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All responses Most smiled responses
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My fiancée is always on my mind. (Insurace in case she reads this)
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asked by Thiefree
I'm not that risk taking. I did pack up my life and move to New York only to hate it like... like something that gets hated and then moved to Pittsburgh and back to Florida. I've lived roughly 4 of the last 12 months out of a suitcase.
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It's a misconception that all of a designer's work is pre-production. Nothing ever works as planned as a rule of thumb so the designers are constantly changing and adapting concepts and systems as they are implemented. Pre-production may be the most creatively prodigious time of the cycle, but it isn't necessarily the busiest.
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That's a trick question. Designers can't screw in a light bulb. They can only write design documentation on the best way to screw in a light bulb, get engineers and artists to actually try it out and when it doesn't work, bootstrap a way to duct tape the light in place.
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This sort of hollow 'what have I done?' pit in my stomach mostly. I didn't want to step on anyone's toes because I have a lot of friends I respect doing Facebook games and I was even doing one at the time. I've never been able to pull punches - I pretty much always speak my mind - so having a blog is like the worst possible thing for me to do. But someone must have liked it or it wouldn't have gotten a million hits, been the top of Digg, and so forth. I honestly didn't think it was that clever, but the nature of meme virility is that you can't predict it before the fact. I'm glad people liked it.
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Actually, I had no plan to become a game designer at all, although I'd always been a games enthusiast. My degree was in Information Systems and I was pretty much ready to go work as a systems analyst at some bank or something. In my junior year of college, I heard great things about Jesse Schell's graduate game design course at CMU's Entertainment Technology Center and I begged my way in because it seemed like fun. Before that, I thought Game Design was just 'let's throw some shit together and see what happens' and he helped me find out about this whole world out there where you can simultaneously be a Systems Analyst and a Creative. When I started at EA though, I was in Production, which is much more of a groomed-for-management track. Luckily, I switched to design and never looked back. I've had some very blessed and lucky opportunities.
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I pretty much find mechanics as a means to an end. Mechanics themselves don't ensure good gameplay unless it is in a framework that allows for gameplay dynamics to emerge that lead to the sorts of aesthetics you find attractive. I find myself drawn to deck-building games like Magic and Dominion, but not because I enjoy deck-building but because of the variety of play and surprises that tend to come from the interplay of mechanics in each. That's a great question, thanks!
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Zack’s Bio
Game designer, producer, writer, football official, carbon-based life form, blogger
