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Improving as a Game Designer

A topic by Ichit created Jun 20, 2020 Views: 324 Replies: 2

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Been on a journey on trying to improve myself as a developer, but with a big focus on design.
Was wondering if anyone can share their tips and stories on how they improve.

.. A lot of this I just started recently doing, but wish I did some of this sooner.

These are the things I believe I should do (in no order of effectiveness), and I'll provide reasons why (I am not coming from a high place, as I don't think I am great at all):

1. Play games that you are interested in

I think playing games you personally like, even for research purposes, help you understand why you might be passionate about some games.

Personally I have the mindset that the reason why you'd want to design in the first place, is that you are passionate and you yourself enjoy how some things are designed.

I figure I like this sort of game, so I want to make this sort of game, but with my own spin that I think would be fun.

2. Review games and try to show your games to random people, family, and friends

Review games to gain insight on how to give and hopefully receive feedback. Idea here is to learn how to collaborate with people. And gain insight on how they design and not get stuck in a vacuum. (I personally have done internal prototyping for years, where I would prototype and show nobody anything, as I was super shy)

3. Game jams

Learn new things, try new themes and mechanics. I myself often get stuck into a genre or type of game constantly when I prototype without an external direction.

4. Start a private development journal
Review what I did for the day, sometimes I don't realize I even have questions until I start writing stuff down. (After I started this a few days ago, I feel like I've been taking stuff more seriously and in a more planned manner)

5. Chatting in game dev forums
Try to gain insight on how people market their game, talk about their game, how to talk to people and work with people.

6. Supplementary reading

Reading when you have a problem that needs solving.

Reading game development articles for the sake of reading them , (this gets dry very quickly) because I think trying to stick to the bleeding edge of something is something some professionals do.

7. Supplementary tutorial videos

Watching a bunch of game development videos. Same thing as above.

8. Writing down game ideas whenever you got one

I think this helps you create a small library or game ideas to fall back to.

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No Time To PlayModerator4 years ago(+1)

0. Make games. Lots of games. As many as you can. Learn from the process. Make more games.

You can try a lot of other things, but the way to become better at anything is to practice a lot. So do that first.

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Afloof.devModerator4 years ago(+1)

I can’t recommend this enough. To add to it:

Try to make unique games. Don’t just think “Let’s combine popular game X and popular game Y into one”, chances are those two games require months and months to be made, which can easily discourage a new dev.

Try making a small game, try to find a new concept, and start working on it. As you continue working on it, try adding some new things that make sense with whats already made. If you think something is difficult to make, skip it for another time. Make what feels comfortable, and add a few new ideas that would put you just outside of your comfort zone.

The moment you stop enjoying having fun working on that game, wrap things up, do some polish, and possibly publish your work. There are times where you might make a gem and not realise it until people tell you about it.

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