Notes on Schell

Notes on Schell

Mortals! How are you all?

Having completely ignored your responses, I have been given the task of (pauses mid-sentence to look up Nintendo themes on twin musical tesla coils) reading part of the book "In the Beginning, There is the Designer" by Jesse Schell.

The following are my notes on this rather pleasant piece of literature.

It's important to be confident in yourself, and to be able to build your confidence when you need it; you are a game designer. Doubts are useless to you, and decisions must be made with confidence.

You will fail more often than you succeed, and that's good; when you fail, you learn, and you do better next time.

Game designers must have skills in animation, anthropology, architecture, brainstorming, business, cinematography, communication, creative writing, economics, engineering, history, management, mathematics, music, psychology, public speaking (damn), sound design, technical writing, and visual arts. You will not need to be skilled in all of these, but be familiar with as many as you can.

The most important skill for a game designer is listening, as you will have to listen to many things, including your team, your audience, your game, your client (or publisher), and yourself.

Don't just surface listen, understand more deeply what others are communicating to you, whether they know it or not.

While some people may be gifted at certain skills naturally, this is less important than the "major gift", which is a love of the work; if you love designing games, your own skills will grow, and you will become as good or better than the people who are naturally gifted. The only way to figure out if you have the major gift is to try out the work, and see if it works for you.

Praise the Holy Emperor, Mortals!