Lord British: "Most game designers really just suck"

What Garriott did concerning creating 'virtual worlds' is something that even now in 2013 has rarely been matched. Let alone surpassed. Shame the guy then jumped entirely on the mmo bandwagon, although it really isn't that much of a surprise when you consider his love for creating and living in a virtual larping land.

 

Can we say a game designer is a mediator between code(rs) and art then?

 

Right, so he's one of the best game designers ever when it comes to creating virtual worlds, and although he completely fucked that up the last time he tried his hand at it, he wasn't really too heavily involved in that game. It only had his name plastered in front of the title, and he cosplayed General British in real life as well as LARPing him in-game, and he went into outer fucking space to promote it, and he thought it would be the best game ever and said so at every opportunity.

Fuggit. Let Shroud of the Avatar do the talking, then. I just don't think our contempt for AAA workaday developers should translate to letting his douchebaggery slide.

 

I think it can, if rigorous technical study is mandated. A game designer needs to know how to work, not just have fun creative time and think about kewl ideas like an amateur enthusiast. Their exams should involve execution, funneling ideas into an actual product, a game of some sort. In other fields, a designer is someone who is a technician first, artist second. The guys who do the design work for Star Wars movies are not there to express themselves, but solve a problem. If you're not providing workable solutions, you're not a designer.

 

from the article i got the feeling that more than "i'm better than you" garriott meant "designers suck so much they're worse than me, mostly because they lack specific technical preparation which a programmer or artist has".

molyneux disagrees.

 

To a degree. That's not fully accurate though. A designer can and should fill that role, but it's really a designer's job to be the one who does the creative work - world building, designing gameplay systems and features, coming up with concepts for the story and settings, characters, etc. Ideally those are then passed onto more specialized people, like writers and programmers. More than anything it is a problem-solving job, with the central problem being "how do we make a fun game?" and then solving all the sub-problems in their millions that appear along the way. As Machocruz said, this can and should involve some degree of technical skill, though the extensiveness of this will very dramatically.

Depending on the size of the company and the type of game being made, a designer will do much more than just the simple creative brainstorming. For instance, designers are often responsible for scripting gameplay, doing level design and creation, defining raw data which is then fed to the game engine (think spreadsheets defining various statistics), doing the majority of writing for the game and even sometimes music and sound. The smaller the company, the more general a designer will have to be in skill set, while at large companies like Ubisoft and EA you tend to get people whose job is basically just telling other people "do that, that would be cool." I've read interviews with some industry veterans that are pretty enlightening - one where (and forgive me for forgetting his name) the guy did everything from art, to sound, to writing, to scripting, to some programming, to level design, etc. on an early-90s RPG, and when he told his interviewers at a large game developer, they were literally stunned that he did all that himself.

That's yet another reason for having so many misconceptions about what game design is and what game designers actually do - it's extremely variable based on the individual job.

On a personal level, I can do level design and building, some scripting, I can write and communicate rather well (= game design docs and coordinating team members), I can use Photoshop and similar programs, have some basic knowledge of 3D modeling programs, and so on. I don't know how that stacks up to other designers but it's definitely served me well in building various game mods etc. over the years. I imagine that skill set is probably wider than what you get at some larger studios, though. The problem for a designer is that you are only as useful as your skill set allows for a certain project... if "designer" means "gameplay programmer" and you aren't a programmer, then you're going to be out of luck, or will have to be a very fast learner.

 

He made his own business simulator, which is more actual product design than some of the celebrity AAA "designers" have done. And I heard some of his earlier games were p. good.

 

For crying the fuck out, the inventory in Ultima 6-8 was DELIBERATE! Same as in Divine Divinity. It was a ton of fun too. If you took your time arranging your shit you were rewarded by quickly being able to use it in combat. And it looked good. It was like a mini game that was actually fun, for once. Do you actually prefer the slot based shit in gamez like Baldurs Gate and PS:Torment?

Also, lore wise and plotwise Ultima 7 was superior to Serpant Isle, which had those really, really annoying 'factions' I MUCH preferred the openness and wonder of Black Gate, and the whole Fellowship konspiricy.

 

Actually he is right with

I remember I did a lot of reading of various different stuff about architecture, social antropology, military, political science, and programming. If I didn't spend that spare time for learning the stuff, and refreshing this every few months with new stuff, I'd suck as game designer. Though I have artistic talent, and you can't beat up talent. Majority of people in the industry looks like they didn't try to improve themselves. Which is kinda strange because there was strong pressure of capable youngsters who were willing to spend time to self-educate in PhD related fields in their spare time.

 

You know what's really funny? If you read the interview, RG names 3 designers other than himself of course, who do not suck. Molyneux is one of them.

 

What's even funnier is that Molyneux, Garriott and Wright have been making shit games for very nearly all of the 2000s (Fable, Tabula Rasa and Spore, what an all-star cast); meanwhile, both Molyneux and Garriott are working on Kickstarter projects that look like they're going to suck cock—and have barely scraped by their funding goals, though Shroud's better off than GODUS on that front.

And Chris Roberts? The guy who made a shitload of money because he's producing what is by all appearances a Wing Commander fan's dream? The only one of Garriot's four named greats in possession of a still-shining track record? Half the people fellating Garriott in this thread were the very same ones shitting all over the Star Citizen Kickstarter thread a few months back.

I really don't give a damn what esoteric and rarefied set of skills any of them have. Produce good games, or fuck off to live with George Lucas in lost-my-touch land.

 

I don't think you can characterize all jobs in the field as the same. Almost no one working on COD15 or SPORTS2014 is a game designer, they are a game producer. The design part is entirely laid out and the job is to make the exact same game again while changing the smoke and mirrors around a bit. On the other hand smaller developers are generally the ones being more creative and in need of actual game design, and from what I know they still hire from the various modding projects just fine.

 

I dunno. Those people aren't responsible for deciding the high-level direction of the game, that's true. But, the nitty-gritty micro-level details are just as important to game design as well. To say it's not "real" design because they are confined to operating within specific limits is unfair.

 

How little freedom needs to be left before we can agree there isn't any freedom at all? It's the equivalent of a bioware choice at this point. Should the next hallway be red, green, or blue?

You aren't a slave. You're just a free man confined to specific limits of mobility.

 

Ah... Codex, the place where someone who made computer classics just needs to say something and all of a sudden those classics suck. Ultima sucks, really ? ARMA without fun and gun ? What the fuck, people ?

Richard Garriott is right. Most game designers suck, and it is extremely ironic for Codexers who do hate most games to bash him on that comment. Truth coming out from a batshit crazy multimillionaire still remains truth.

And I do agree with him on his views of game design schools. I still view video games as a form of art. And do you know what great artists have in common ? The best novel writers, the painters that will stay forever in museums ?

They knew shit. Not only about art, but about everything : they had historical references, they had read books, they had experienced stuff, and they put that experience and their originality in their works. Some of them had no knowledge of "how to write books" or "how to do paintings". They just did what they felt like, without framework, and they stayed famous for it. Guess what ? This is how also the classics games of the 80s were done.

Now, currently, how do you make games ?

You fail at history. You fail at science. You say "hurr, durr, I like video games, I want to make video games." , so they join a video game school and are told "hurr, durr, this is how you make video games and don't you stray from that path.".

Interesting times, indeed.

 

Ultima IX was a game that had some great ideas with below average execution. The story is awful. The dialogs are pathetic. Still, a huge open world filled with secrets to explore was nothing you could see on PC before that.

Besides, all Ultima IX considerations apart, how does that in any way invalidates his opinions not on himself, but on other game designers ?

 

Alright Garriot, you have a good point.


Here:

 

For the record, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that they're good, and that they're classics, but also that I don't see anything particularly amazing or revolutionary in their design—just that they're playable and competently executed. Also, the time of their conception and publication is an important factor that can't be ignored.

Actually, I'm on record weeks ago saying essentially the same thing Garriott's saying, more-or-less: That he's not an amazing genius (nor was Chris Roberts, or George Lucas, or whomever), but that everyone else sucked (or failed, or never made it into the industry) compared to them. It's a strange concept even to me, but I have to agree with him on that point. So many people fucking suck that decent competence and average creativity seem fantastic by comparison.

The thing is, this should be a time of humility and even-keel-edness for Garriott, not an extragalactic ego trip. Even if it's true that everyone else is a mediocre piece of shit, you don't go on record bragging about it in an interview.

 

Blaine, in general I agree with you. However, I've worked at large corporations where literally everyone (even those in charge) are stuck in corporate inertia. While it is true that we can still judge the outcomes through that lens, I think this new project of his will simply have the least experimental interference.

sea, I disagree with your assertion that there is anyone looking for somebody with a Game Design degree. Also, that there are any 'game schools' worth attending. Unless $50k is how much you are willing to spend to find someone who will work with you on a mod. Networking is how you get a game design job unless you are already a game designer via mod or otherwise. Networking is a politically correct term for nepotism.

 

This is going to sound like a cop-out, but factors that make a good game great, elevating it above the chaff are often small details that are the result of serendipity. Like trying to catch lightening in a bottle, it's not really predictable. The time delay from conception to release, when all the disparate elements have to fit together perfectly, means that seemingly innocuous decisions early in the development cycle have huge ramifications later. Music, art direction, level design, gameplay, all those things have to end up being more than the sum of their parts.

I guess what I'm saying is we put too much stock in the opinions of developers who've been partly responsible for great games without taking into account that they could have just as easily fucked up spectacularly had they gone with one of their earlier hunches instead. Skill, vision, communication, inspiration are great, but luck plays a big part and success is a horrible teacher. If anything I'm much more wary of anything put out by an established name convinced of their own greatness, rather than a hungry ambitious unknown with everything to prove, and nothing to lose.

 

This was procedurally generated. Nope, doesn't count