I thought this was a great “first topic” as I can give my story, plus what I look for when hiring new designers.
My story starts when I was working at Domark Software as a Tester and Phone Support guy. We just got greenlit for the first internally developed game, “Out of the Sun” which used Flight Sim Toolkit as the engine for the game. It was my first experience at game design and I was hooked. Around that time, Meridian 59 was in beta, and a bunch of us were discussing it, how it put graphics on the traditional MUD, allowing several players to interact, team up, and defeat foes from different parts of the country.
Eventually I ended up at Prolific Publishing and we got an opportunity to pitch a design for an MMO. I was in heaven. I’d played a ton of EQ and other games, but to actually get to MAKE one? That would be amazing. Alas, that never came to fruition, and I ended up leaving that job to move back to the SF Bay Area. Once up here, the guy who was my Best Man at my wedding got a job working on CoH. I was unemployed and asked him if they had any openings. It was a couple months later, but they did ramp up hiring and I got the job. So in my case there was some “I know someone”, and a lot of serendipity.
Now when I am hiring someone for a design position, we will always give them a test before we do any interviews. The test is untimed (but how long you take to complete it IS a factor), and covers the basics of the position we are hiring for. A Powers Designer would be asked to design powers and how to balance numbers, as well as some “MMO Math” (A question that involves DPS, DOTs and Procs).
One thing I -really- look for is a “Design Brain”. That means that even if this person has never been paid to be a designer before, they THINK like a designer. When you play a videogame (or ANY game for that matter), do you constantly find yourself annoyed by some part(s) of the game? If you answered yes, then you are a human being. Now the next part is trickier. Do you find yourself designing a “better way” of doing that annoying thing in your head? If you do that, then you have a Design Brain. That’s what I like to see. Someone who is always building the better mousetrap in their head, because I know that when push comes to shove they will have SOMETHING to offer in a brainstorming meeting.
Now when it comes to being an MMO Designer, playing MMOs is key, and not just one, but LOTS of them. And your favorite does NOT need to be the “popular” choice. As a matter of fact having a favorite MMO that does not have 11.5 million subscribers tells me that you found something compelling to keep you playing that the other games don’t offer. And I want to leverage that kind of information and that kind of player.
As for education and skillsets, knowing math and statistics is very helpful, especially when reading datamines or doing ANY sort of game balancing. If you hate math, then I would suggest you look for a different sort of career path. Starting in the QA department will get you a lot of experience and direct contact with the developers to “prove you know what you’re doing” as well, I’ve seen a lot of designers come straight out of QA, although a QA person may have an uphill battle in some companies, at least there is a battle to be fought.
So there you have it, my thoughts on becoming an game designer. If you are wondering why I chose the picture of the Mako from Mass Effect, it is far and away the most popular answer for “what was the most annoying thing in the game you loved the most”. Answers for how to fix it ranged from “better controls, smaller planets” to “I don’t know, it was just annoying” (the latter didn’t get the job).
Very Interesting info! Will file for later use, perhaps…I’s old
Nice to hear some of your backstory too!
I would have told you to cut Mako bit entirely. It felt like a completely different game that someone put a bunch of time in to, and therefore ‘had to be included.’ Knowing what to get rid of is as important as making the parts you keep fun.
Out of curiosity, did anyone say they didn’t find anything in Mass Effect particularly annoying but lovable? And if so did you ask them about a question for a different game? Or was the fact that there was a game in which they didn’t find much to be particularly annoying also a turn off? (the inability to see where an improvement is needed, even in a game that you find is not perfect)
Though, personally I didn’t find the Mako sections particularly annoying, however I do agree that it felt like a totally different game that was just kind of thrown in. That being said, what they replaced it with I think is significantly worse.
Mike – Yeah, but would have put in ME2′s mind-numbing “probe” minigame instead?
A.L. – In general, I let the candidate choose the game they want to discuss, but I try to make sure it is one I have played so I can at least ask relevant questions.
To follow on your “Design Brain” comment, here’s a question – which type of ‘brain’ do you find more valuable in the MMO industry…
1) The brain that looks at the problem and goes, “I think I can fix that” and then comes up with the right solution on the first try (thus saving much time and money), or
2) The brain that looks at the problem and goes, “I think I can fix that” and then tries twenty different ways to do it, even if nineteen don’t work, which then might lead to other innovations and/or eliminate other problems as a result of the trial and error?
Interesting article. I’m a bit too easily distracted to work as a designer of any sort (one reason I’ve stayed in my tech support job – it’s interesting but each call generally finishes before my mind starts looking for something else to do).
I just wanted to post my comment about the Mako. I actually liked it for the most part; I didn’t find the controls as annoying as many people seemed to, at least on the XBox. I would have, however, made it easier to tell the difference between “slopes that are too steep” and “slopes you can go up”, as well as making the distinction more definite, eliminating as much as possible the “slopes that are really steep but you can kind of get up using some tricks if you’re good with the controls”.
Now the inventory system, on the other hand… that could have used some work. (I understand it was much improved in the PC version, though.)
For the Mako problem, I probably would have talked about making the worlds more diverse, populated. More stuff to do. Maybe the chance of finding a settlement, a side mission or two. A few Easter Eggs here and there, that kind of stuff. I don’t remember much problem with the controls (although maybe I just blocked that memory out)
The “planets too big” thing just seems more of a lack of content problem to me. So either shrink the planets to fit the content, or expand the content to fit the planets. Between the two, I’d rather give the player more content to fool around with (though I’d probably be forced to just shrink the planets instead and cry in my cubicle instead, due to time restraints and not having time to get enough side missions done. :p)
Looks like I need to try out lots more MMOs. I never even knew about MMOs until I heard that a Matrix one was in development (The Matrix Online). That was my very first MMO, a little before trying out COH. I really tried to like MxO because I loved the movies but I kept becoming frustrated that I couldn’t quite ‘get’ the fighting down. Maybe it was my inexperience with gaming. The only other games I had played before were fighting games like Mortal Kombat. Heh.
I would see my ex-boyfriend playing COH and I enjoyed just watching the gameplay. I tried it out and found that it was MUCH easier than MxO and would play for hours on end. Since then I’ve only tried out two other MMOs, one being WoW- was bored with it three days in- and the second was one called 9 Dragons, if I remember correctly, and also found myself bored or frustrated with it.
So for someone like me, inexperienced with many games, what games would you suggest I try? Just any and all? I’ve been reluctant because of my previous experiences i.e. becoming bored or frustrated early on in the game.
My only problem with the Mako wasn’t the Mako itself, it was the level design of the worlds. Too many way too steep of hills, too many awkwardly places points of interest, and too small of a radar radius for discovering elements basically made it far more frustrating than it needed to be.
In response to Matt’s question about replacing it with “the mind numbing probe” mechanic from ME2 — I literally fell asleep several times while doing the probes; only the vibration from the 360′s controller would wake me.
Gothess,
While not who you asked the question of you just want to try any and all. A file planet membership (or other ways if you keep your eyes open) can get you into tons of betas to give the games a try. Now a beta isn’t a “test the game out for me” type thing by any means, but it will give you experience with the game mechanics used, and while you help out with finishing the game you can get a sense of whether or not you like the game yourself.
You also, probably, shouldn’t just limit yourself to MMOs if you are interested in jumping into the game design field. Even if you want to do exclusively MMOs, having some understanding of other games, and what they do, is always a boon. Just like writers need to read, and from lots of different genres and types, designers should be playing.
Matt may have other, more relevant, advice from his position as an expert on the field. This is just how it seems to me to be the case. Been getting into design myself for a Table Top RPG and you wouldn’t believe the things you can pick up from unrelated things (like an entire key mechanic from a movie, not a game).
Really interesting information Matt, particularly the bit about the “Design Brain.” Out of curiosity, have you looked at all at the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator? I recently finished reading David Keirsey’s books on the topic, so it’s been on my mind a lot as of late. When I read your description of the “design brain,” I couldn’t help but think, “ah, he looks for someone with the ‘iNtuition’ information gathering/perceiving function.” Those are the types that think in the abstract/theoretical…they outside the box, look a the big picture and look to future possibilities. It makes a lot of sense as to why there seems to be so many intuitive types with Paragon Studios…but it also also makes it a bit more difficult to you when it comes to hiring since those with iNtuition personality types make up a relatively small segment of the population.
Enjoyable post.
It’s nice to see that someone still believes in people having an aptitude towards a role rather than gambling on previous experience listed on their CV.
I like that you mention play other MMOs as many folks have blinkered views of MMO games.
How can you afford to be so narrow-minded when each game brings a little something new to the scene and genre.
Great post, Matt. I think the one thing that would have made the Mako better is a slower turn-speed. The slightest twitch of the control stick made it gyrate wildly… And I wouldnt necessarily say smaller worlds to explore, but there needed to be more interesting features to those worlds. Even on a so-called garden world, it was just flat land and mountains… Not a single tree in sight. Give me some of those harmless little crabs from Virmire or something, and some objects to break up the monotony. Make me WANT to explore the area and OH LOOKIE HERES A MINERAL TOO, instead of the minerals and a rare geth outpost being the only features of the whole planet. On Luna, throw in a couple of historical markers too like the Apollo XI landing zone. There are so many ways to improve both the Mako and the sections it appears in.
: Myers-Briggs, in order to have any degree of accuracy, need to be several hundred questions long. We’d need to spend a pretty substantial amount of time designing such a test. It could be useful, yes, but is the investment cost effective in the long run? I don’t know.
– You’re right, the most accurate way to find one’s Myers-Briggs type is to do a really long test given by someone certified to give the test…and yes, the cost to give the test for hiring practices isn’t really worth it. But if one reads the books, they can get a general idea of what a person’s type is just through their everyday interactions. I wasn’t suggesting to utilize it in the hiring process, just was curious if Matt (or anyone over there) had taken a peek at the topic considering how he looks for the “design brain.” Very much the way an iNtuitive would test to see if they’re talking to another iNtuitive, that’s all.
How to fix the Mako? The Mako’s fine. Just don’t make me drive it offroad so damn much. It works perfectly well on road sections like the plot worlds or the, um, what was the Geth outposts cluster called. Armstrong?
Since I do Engineering tech support for a living, I suppose that I have a design mind. I’ve build/worked on hundreds of machines. Everything from packaging machines to medical devices. My problem would be if you were to ask me about mechanics from a specific game. I tend to spend more time on playing for completion vs running through tons of games. I love my mmo’s and I always find myself thinking on how I would have designed something different. One of my pet peeves with mmo’s is that the GUI usually seems clunky. That is one thing I like about WoW. I can change my GUI to be exactly what I want it to be. Great first post Matt. I am looking forward to more.
As I admire your work, could I get your feedback on the podcast (anothercastlepodcast.blogspot.com) I record with a few of my friends? Episodes usually run about 20 minutes (outside of one hour-long exception), and all focus on a single aspect of game design. We discuss games that run afoul of these ideas and how to fix them.
I aspire to be a game designer, so I’d love your feedback, or any feedback.