A letter to a young game creator
This is the first of a series of letters I’m writing right now. They are, quite obviously, inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. I aim to make a little book of letters to give aspiring game creators ideas and advice on how to start. It’s less about the tools to use and the skills to develop and more about… how to develop them. Less about what to look, more about how to look. I hope I’ll eventually finish this, and publishing the first letter is arguably a way for me to make it real and to self motivate. So, here goes.
Dear K.,
spring has come. I always think spring as a moment when things that have been around in potential for a long time start to take form, develop and bloom. And this year this message of spring is even more powerful. We’re forced in our houses as we try to make sense of an unprecedented event. We are looking at other things bloom while we ask ourselves how the world will be after this will be over. It’s a metamorphosis we’re going through. It’s scary, but it can be beautiful.
Spring is the best moment to start writing to you. I really enjoyed the letter you sent me a few weeks ago, even if it’s still a mystery to me how that reached me at all. I’m also curious about the fact that you are sending me an old fashioned letter instead of an email or a Twitter DM; that tells me a lot about you and surely sparks my interest. So, you’ve started making your own games. And you’re asking yourself a million different things because of course you do.
You can probably imagine how many letters like this I receive. I’m not even that well known around and yet there are so many people asking me for advice on how to become a game designer. And I get it. Making games is great. I have to say, though, that sometimes people don’t really understand what it means to do this job. Don’t want to be the old wise person here, but you know, there are implications. It’s not just about realising what it’s actually your day to day job. What are your material duties and responsibilities. It’s also about understanding what kind of person you need to be in order to become a good game designer.
And I have started to consider how it could be way more useful for an aspiring game creator to start working on that part. The use of tools, the tech, even the structure of what you are supposed to do are all relatively straightforward to learn. They also can change wildly with time, companies and with the kind of designer you are going to become. You will see your approach in making games change as you grow but also adapt to the particular landscape you’re working on and to the things you need to talk about through the experience you’re building.
I’m telling you this because, say, a narrative designer, a system designer and a creative lead job stand miles away from each other. Sometimes you will need to be extremely creative. Some other times you will push numbers on a spreadsheet. Some other you will script stuff on a game engine, reviewing behaviors and tuning timings and reactions. Of course you will need to learn the tools for doing these activities. Of course it might happen you do all of them at once, or just a tiny part. You will end up specialising in something and asking friends for help. Games are not created by a single mind. However, your mind will still matter so much. Because you see, there’s something else, often overlooked.
And that has to do with your eyes. Metaphorical eyes. It has to do with your attitude towards life. Your culture. The way you look at things. The way you understand things. The way you connect them to each other and make something new out of them.
Your eyes are important, dear K. Don’t focus them only in the realm of games; when it happens, you start getting short sighted. You lose sight of the big picture. You stop becoming an explorer of that fantastic landscape.
And being a curious explorer, I believe, it’s what really makes the difference here. Of course you can still be a game designer without that pulsion. But it will be so hard to grow. It will be so hard to leave your mark. That curiosity, that will to understand how something works, both literally and metaphorically, is what will train you to see the systems underlying anything and to find the patience and motivation to simplify them until you can represent them in game form.
What does it mean being a curious explorer? Once someone told me how they were fascinated by my attitude to welcome any insight, any thought, any experience in me. By the fact I was like a sponge. I believe that is what it means. It doesn’t only take good eyes but also the will to look. The will of not losing the tiny details. The awareness these details are so important because just by acknowledging them they will lead you somewhere else.
Being an explorer means not being afraid to lose yourself following a butterfly just because you want to see where you end up. It means willing to be surprised, it means not questioning if something will make you earn money. It means just going somewhere for the sake of it.
Welcome everything. Discovering, researching and being interested will make you grow so much.
This is my first task for you. Think about what kind of person you want to be as a game designer. Whatever the answer be ready to see it change many, many times. It’s the sort of healthy change that is always welcome. But start to use your curiosity to move towards it. We will pick up from there.
This might seem to you all a bit strange and maybe not what you expected. You might even think you need something more grounded and tangible. Which is fair. And I promise you I will get to it if this correspondence will go on. For now, I really love to see you getting to a mindset I personally always found useful.
I started this letter talking about how these are times of change and this could look like a metamorphosis. Embrace it. Let this be the start of your own personal metamorphosis.
I look forward to your next letter.
Be safe and take care.
Yours,
F.
