 | From the mailbag: Rattlesnakes for BreakfastJuly 10th, 2006 |
I’ve been bad and let the mail pile up. Even this only cuts it in half…!
OK so I’ve been reading your site since before it was a blog, since lumthemad.net was still a website. I read everything I can find about game development. I’m currently in community college (not doing well, but whatever), and I want to work in game design. I read a post where you pointed people in that kind of direction. One thing I’m not sure of, though, is once I get a diversified education, what do I do? I’m about to have an associates (2 year) degree from my school, and I have no idea what to do after that. You say learn coding, I’ve already got Flash’s Actionscript and some basic C++/C# down. Should I continue my education at a 4-year school? What should I major in, since I already (almost) have a Liberal Arts/Social Sciences degree? Start coding up some games and try to break into the industry? Apply for a job at a game company near where I live (yeah right, New York)? Start a blog that nobody will read and post thought-provoking essays? I’m at that point in my life where I need some direction, and as probably the most successful person in your field, you’d be the man to ask. I’m looking to spend my life making games and worlds, I just don’t know where to start. Thanks for your time, whether you respond or not.
Well, definitely, try to do better at college. The skills you need there are much like the skills you need in the workplace: completing assignments on time, doing work on your own without someone having to check up on you constantly, working through problems on your own, and so on. College isn’t suited for everyone, and game developers seem to either love it or hate it, but a lot of the modern game industry is like any other big corporate job.
Whether you want to continue on to your four-year degree or not depends on your desires as a game developer. These days, it’s getting more and more common to expect a four year CS degree from a new hire for a programming slot. You could pile that atop your AA. (FWIW, when I mentioned a liberal arts degree, it was for a designer — and I meant a full four year education’s worth of one). If you’re looking to be a designer, then the thing to do is start making games, regardless of whether you want to continue your education.
You could do that while finishing a four year degree — perhaps at someplace like Full Sail, CMU, the Guildhall or USC, which offer game degree programs with heavy vocational training — meaning, they make you make games. And actually, so does NYU (New York!) You could also do that on your own, and in fact even if you’re in school, you probably should.
Applying for a job would likely land you in QA at this point. That is a good thing — you can learn a lot about what the process of making games is from seeing them at all those horrible early stages. You’ll also learn whether the politics of the game industry, the hours, and the pay are for you or not.
Starting a blog — do it only if you see value in it for you. It will not help you achieve your goal to just talk about doing things — you have to actually do them.
Greetings, I have a quick question i have a story line developed for a game and was wondering if you can pointme in the right direction of how to get it developed. it has many of the original SWG concepts and others based on a EX point sprend system. I and a few friends have worked on the story line for quite some time and not at all game developing savy but know it has potential in the deprived Sci fi market. one i think it will pullin all the pissed of pre CU galaxies players as well as many others. but i dont want the control to go to a major company so it gets trashed and sent in a direction we feel its not meant to go. any advice you could give would be helpful.
Develop it yourself. I cannot overstate how cheap ideas are in this business, like in any other creative business. That means that having an idea, unless you are the only one who knows how to implement it, is basically worth nothing at all. It doesn’t matter how complete your storyline is. Odds are there are literally dozens of people at any company you might care to pitch to who have ideas just as developed, if not way more so, and who have been waiting for years to get one approved. Hell, I have probably a dozen MMO designs on the shelf that I knew would never get a shot at seeing the light of day.
Dear Raph, I am doing a PhD research project on MMORPG communities in the Department of Social Sciences of Pisa. As a sociologist, I am interested in the relational aspects of online social dynamics. I see that people came into a guild or drop away from it, but if you are really in the core of the guild, it is normal to switch to another game if the guild decide to do it, just because you want to play with your friends. This is quite a basic and rough hypothesis, but I think that it can help me in the investigation of the information flow’s mechanisms of a guild. I am writing this email to ask the opinion of a MMORPG expert, and maybe to have a link to some papers on the topic. Thank you for your time, Regards, Simone Gabbriellini
I’d get in touch with the following folks, who can provide you with data and also their insights from their research:
- Nick Yee, at Stanford, is the guy who has done the most research into the behavior of players online.
- Constance Steinkuehler, at U Wisconsin-Madison, has focused her research specifically on large scale guilds.
- T. L. Taylor, who just completed an ethnographic study of players in EverQuest, Play Between Worlds : Exploring Online Game Culture
They have all published papers online, so I would look for their work first, and then start exploring the works they cite.
Hello Raph. This email completely qualifies as “YAY Raph!” I re-subscribed to SWG a few days ago after a year long absence due to extream frugalness, only to find the game I used to love had become more like the ones I didn’t care for at all. (WOW, EQ) Upon mentioning the proffession path changes to my hubby he immediatly suggested that perhaps you were no longer at the helm. See, I was also a rabid fan of UO for about 6 years. Basically the fact that I have to include cooking in my list of abilities as a Domestic Trader and don’t have the option to use those points to go dancing or shooting womp rats anymore has led to the re-cancellation of my account with them. “People like to make stuff themselves a whole lot” …and they do not like being told what to make. I will make NO Bofa Treats. =P So now we’ll be eagerly awaiting news of your next project as it seems your “Worldly Game” style perfectly suits us.
I am glad you enjoyed yourself in SWG. I must say, that even the shipping version was still quite a far cry away from what I had hoped we could achieve. So I’m glad that even incomplete as it was, you liked it.
I must warn you that “worldy games” may be what people associate with me, but it’s not the only sort of game I make. I have in fact made more puzzle gamesin my life than I have made worldy MMOs. 
So the next game you see form me may not be what you hope for — it may be something completely different. I hope you try it out anyway.
In fact, have been desultorily working on a little game idea on the side here this week… been thinking about posting samples as I go. I am trying to work on it only for fun in the evenings, since it is quite beside the point of the startup studio… shall I post what I’ve got for people to mess with? It’s not online at all…
what game are you currently with, we sure miss you here at SWG. the game is just not like it was when you created it. are you working on a game similiar with skills and diversity? thanks in advance for answering my questions and take care
I am not ready to talk about what I am working on with the startup studio, and probably won’t be ready to talk about for many months to come. It will be online, I can tell you that much.
Hi Raph – I was just introduced to you as a resource for designing a Simulation excercise from a website that I stumbled across: Forio Business Simulations. I am developing a business simulation for an upcoming conference in October, and i need some help! I’ve written a case study before for use in graduate business schools, but i need some pointers/outline/resources on how to best write a simulation game for use by adults (a 3-day conference with 3 hours/day simulation time.) i have an idea for the setting, plot & theme, but can you suggest any resources to use as a guide for writing a relevant, realistic, fun and engaging storyline? many thanks for your ideas~ Heather
The first challenge is to pick what you want to simulate. Really, it all flows from there. You are focusng on the wrong thing if you are focusing on “a relevant, realistic, fun and engaging storyline,” particularly for use in a graduate business school conference. You need to identify the core fun mechanics to simulate — the stock market, a management dilemma, sorting out supply chains, what? Once you have that, you can then assign storyline elements to it.
At the Ludium organized by Ted Castronova, our group had to pick a topic to do a game design about that would be a serious academic research project. We decided for our presentation that we would also be actually playing a little bit of a crude form of the simulation. We decided to do a simulation of information flow through a population in crisis, and the serious application was measuring who talk to who when and why, and how bits of info flowed. Because of what we were doing, we were able to tokenize the info down to index cards that the audince could pass around, and play the game that way. It was a fun way to get the conference attendees interested and having fun.
hi, this is all about your book “theory of fun game design”. i really enjoyed this book, there is none alike. what annoys the heck out of me though is the missing index and the “senseless” chapter headings. it took me 30 minutes to find the chapter on game definitions. (after having read the book) i browsed through “what games are” remembering i hadn’t read it there then went to “what games aren’t” which didn’t seem like what i was looking for. finally i found it under “how the brain works”. seriously my brain works differently
, so for future editions this would be probably a great enhancement. thank you very much, jan
You know, I’ve often found myself wanting an index too. Maybe I will ask the publisher about it. Did you know that originally, it didn’t have endnotes either? Now I cannot imagine the book without them.
I’ll makea point of including an index in the next one, how’s that?
Oh, and the post title comes from a song by my friend Paul Edward Sanchez. “I’ll have rattlesnakes for breakfast, sugar in my stew, whiskey in my coffee, and a dream to hold on to.”
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which stinks because I’d love to be getting some input during development. Of course I dont make games, I only mine data 
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[...] What Raph is working on Submitted by Abalieno on August 2, 2006 – 12:12. From his blog (also here): I am not ready to talk about what I am working on with the startup studio, and probably won’t be ready to talk about for many months to come. It will be online, I can tell you that much. [...]