How Game Developers Define Success

[Music] hello my name is Dana Ruggiero and I'm giving a talk on how game developers define success I'm supposed to ask you to move in in case people need more chairs okay so just by a show of hands how many people here are game developers whoo and how many people here are games researchers like you teach at a university as well yeah okay few if anybody else I might have missed out on students or things like that yeah game designers so I am I'm a researcher if you're not familiar with the English terminology and yes this is a bath accent then I'm a reader which basically means I do research and the research I conduct is on games and learning one of my passions is ethnography basically getting stories and over the last four

years I've gotten the stories of game design from 55 game designers around the world people whose names you'll you'll probably recognize so to start off with when I started this project my my main idea was what is a framework for game design what kinds of stories can game designers game developers tell about their process that can help me learn if there's a certain way to do this okay is there a right way is there a wrong way what makes success well that that bombed pretty quick fifty five game designers fifty five different frameworks fifty five different stories really zero consistency when it came to the actual stories but we did have some consistencies when it came to definitions of success so this talk is about the fact that game design itself still exists beyond this mystique of programming art and showmanship maybe not for you because you are game

designers and you know it's a slog but for for people that aren't game designers people like me it's like you press a magic button and all of a sudden boom there's this amazing game and I know that's not how it actually works so when you look at game 2 designers who have published at least one game we can see that behind this mystique is is hard work late nights and the lure of lasting success this talk will look at how 55 game designers from indeed a triple-a think about success in relation to their own journeys as game designers so this is the first question how do game designers to find success and then how do I actually answer that question believe it or not you can't just call somebody up and say hey how do you define success it stifles the conversation right away now as a researcher as somebody that works in a university as professor I can tell you right now success for professor is publications and research grants that's it okay that's pretty much it but but it

seems to be very very different for game designers so asking questions is basically what I do for a living and as a researcher I'm interested in the lived experiences of a specific phenomenon and right now I'm very interested in games I have been for the past 10 years so here's the answer four years of interviews research and writing four years all right I spent a lot of time talking to game designers mainly over Skype sometimes in person and in the end I had over a hundred hours of recorded interviews and transcription was horrible this is actually going to be a book from focal press called why we design games it's coming out in December so the next question I had was what is the best way to actually tell this story no points if you recognize this guy without looking at the name okay so Studs Terkel is an amazing amazing writer and i kind of want to be him when I grow up not like him but his writing style cuz he's goofy he wrote working with who has it has

anybody can read working yes amazing book so what he did is he went around the country for years and years and he got the working lives of everybody from CEOs to waitresses to truck drivers to bank accountants everybody and he had them tell it in their own personal way and the book you you would think you were that truck driver you were that CEO you were that ballet dancer if you read it so I'm not Studs Terkel you know and my writing style is not half as I like went or well done but I'm trying and this work this is this is my best effort so far okay so these the people I interviewed okay the interviews ran the gamut from people who had dropped out of college to make games people in PhD programs veterans of the field newbies indie game developers and triple-a all very very busy people who are willing to talk to me if you're in this room thank you okay thank you very much for talking to me and this this is

what I found so there were 19 people who identified as women the average was about 13 years of experience and the really the reason it's an average is because I asked from the time they'd begun developing games so not the time they'd published their first game but the time they'd begun developing games and some people had been when they were 13 years old it was a snowball sampling so the last question I asked this interview was is there anybody else's is there anybody else out there whose game design process I should talk to who do you recommend so I got more people by asking them who they thought had a cool game design process they had to have at least one published game I had to be able to find it on the internet my publisher insists they had to be willing to talk to me that was actually quite a big one not a lot of people were willing to talk to me there were five questions first question was take me through the best game you ever played the best game design that you thought you ever played second question is when did you move from playing games to designing games

third question was tell me about your game design process from start to finish so choose a game and bring me through it fourth question was how do you define success as a game designer game developer and fifth question was who else do you recommend I speak to the interviews lasted an average of 45 minutes some people spoke really fast 10 minutes some people brenda romero i was on the phone with for two hours so you know it just depends on who you the kind of story you were gonna tell so there were themes there's about five themes i'm gonna go through them now okay the first theme was this idea of a one-woman band working alone and creating communities so here are some examples of that okay progress in my one-woman band progress is one way one way of making the band this idea that you put little pieces together every single day and this is a definition of success every single day you move your project forward and that you looked at your progress and

said that same day okay this is good now I can move on to the next step another one was creative freedom I don't know if a cheerier Lam is here at GDC but thank you for drunk and robot pornography amazing game okay and this idea of creative freedom that basically you have the ability to you know to play a 20 minute riff in your band and you can call a Ruud name and nobody's going to come back at you because you are the band you are this one woman show and that's another way to think of success thirdly in the one woman band was this idea of building a following Henry Smith space team basically said that it's not about making money so much as it is about saying in the future hey I made that cool game this is why you should buy this next cool game that I made so building a following the ability to create for yourself but also able to say I made this so back me because I made this other cool thing okay finally

agency this idea that you want to promote agency in the joy of seeking your own process you don't really care about other people defining your success you know you're a game designer you know your game developer and that's it that's good enough this idea that you can just say screw this and I'm gonna make my own types of games Elizabeth upend say it was actually very very eloquent when she said that when you're starting from a place of seeking validation from other people then that's not a creative process the second theme that came up a lot was moving goal posts this idea of struggling with defining success and actually recognizing it when you see it I actually suffer from this myself I think there's even a name for it called imposter syndrome so one of the first sub themes and this was this idea that success is a sliding scale success can go back fourth that that you really have to think about coops aren't confining

success calling yourself successful across the board was almost like tempting fate too much that saying this project this game this little part is successful and that can get bigger or smaller depending on the games you're making approval okay approval Nina Freeman said this very very well as well I still haven't gotten my own mom to play one of my games when I do I feel like that will be the end-all of success that by having the people that you love and the people that have you know raised you to actually validate what you're doing is a form of success Andrea Phillips who made perplex City talks a lot about this idea of scalability that small scale can still be successful in fact it's just as valid as large scale they need to find your bubble and go with it because it has to be about you and not about a number do 50 people play your game do fifty thousand people play your game are you employed for six months at

EA are you employed for twenty years somewhere else what is your bubble look for it find it be ok with it this idea that you have to just be okay you should be okay with not being successful avery alder mcdonald doesn't actually make games anymore she tells me that she stopped making games because of well lots of reasons but this battle with success was one of them she was probably one of the most elegant people that i actually interviewed this idea that she doesn't have a good a rubric for evaluating success and and and that that was seen in a lot of the interviews hemming and hawing me saying what's makes you successful as a game designer and people not being able to answer the question or being able to answer it but taking twenty minutes being okay with not being successful is really hard to do some designers talked about the idea that success can go both ways and that being okay with that is a challenge and a good way to think of goal posts so the

fact that you're not successful and being okay with that is a way of being successful it's very meta but the big circle mmm-hmm one of the third the third theme was horizon scanning this idea that as a game designer you always want to provide new interactions new technologies new ways of working so one of those things was accountability that as the game designer you have to be accountable to your players that the players liking your game was a sign of success and that you want to bring new things and be interesting and have interesting things for your players but that you should be aware that they're gonna hold you accountable Kyle Gabler who's part of t2 d-boy said this very very well that otherwise we're just wasting everybody else's time transforming play beyond the actual game not just saying within the game but beyond the actual game it was

also mentioned quite a lot bringing in the unexpected bringing the joy creating new play experience and then challenging yourself to say oK we've done that now let's go beyond that if like Robin here says after they're done they can say wow that was unexpected I didn't think I would enjoy that but now I see the world differently as a result of it then you are a successful game designer that's the ultimate success enhancing design vocabulary it's one thing to make a game it's something else to make something that somebody else can then take and make another game or to make something else pushing it forward okay it's one thing to be an expert but then it's another thing to be able to take that expertise and teach somebody else how to do it John Romero actually says this very very well that game design has been around a long time and the Angry Birds could have been made you know with the 8-bit computers of the 80s but it wasn't because our design vocabulary wasn't established so this idea of weaving threads of success that you

being successful on your own as a game designer is one pin point but then being able to push that forward being able to say okay other people can now use this technology can now use this interaction can now use this design vocabulary and make it more make it better not property satisfaction at key who wrote Proteus and who likes to take long hikes talk to me a lot about motivation this idea that he wants to create neat things but that there still has to be player satisfaction within that that you can push past boundaries I mean you you can make something that you know that you control with a churro and you know then you eat the churro and then but nobody else can actually make that and maybe it's not satisfying as a game design experience he was a lot more elegant than I am in this but that you have to retain good play the good play is one of the key marks of being a good game designer and has to be engaging for

people this is the one I actually expected to come up first and didn't okay that we do this for money out of the 55 game designers I spoke to nobody came out and said I do this for money I was surprised but then I thought I am recording you for a book so maybe maybe you don't want to say you know I go I go to work for a paycheck okay but this this this theme was probably one of the most powerful and and one sub question I asked a lot of the indie game designers was if you worked for a triple-a what's your game design process change and a lot of them said no that they would rather stack boxes then then then change their game design process for money so this idea is we got to eat paying the bills and responsibilities so one aspect of success was funding Warren Spector basically said that I measure success by this idea that can my next game get funded how many do I have to sell of this game to get the next game funded

moving forward through funding was a practical yet tried way of thinking about financial success based solely on numbers what does it take to be able to make another game what is the magic number okay I guess it depends on who you are as well as the game you make another one was about fearing the mundane Devi readin said it best in the Stanley parable that he actually fears normal jobs that he has to be profitable because if he's not profitable and he has to go back to doing a normal job making money was a way to avoid the soul destroying job and money makes it possible to continue to be creative and design games rather than stacking boxes then we had some people that said that's okay I'd rather stack boxes then do this creativity burn that that making money you know ensues that let's be okay with the idea of stacking boxes as the

pressure to make money burns creative energy day after day and that really being able to take your extra time and make something you're passionate about would be worth it if you just had a normal job and this idea of responsibilities we're not all one-man bands or one-woman bands all right some people a lot of people have responsibilities they have kids they have grandparents they have houses they have mortgages they have a lifestyle they want to maintain you have responsibilities and one of those one responsibilities is you have to eat and the responsibility first was a theme that really came across I will say that theme came across more and the people that have been doing this longer than it did in it for the people have been doing it a shorter amount of time but this really brings to light this idea that every effort brings both artistic and commercial access ideally but sometimes you only get one and one of them will pay bills and one of them won't we also

have this idea of creating a lasting legacy of hitting it big being remembered in games being the person that made this thing that everybody can then say I made this thing go get your picture with them at GDC it's it's that person that made the thing okay so this idea of looking beyond constantly looking beyond is exhausting okay it's exhausting yet there this is where many game designers seem to find themselves this this drive to make something that would be remembered forever and Jason Rohr actually said it very very well that it's like the old obscenity thing you know it when you see it you know something fantastic when you see it and that something that will last something is just more that's just not binary something beyond that and I couldn't get him to be any more specific than that honestly ego okay very very very much an ego driven occupation from the 55 people I talked to maybe not all of you within 55 people

I talked to it was very evident throughout the interview is the idea of go big or go home make something make something that will stand the test of history a Nana Tito a developer from Australia says it very very well that the games are an experience and that she releases the whole experience and not just one song that games have to be good over the years decades if you're lucky but definitely good over the years years are the enemy of digital games mechanics and technology improve and what was amazing ten years ago may look antiquated a few years later joy fun and having a good time do not fade and game designer see this as a lasting legacy a way of thinking about success David Jaffe actually said it very very well that game design success is is that going back and be able to play these games years later and still having a good time this idea that you should leave something behind then when somebody plays your game the part of the

game should go with them game designers want to create a lasting experience for the player little pieces of the game that were left behind and and bring bring it forward okay they actually bring them forward Lehren homeland mix re Lehren Lynne McWilliams said to me that she thinks that games that are ranked the highest and should rank the highest are the ones that leave something behind when you're done with name done with playing them so here's some lessons learned from those two five different themes one nobody was one thing there was an amazing amount of overlap I thought I was going to have people fall into one theme or the other but what it came down to is is that many people fell across the different themes simply because yes they might do it for money but they were also simply very passionate about their jobs yes they might want to leave the lasting legacy but also was about being having creative freedom this is probably the most frustrating

experience does not equal clarity the ability to talk about the game design process did not get clearer when interviewing people with the most experience in fact some people were so beyond knowledgeable if they couldn't define success anymore the process of game design was so ingrained within them clarity about individual projects was actually more easy to recall and have you seen this it's a something we tend to use and we're talking about expert analysis and these people were basically in the fourth level they were so competent they couldn't actually tell me how they were competent anymore the people that were newer at this the people that had maybe been designing 10 10 years or so they had conscious competence they could bring me through their steps they could define very very easily what it meant to be successful but the people they'd been doing this a very very long time the lines had blurred they simply couldn't lay it out in a straight line goal-setting is

continuous and ongoing throughout the interview many game designers talked about evolving processes and evolving definitions of success its success it just can simply keep designing games and its success to be able to keep trying finally you don't have it figured out any more than I do you don't know game has the same journey and no game designer has the same process we're thinking about success from the analogies they developed to the games they produce game designers in this presentation have worked alone dealt with moving goal posts scan the horizon of what could be next paid the bills and aim for creating lasting legacies the kinds of analogies they talked about were the first penguin Sheree Rainer gray being the first penguin fields of virgin snow the magic circle walking alone making the music puzzles everybody had an analogy for what they were doing this is in no way a comprehensive list of every success status that could exist but by examining

design process of these designers we've learned that this field is about the audaciousness of creation the privilege of impact and the sheer exhaustion and exhilaration that comes when they put the game to bed thank you questions [Applause] if I interviewed you when you're here hi I have a question regarding so you asked each of the individual game developers but game development is very collaborative I'm wondering if you detected a strain that tended toward collaboration or away from collaboration as far as measures of success okay good question so were there strains of collaboration or whether or not strains of

collaboration in my is there is there a hostility toward cuz I noticed she said people said they'd rather not change their process they'd rather be packing boxes well when you work with other people he's really important to be flexible that is true so of the 55 people that I entered for 56 people one was a pair Danielle Swank and Jim Fleming their pair and they were actually very very well together in terms of their design process everybody else that I interview talked about themselves as a soul game designer they didn't really get into the idea of collaboration and when they did so for instance John Romero talked about a an online game that he had created and the idea there was is that I needed them to talk about something where they had the decision-making process so when they talked about collaboration it was secondary to their definitions of success okay thanks thank you thanks for

the great talk after your talking with these a designer and famous game developers what do you what was was your channel feel about these people as a group do you think that generally they are good people bad people or until they're just you know nasty people that just egotistic or whatever you know so if you just take them as a group what would you characterize it in okay so I'm being recorded as well no one seems like a bad person you know everybody was very people that agreed to speak to me were people that were willing to have their ideas out there and they also were willing for me to give this presentation because I since I sent them an email saying I was giving this presentation I would guess they're good people I mean I don't I don't really know anything about their personal lives what I did want to hear

about was I want to hear about people that had different game design processes and some of the people that were recommended because they were difficult to work with and I'm not going to say their names or some of the people that definitely told the most interesting stories but as for do they kick puppies I don't know okay thank you thank you thanks for the talk is really informative did you notice a difference between the independent developers and the triple-a developers in their design process whatever they talked about it yes okay that's actually a very very good question yes independent game designers I'm sorry if this actually sounds bad but seem like they hadn't lost their hope I'm sorry I'm sorry if this sounds bad but it seems like they still believe that the magic could happen whereas the people that I talk to that work for

triple-a seems more along the lines of that that it was a business that it was a business and that it was a very big machine and that yes that they were a game developer or game designer but as part of this idea of collaboration they didn't maybe have as much agency as they could have agency came a lot from the independent game designers and this study leans more towards independent game designer simply because they were the people willing to talk to me the people in triple-a I got very very nice letters back saying no because we're not sure what you're gonna write mm-hm so I would say that yeah I'd hate to call it hope but it's really what it seemed like it seemed like anything's possible if I just work hard enough if I just do this thing eventually I will be successful that was amazing to hear thank you thank you hello could you talk a little bit about the process of compiling this into

a book and what the focus of the book is what you hoped it would be or how it changed than the process of making it of course so Sean Cameron from focal press not Sean Cameron Wow forget his name now anyway Sean from focal press is my editor and the book is called why we design games frameworks from indeed a triple-a and each of these people have talked me through the game they are most proud of so maybe not the game they're most famous for but the game they are most proud of and this idea of building on success came from them talking about well which game should I choose Dana which game you know the game that made me the most money or the game where I thought the process was the best or the game where you know the most people responded in these different ways and every time I took notes it kept coming down to pride and success don't really equal the same thing so the book will look at the individual process so

what you'll see is you'll see 55 different games torn apart and then you'll see there lessons learned as well as their pasts of the best game they ever played or the first game they ever played and how they became game designers awesome thank you so much you're welcome hi thanks again for giving this talk um so in all the times that I've spoken with game devs and project managers and everything you seem to come across some common themes like I would say one of the ones I stumbled upon CEO to be like you know nothing's like black and white like everyone's sort of there's like this sort of oh you know sort of depends on the situation answer so I was wondering in the talks and the interviews that you had with people if you seem to come across those like common core like answers or something like that I would say yes I would say there were some some common core answers as much as people wanted to say that money didn't matter it had to matter and

how it has to matter in some aspects oh so that but how much it mattered was really dependent on the individual game designer and in terms of the process of actually designing the game that's what I was talking about in terms of unconscious competence and things like that what I got a lot was and then we designed the game like well what does that mean okay I need you to bring me through it step by step so yes there were common core answers and things like user testing or how they design music or white boxing and things like that in terms of how people think about success these themes were actually very very hard to draw together because what I'm making people seem like here is very black and white when in reality nobody was it just happened to be which box they fit more into less than they're solely about money or solely about creative freedom I really like that answer thank you thank you hi great talk thank you did any of the designers that you talk to the developers talk about failures a lot of their failures were

they comfortable talking about their failures did they not want to talk about their failures yes okay so failures let's see the first 17 people I talked to we talked about failures when you really really just bombed and things went bad what I found after that was is that those people then took away permission for me to use their stuff in the book so then I stopped asking about failures not all of them but about seven out of the seventeen so whose names I cannot mention here because they took away their permission for me to actually use that some people were very very open about it it seemed like the more successful and well-known you were the more okay you were with the idea that you had failures out there and the less and the less games you had out and the less successes you had the less okay you were with admitting the fact that you know that you've you bombed oh thank you thank you

hello I been from Google I had a question on your first question you asked him was what game like inspired them or they felt was their common themes therefore what inspired all of them are no so there were no common themes for the first games they played and were the first games they thought had a really big impact on them and I think the reason behind that is because of just the age range of the people so some people said it was tic-tac-toe you know some people said it was something on an Atari some people said it was a mortal kombat you know other people were talking about arcade games where they were playing I'm sorry space invaders I'm guessing the things dropped down space invaders so no there was no actual common theme for the games that had the most impact on them and I was actually kind of surprised I thought it would I thought they would be more in tune and nobody said Mario how's that nobody said Mario thank you mm-hmm hi all right why did you focus just on designers as

opposed to producers programmers artists ah okay that is my own ignorance honestly in in in not being a game designer or a game developer in my head I wanted the people that I thought would be solely responsible for a whole game now I know that's completely not true right but having started the book looking at mainly independence I decided to simply focus on this person that was gonna go and make the story make the game I think we are out of time and if you would like to talk to me more I'll be in the wrap-up space please fill out the survey that they've sent you via the internet I think that's all I'm supposed to say thank you very much you [Applause]