Read on Twitter
i used to believe i couldn't be a designer because the other aspiring designers i knew were men who got raised on blizzard games & star wars while i was raised on barbie games, neopets, & purple moon.
wish i could tell my younger self how flat out wrong that belief was.
wish i could tell my younger self how flat out wrong that belief was.
in design it's common to fall back to patterns you're familiar with/are nostalgic for. it's a bias, but it can be useful, too.
my fallbacks are different from most other designers'. that means i dissect problems in very different ways and often reach different conclusions.
my fallbacks are different from most other designers'. that means i dissect problems in very different ways and often reach different conclusions.
as a student i used to see guys who wanted to be designers dissecting games and thought "there's a whole body of knowledge/experience here i'm clearly missing, and therefore i cannot do this job."
what i minimized by doing that was the body of knowledge *i* had to contribute.
what i minimized by doing that was the body of knowledge *i* had to contribute.
i also overlooked the benefit of being able to come to a lot of these games later as an adult. with clear eyes and no particular nostalgia for them, i could be curious about how they worked. sometimes they held up to the nostalgia, and other times they didn't.
i believe great designers are curious. they want to learn. why did another game do it this way? what is that mechanic trying to evoke? is it successful? what would i change about it?
if you can be curious, then no matter what game you work on, you'll be successful.
if you can be curious, then no matter what game you work on, you'll be successful.
