Game Designer Research

The gaming industry is the fastest growing entertainment industry in today's culture. It grosses enormous amounts of profit each year and has had a huge impact on the technological advancements in computer hardware and software developments. Whether this be a collaborative effect or companies pushing for a bigger slice of the market by offering the most up to date and powerful products on the market it doesn't matter. The fact is gaming is now everywhere in our lives and freely accessible for all demographics of society.

But why develop games? Surely it cannot be purely for the paycheck?

Todd Howard from Bethesda Game Studios describes games as the "ultimate combination of art and technology" this statement couldn't be anymore relevant considering where we are as a society when comparatively studying the advancements in both technology, art and gaming. The parallels with all three are astoundingly similar. In fact even disciplines such as painting, photography and illustration has seen huge changes in the way art is created. In today's age an artist cannot be at the forefront of his or hers profession if they do not share an up to date knowledge and everyday relationship with technology.

He continues to say "how people feel this sense of pride in a game is like nothing else in entertainment." he says that when creating a game that functions the way it is supposed to you feel proud of the achievement. This of course is a similar feeling to how any artist would feel after completing a hard and laborious piece of art. 

Howard says that his goal when creating a game is not to define it by how many levels, add-on's or features that game has but rather define it by an experience. What is the experience you want your players to recieve and what is the best way to achieve this experience. He says that when creating games issues are unavoidable and that most games never conceptually achieve 100% of the initial ideas, and that is the point. That in essence is why he makes games. He says that when he has to cut aspects out of a game that the entire team of developers loved so much it drives him to make it possible in the next game.

Games have to be created in a time frame. They cannot be drawn out or over developed because by the time is released other studios will have been using better software, better programming and better technology then when the game was first created. This is why portions of over conceptual ideas can never be created, because the time in which the programming for these aspects would take is never worth the loss in time, so well put by Howard "we can do anything in a game, we just can't do everything".

To summarize Tod Howard said that when making a game his most important accomplishment is always to create a unique experience. "Where films fail to do so games succeed, in making the gamer the director of his or her own movie"