be blunt, but it's obvious that you've never actually worked with a large team of professional game developers, because that's not how things work out in the real world.

Even the best game designer can't sit down and design exactly how every single mechanic in the game will function from button input to frame-by-frame changes in the game state. There's an initial idea with some guideance for how it should be implemented, this is produced, and then refined over time. It usually will not exactly match the idea that the designer had in mind, and/or it will demonstrate why the designer's original idea is lacking and needs refinement. These refinements will be created both independently and collaboratively by everyone involved in that particular area, which will involve the game designers (there may be general ones, and specialists -- e.g. combat designers, level designers, mechanic designers, etc) the artists (e.g. environment, character animation, concept, etc) and the programmers (e.g. general engine/technology, general game mechanics, and specialists like animation programmers, etc). If someone on the team is just a passive tool to be used to implement specifications to the letter, then they belong at a finance company, not a games studio.

The best designers are the ones who can implement their own ideas and thus keep the feedback loop very tight.

Often, a gameplay programmer with some specialty -- e.g. third person movement controllers, or weapon animation controllers, or AI navigation and planning systems, or multi-character interaction systems -- will have a lot more creative insight into their particular speciality than the game designer does. When trying to implement a designer's abstract ideas, these programmers will internally have to iterate on their implementations many times, and many of the small nuances that separate a good mechanic from a great mechanic will be injected by these programmer's own creativity independently from the game designer's overall vision. In this sense, the guy working on the "third person movement controller" may be a programmer and a "movement designer" at the same time -- and the same goes for the animators; their creativity and skills may inject new possibilities into the implementation which were unimagined by the original designer, and they may reshape the game for the better. A good designer will be receptive of the inputs of all the creative people on the team, and not just dictate that everyone stick to the original GDD to the letter. In the real world, GDD's are evolving documents that change as the game changes.

Often the high-level game designer will deliberately be vague in areas that are not his speciality to allow other designers on the team enough freedom to make their contributions great, because the high level designer is not necessarily experienced at creating the nuances in every single minute aspect of the game.

And if the game designer is REALLY good at his job, they shouldn't meddle with his process besides telling him what limitations he's working with.

I have seen several times where several variations on a game mechanic have been developed, including one which was a to-the-letter implementations of the designers words, but the latter one not shipped. In many cases, the designer has stuck to his opinion of the original idea, thinking it was superior, while everyone in play-testing felt that one of the other variations was more fun.

This designer, being a particularly good one, possessed humility (an important trait) so he compromised his own vision in order to produce a game that everyone else found to be more fun, rather that one he felt to be pure to his original imagination of the final game.

I've also seen the reverse, where a designer used his connections with management to work in a dictatorial style, where he would make changes to the game as he saw fit, regardless of the creative input of others... and the game suffered for it. Games are made by dozens of different specialists, you'd be stupid not to be receptive of their feedback.

Collaboration is not "meddling"... Collaboration is how you work with a team. A designer who can't collaborate, because they accuse people of "meddling" is not one that people will be able to work with.

No... Sorry to be blunt, but it's obvious that you've never actually worked with a large team of professional game developers, because that's not how things work out in the real world.

Even the best game designer can't sit down and design exactly how every single mechanic in the game will function from button input to frame-by-frame changes in the game state. There's an initial idea with some guideance for how it should be implemented, this is produced, and then refined over time. It usually will not exactly match the idea that the designer had in mind, and/or it will demonstrate why the designer's original idea is lacking and needs refinement. These refinements will be created both independently and collaboratively by everyone involved in that particular area, which will involve the game designers (there may be general ones, and specialists -- e.g. combat designers, level designers, mechanic designers, etc) the artists (e.g. environment, character animation, concept, etc) and the programmers (e.g. general engine/technology, general game mechanics, and specialists like animation programmers, etc). If someone on the team is just a passive tool to be used to implement specifications to the letter, then they belong at a finance company, not a games studio.

The people who are actually taking the designers ideas and bringing them to life through code and art have a huge amount of influence as to how they turn out. They will inject their own creativity in to the process, just as the game designer does. Often, many different variations on a game mechanic will be developed and tested, to try and find the most fun incarnation of the game idea. The game designer will not have thought up every single one of these variations.

The best designers are the ones who can implement their own ideas and thus keep the feedback loop very tight.

Often, a gameplay programmer with some specialty -- e.g. third person movement controllers, or weapon animation controllers, or AI navigation and planning systems, or multi-character interaction systems -- will have a lot more creative insight into their particular speciality than the game designer does. When trying to implement a designer's abstract ideas, these programmers will internally have to iterate on their implementations many times, and many of the small nuances that separate a good mechanic from a great mechanic will be injected by these programmer's own creativity independently from the game designer's overall vision. In this sense, the guy working on the "third person movement controller" may be a programmer and a "movement designer" at the same time -- and the same goes for the animators; their creativity and skills may inject new possibilities into the implementation which were unimagined by the original designer, and they may reshape the game for the better. A good designer will be receptive of the inputs of all the creative people on the team, and not just dictate that everyone stick to the original GDD to the letter.

Often the high-level game designer will deliberately be vague in areas that are not his speciality to allow other designers on the team enough freedom to make their contributions great.

I'm not going to deny that I haven't worked with large teams, because I would be lying.

I should have said they usually don't touch the heart of the game, I should have said they shouldn't.

It's clear that making a game requires a lot more technical skill than making a painting, which is exactly why paintings tend to turn out as more artful than games do. People who don't share the vision of the artist get to mess with his product, it might be largely necessary to deliver a decent product, but it's far from ideal.

A good compromise would be having a game designer with a maximum amount of knowledge about all the aspects involved n making a game and a team that only suggests things to the main game designer but lets him process what they tell him and use it as he sees fit, without further discussion. Unless of course what he wants is impossible, but that would mean that he's not a very good game designer.

Ah, the good old 'Ideas Have Value' argument.

The trouble with these arguments is that they usually involve some guy who has little or no practical development experience, trying to tell experienced developers how they think industry should work. Meanwhile the experienced guys try to explain how it actually does work.

Unimplemented ideas have no value. If you don't believe this, feel free to try and prove me wrong. Daydream up a bunch of game ideas and try to sell them. A thing is worth what someone will pay for it, after all.

Coming back to the first point Hodgman made about games (or anything else) as art, isn't what the audience think and feel about a piece more important than any intrinsic quality of either the product or artist? What's so great about Rembrandt other than the fact that people like his work? Isn't Picasso just a crappy painter until people decide that they like his unusual style?

If a game is considered art it will probably have little-to-nothing to do with the designer or his vision for it, much as people like songs because of a feeling or something it reminds them of rather than what the composer wrote it about, or as people like paintings because of something they imagine or see in the imagery rather than what the artist saw and attempted to portray.

Ah, the good old 'Ideas Have Value' argument.

The trouble with these arguments is that they usually involve some guy who has little or no practical development experience, trying to tell experienced developers how they think industry should work. Meanwhile the experienced guys try to explain how it actually does work.

Unimplemented ideas have no value. If you don't believe this, feel free to try and prove me wrong. Daydream up a bunch of game ideas and try to sell them. A thing is worth what someone will pay for it, after all.

You're exactly right, someone with enthusiasm suggests how they think things should be and someone worn down by the industry talks beside the question by stating how things are.

I never said unimplemented ideas have any value, it's the passion and vision of a talented game designer that give them value, but that doesn't mean that there isn't such a thing as a bad and a good idea. And a great idea for that matter.

If a thing is worth what someone will pay for it, the Call of Duty series must be the epitome of gaming.

If it's of any value, I'm not making record sales with any of my game designs because I don't think I have what it takes to be a master game designer.

Pretty much agree with a bunch of other replies, it isn't the initial big picture idea that's valuable, it's the thousands of small decisions that the designer makes during the course of development that determine how good the game is. The disdain for 'idea guys' in the indie community partially comes from the fact that with small teams you just can't afford to have one guy who only does design and can't program or make art. (Although I think the main reason is that most of the people who just say they want to design games don't really know what it takes to be a game designer and as a result aren't actually any good at it.)

Still, there's definitely a lot of value to having one or more person doing the work of a lead designer or art director. Sure, the initial concept isn't nearly as important or difficult to get right as the full implementation, but the overall direction and artistic vision of the game is important throughout the development process. It's a big advantage to have an interesting concept and a coherent vision of what the game is going to be, otherwise you run the risk of making a mismatch of conflicting ideas or churning out a technically proficient but generic and uninspired game.

Good idea + good implementation = good game

Bad idea + good implementation = playable but generic game

Good idea + bad implementation = wasted potential, "could have been good, but isn't"

Bad idea + bad implementation = worthless

A good compromise would be having a game designer with a maximum amount of knowledge about all the aspects involved n making a game and a team that only suggests things to the main game designer but lets him process what they tell him and use it as he sees fit, without further discussion.

On a big budget game, a designer can't possibly have a maxium amount of knowledge about every aspect involved in it's creation... It takes 10 years to master a skill, and there's more than 10 specialists involved in the game, so this hypothetical designer would be long dead of natural causes.

In smaller games, sure, the designer can have his fingers in every pie -- this is usually how small 2/3 man projects are made, where the designer will know about every aspect because they are also one of the implementors.

It's only on really large projects that it's economically feasible to have a full-time designer (or several designers each with their own speciality).

Seeing that these designers can't possibly know how every aspect of implementation actually works, they need to defer some decisions to other specialists (that's the whole point of having specialists). As mentioned before, AI systems are a great example of this, but so are movement systems -- e.g. the first assassins creed had a team of several dozen people working on just the mechanics behind the main character's movement. There's no way that a single designer could sit down and theory-craft all of the details behind that movement controller that those two-dozen specialists discovered during their implementation process, up-front, without a feedback loop, into an immutable GDD.

someone with enthusiasm suggests how they think things should be and someone worn down by the industry talks beside the question by stating how things are.

I'm not worn down and trying to erode your enthusiasm, nor trying to talk beside the question. There are a lot of reasons for why it's a general consensus that an initial idea does not have much value, and also why this stereotype exists, which we're trying to explain.

Implementing someone's game ideas necessarily requires creativity on the part of the implementer. The design given to an implementer is necessarily vague, otherwise it would already be an implementation and not a design! Implementers are not just a tool to be manipulated by a GDD, but an active participant in the design process, being guided by the game designer.

If they are a tool, they are a tool that is necessarily in a conversation with the designer, guiding his hand while his hand guides it. A great artist is one that can use his tools well, so a great designer is one that is a master of conversation with his tools.

The fact that you disregard this participation as meddling, robs you of the ability to understand the implementation process and the role of a designer in it, so there's nothing much we can say here.

If a thing is worth what someone will pay for it, the Call of Duty series must be the epitome of gaming.

FWIW, even bland, generic, middle-of-the-road games like COD require talented designers. Even just getting a bland game out the door, complete in it's bland vision, on time, requires a large amount of talent. It may be a different kind of talent from the ones that produce the cult-classics though. A real visionary and critically acclaimed designer might actually be a failure if required to produce intentionally bland blockbusters Everyone has their niche.

Good idea + good implementation = good game
Bad idea + good implementation = playable but generic game
Good idea + bad implementation = wasted potential, "could have been good, but isn't"
Bad idea + bad implementation = worthless

What about a good game with good implementation where every element implemented was carefully considered by someone who is very passionate about the project and is a talented game designer?

As an answer to Hodgman's last post: You are right that on very large projects, it becomes basically impossible for one person to have a full overview of everything. This is why large projects will always be so different from what small and medium sized projects. There is nothing wrong with tinkering with a formula when it is necessary, but every step away from the original idea is likely going to detract somewhat from its personality. Of course it can improve the end product but it seems obvious that starting out with an idea that needs a minimal amount of tinkering and having said tinkering done by the person who originally came up with the idea will result in a game with more soul.

I agree with most of what you're saying, really. This is a very idealistic view of game design, I just think that there is nothing wrong with the ideal itself. And that it could be strived for a bit more in the gaming industry, especially the indie community.