Arcade Berg aka. "Learning Game Design with Arcade Berg"

A good designer is always a good designer

This is a re-post of my post over at AboutGameDesign.com and is my response to:

can a good game designer design any type of game?

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The topic which I'm to discuss is one that I think most people have an opinion about. Can a good game designer design any type of game?

I've decided that I'll break it down to two different ways of answering that.

Can a good game designer contribute to any type of game? Yes, absolutely!

Can a good game designer unfamiliar with the type of game in focus, design that kind of game by himself? No! Well, yes... But... It depends... A definite "maybe"perhaps?

I'll start by discussing the first answer, as it's not only first but also simpler.

I think a good game designer is a good game designer no matter what. Even if he's only done FPS action-games, he's a valuable member in a design team working on a funny platformer. It's still about making a fun experience for the player, thinking about tweaks, balance, features, pacing, interaction, etc. It's impossible for a designer to be completely useless in one project while being invaluable in another.

Not all designers work or think the same way, nor do we all have the same set of skills. But we all have something to offer, just like even programmers (no offence) might get a good creative idea every now and then.

So therefore, if you're a "good game designer", we can assume that you have a broad skill set but also a good understanding of what makes a game tick, and in one way or another an idea of what "fun" is.

But of course, just as you're probably better at cooking one kind of food than others, it's the same with game design. You might be better at the FPS action-game or not any particular kind of game, but an area like Human Computer Interaction (HCI).

Which brings us to the difficulty of answering the second way of wording the question.

I do think expertise is needed and hence, not anyone can do everything. So if you're gonna develop a game about social interaction and power struggle, it might be wise to get a designer that actually knows that kind of stuff.

But here's the thing; how do the designers with the expertise know what they know? They've learned it! And there's nothing that dictates that no one else can learn that stuff as well. So basically, a good designer lacking that particular expertise could work hard on "getting there". Reading, doing research, etc.

So what it comes down to now are two things:

1. The possibility to learn - A lot of the expert designer's skill is probably based on actual experience and not just theoretical practice. Some or all of those experiences might be impossible to replicate and are therefor unique to the expert designer.
2. Time - With enough time, the good designer lacking the expertise could probably get there, but time is the one thing that there's never enough of within actual development.

Meaning? In reality the expert designer has knowledge of the particular kind of game, that a good designer doesn't. The good designer is a truly great asset for the team and he can take the game a really long way, creating something great. But for that something special, the extra edge within the type, I do think an expert is needed.

But let me end with this. Every rule has an exception, right? So of course there are designers out there without the expertise that could elevate the type X of games onto a whole new level, but I don't think it's fair to say that that's normally the case.