Triptych VII

Triptych VII

Three separate topics in one post

Game Design: Not much to Show about the Process

As you may know I make hundreds of screencasts about game design, many of them in courses at https://www.udemy.com/user/drlewispulsipher/ (discounts at pulsiphergames.com).  And I've written a book about game design as in my book http://www.amazon.com/Game-Design-Create-Tabletop-Finish/dp/0786469528/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459717843&sr=8-1&keywords=lewis+pulsipher

But game design goes on in the mind. There is little to show. I can show someone making a map for a game, I can show people talking about game design, I can talk about game design, I can show you a game being playtested: but I cannot show you game design, because it's internal, not external.

I think many people don't quite understand that.

Yet recently I’ve been made aware of the gamedev threat on Twitch TV, live streaming. Most of the streaming shows someone playing video games, often watched by thousands. Gamedev shows game developers crunching their code while occasionally answering questions from the viewers. Still not much to show, but it works for several dozen viewers! Yet it’s about programming much more than about game design.

Chinese history in a (cyclical) nutshell: 
1. Anarchy reins, famine widespread, population plummets
2. Fairly stable "nations" (often called dynasties) established
3. Sooner or later, someone unites the land and becomes emperor (by Mandate of Heaven, of course); the land prospers
4. Population becomes too high for current agricultural technology, banditry erupts, anarchy reins, famine widespread, emperor/dynasty overthrown, population plummets - that is, back to 1.

Though it must be said, sometimes external invaders come into it, though usually the invaders succeed in bad times and fail in good times.  Sometimes one dynasty was immediately succeeded by another, sometimes a period of warring states intervenes.

Hiring an F2P Game Designer

How to hire [F2P] Game Designers [for a small studio], by Ilya Eremeyev.  http://gamasutra.com/blogs/IlyaEremeyev/20150720/248965/How_to_hire_Game_Designers.php

Detailed, some interesting points of view both in the kinds of designers, and in the crap he has to wade through.

I don’t know his company or even country, though the name is Slavic and English is not his first language.

Game designers are basically divided into 2 types: Game designers - storytellers and game designers-mathematics.

The first ones see their role in developing a “feeling”, writing a plot, quests, items descriptions and game universe backstory.

Second ones are all about balance design, economics, gameplay formulas and calculations.

In all conscience, most designers unite those skills but usually they focus on the one side more than on the other.

Usually, I hunt people with math\programming background and surely add this condition to our vacancy, which helps immediately cut off a half of unsuitable candidates and save some time.

After receiving “CVs”:
"First of all, I isolate infants, crazy dreamers, too juniors without any experience and strange guys who send me messages like ”Yo, wanna work in your company, I have a lot of ideas, but won’t share them with you, mail me dude” and instead of useful skills they point their love of anime and coffee."

[The noobs who haven’t figured out that game design does not equal ideas.]

[He gives them a seven- part test (questions but not answers included in the blog post) involving probability and knowledge of F2P games.]

"It is very important to catch a free-to-play haters, ideological pirates and peoples who stuck in the past. To understand how to make free-to-play games it is necessary to play and pay by yourself."

[As a college teacher, my colleagues and I were told by administration that we should not discuss a student (current or former) with any prospective employer unless we had only good things to say. Colleges nowadays are afraid of being sued.  This fear-of-litigation tends to reduce the value of references and recommendations. Here's the author's take:]

"Recommendations are a very useful tool in hiring, which unfortunately [are] often ignored. It is great if a candidate can provide a few contacts of his previous employers but if not I do not hesitate to contact them by myself and get a feedback about candidate’s performance."