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Rare is the leader who can actually write well

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Re: Rare is the leader who can actually write well

#21

Post by [deleted] »

makecheck wrote: post #15
dissenter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're approaching it from the wrong perspective. English is the lingua franca. If your colleague were really nice, he would translate his message into Hindi, but that isn't an effective use of time. Neither is writing in Simple English. Let the recipient use a dictionary. After a while he won't have to anymore.

That isn't really fair to the recipient. Why should he or she spend extra time figuring out what you said, and you spend no time at all making it easier to read?

[deleted]

Re: Rare is the leader who can actually write well

#22

Post by derefr »

unalone wrote: post #17
derefr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm double-majoring in CS and creative writing--I'm trying to synthesize a curriculum that leads directly to being an optimal choice as a game designer ( not developer .) People who think I'm trying to be a developer don't get the writing part, and people who think I'm trying to be something like a screenwriter don't get the CS part. It's all very frustrating, but I think it'll work out.

What is a game designer, out of curiosity? I mean, I get the basics, but game designers don't do most of the programming, do they? They just need a general overview of how the game is working?

I could explain it, but it's easier to just show you an example. A game designer writes things like this: http://www.squidi.net/three/

Re: Rare is the leader who can actually write well

#24

Post by lallysingh »

unalone wrote: post #16
coolnewtoy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a CS grad student with an undergrad degree in creative writing, I always feel like I have to explain how I got here. I usually tell people I have an affinity for metaphors, and remind them that their desktop, folders and files are all electronic metaphors.

That's a great explanation! I wonder: do a lot of CS people feel connected to writing? I never thought so, though I know music is a common connection. But most people here write fairly well, and you get a lot of eloquent posts. Is that a common trait among hackers, that they write?

I think it may depend upon the school you go to. The CS people at VT, if double-majoring, went to math (to be fair, our CS major all but gives you a math minor already). If it was a more liberal-arts school, it may have gone more towards writing.

Re: Rare is the leader who can actually write well

#25

Post by iron_ball »

derefr wrote: post #22
unalone wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a game designer, out of curiosity? I mean, I get the basics, but game designers don't do most of the programming, do they? They just need a general overview of how the game is working?

I could explain it, but it's easier to just show you an example. A game designer writes things like this: http://www.squidi.net/three/

Coming up with new game ideas is the holy grail of game design, but a game designer's day to day work is creating and refining game content, often working with programmers to tweak the implementation.

For instance, take Super Mario Bros.: the developer would write the graphics rendering code, physics, make a level editor, etc, but it's the game designers who decided beforehand what the concepts would be, and work afterward to create and playtest the levels themselves until the game is fun.

For a more modern example, in World of Warcraft, developers push all the polygons and worry about collision detection and timing of spell effects, while game designers say "the fireball spell should do n damage at x range, and the Whatzisname questline should have such-and-such a set of rewards; here's the dialogue script."

If you prefer, you can think of developers as providing the toolkit, and designers as building the game with it, but in a much more iterative process.

Re: Rare is the leader who can actually write well

#26

Post by unalone »

iron_ball wrote: post #25
derefr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could explain it, but it's easier to just show you an example. A game designer writes things like this: http://www.squidi.net/three/

Coming up with new game ideas is the holy grail of game design, but a game designer's day to day work is creating and refining game content, often working with programmers to tweak the implementation. For instance, take Super Mario Bros.: the developer would write the graphics rendering code, physics, make a level editor, etc, but it's the game designers who decided beforehand what the concepts would be, and work aft…

Okay! That makes a lot of sense. Thanks a lot for explaining.

Are you in that job right now, to my parent post? What sorts of things have you learned from it? What trends do you see developing within the industry?

Re: Rare is the leader who can actually write well

#27

Post by curiousgeorge »

Raphael wrote: post #19

Rare is a company that made GoldenEye for N64.

Fantastic game. Played it enough back in college to realize that the spawn points in multiplayer weren't random. That realization changed the dynamics of the game somewhat....

More on-topic, I think the title is wrong. People who can write well tend to be better at social organization. Mao was - among other things - a librarian and poet.

Re: Rare is the leader who can actually write well

#28

Post by iron_ball »

unalone wrote: post #26
iron_ball wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming up with new game ideas is the holy grail of game design, but a game designer's day to day work is creating and refining game content, often working with programmers to tweak the implementation. For instance, take Super Mario Bros.: the developer would write the graphics rendering code, physics, make a level editor, etc, but it's the game designers who decided beforehand what the concepts would be, and work aft…

Okay! That makes a lot of sense. Thanks a lot for explaining. Are you in that job right now, to my parent post? What sorts of things have you learned from it? What trends do you see developing within the industry?

I don't work in the game industry. I'm just a lifelong player who has talked from time to time with game developers. So don't take this as gospel, but here's my take on long-term prospects.

"AAA" games, the real earthshakers like Halo and World of Warcraft, can only be made by large teams with multi-million-dollar budgets. Inescapable truth. Success in conventional game development has come to depend more and more on a corporate lifestyle: no loose cannons, no lone geniuses. Game developers have to master their C and C++ and perfect their 3D optimizations; game designers have to be very lucky, very hardworking, and very low-paid. (The design side is much harder to break into.)

Games from established studios have to be guaranteed moneymakers, mostly appealing to 15-to-35-year-old males, which is why we see lots and lots of online gunplay and me-too rhythm and karaoke games. The sudden upswing in rhythm and karaoke games points out the increasing mainstreaming of video games, though, which brings me to point 2:

Independent development. The internet has made it extremely easy to write a simple game in Flash or something and get it plastered all over the internet. You go viral with a decent business model, you can cash in, and quite a few games have already been optioned for downloadable console ports after an online success. Especially for casual games -- pick-up-and-go entertainment, usually in the puzzle category -- this can be a great road to recognition, and it's the only one available to the reclusive-genius solo programmer.

Solo development with internet distribution is also the only way to release game types that just aren't that popular these days. I've been playing a game named The Spirit Engine 2 [ http://thespiritengine.com/ ] lately; if you look at the screenshots, you can see that it's not the kind of game that would fly on the mass market.

In fact, my advice to anyone who wants to "make games" is just to make games. Don't go work for a game company. You'll do more work for less pay than you would in any other programming job, and you probably won't even scratch your game-creation itch -- you think you'll be slaving away on Doom 7, but it's far more likely that you'll be fixing graphics buffer glitches in Horsez [ http://www.amazon.com/Horsez-Nintendo-DS/dp/B000GJ0J1K ].

Re: Rare is the leader who can actually write well

#29

Post by Retric »

makecheck wrote: post #15
dissenter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're approaching it from the wrong perspective. English is the lingua franca. If your colleague were really nice, he would translate his message into Hindi, but that isn't an effective use of time. Neither is writing in Simple English. Let the recipient use a dictionary. After a while he won't have to anymore.

That isn't really fair to the recipient. Why should he or she spend extra time figuring out what you said, and you spend no time at all making it easier to read?

If the company is paying me 10x what it's paying them then it's probably more cost effective for me to brain dump (if it's clear) than it is to clean up for the reader. This is not about outsourcing the same thing happens with emails from senior management.

Re: Rare is the leader who can actually write well

#30

Post by [deleted] »

makecheck wrote: post #15
dissenter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're approaching it from the wrong perspective. English is the lingua franca. If your colleague were really nice, he would translate his message into Hindi, but that isn't an effective use of time. Neither is writing in Simple English. Let the recipient use a dictionary. After a while he won't have to anymore.

That isn't really fair to the recipient. Why should he or she spend extra time figuring out what you said, and you spend no time at all making it easier to read?

[deleted]
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