Blog - Designers vs Gamers
Tuesday, July 1, 2008Game designers find making games more enjoyable than playing them.
I'm sure that by this point this is true at least for me. Keeping up on my game playing almost seems like more work to me than my game design projects.
This dynamic of being a game designer first and a gamer second, however, is something I notice is lacking in most of my students in the EGD camp sessions I've taught.
Most of them can't wait for our lectures on how to use the tools to be over so they can have more free time to play games on the LAN with each other. In fact, a few of them are probably playing games during our lectures.
On one hand, this doesn't bother me as much as you might expect. We see our program as a great way for high school students to determine if a career in game development is right for them before they start college.
This is certainly valuable, if true, as I see a lot of people enter the game development major at SCAD who just don't make it once realizing early on that it's not what they expected. Lots of students like games, and think making them would be fun. It is, if you're into it, and don't mind how much work it is. Neither is necessarily true for most people.
So if these kids come to this camp and realize that they'd rather play games than make them, then I suppose we've done our job. The price tag for this camp is rather expensive for a camper to decide they'd rather spend it all playing LAN games, but then again the price their parents are paying is still nothing compared to the cost of finding out the same thing as a University student.
So, it shouldn't bother me. For the most part it does not. Even so, there's a part of me that finds it a little disheartening. For one thing, even if they find out they don't like it, they still are stuck making a game with other students. They all have to work on a game which gets judged by industry folks. That means that when my students put as little work as possible into their game, just so they can get back to playing, I'm pretty embarrassed and angry when it gets presented to game developers I respect and admire.
On top of that though, I just feel a little sad that the kids don't see the same magic I've found, where making games IS more fun than playing them.
So, it makes me happy when a few of them do find that magic.
This session we have one camper who spends all his free lab time just playing with the level design tool we have, once we showed him how to use it. Especially after lectures where I show them more on that tool, a few keep playing around in it, exploring the possibilities. One called me over to test out the level he'd made, using a few of the tricks and techniques I had taught.
I love that. posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 11:17 PM
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