This post is the third in a series about how to land a job as a game designer. Check out previous posts for details on setting your career goal and building your portfolio. Now that you’ve built a strong portfolio filled with tangible design works, you may think it is time to write your resume and start applying for jobs. But the same way that when designing features on Enhanced Wars I always set a […]
Breaking into game design: Part 2 – build your portfolio
This is post is the second in a series on how to land your first job as a game designer. You can read the first post about how to set your career goal at this link. Although I do not review as many resumes now that I’m an indie developer working on Enhanced Wars as I did when I was at BioWare San Francisco, I still review the odd resume here or there as a result of a […]
Breaking into game design: Part 1 – find your mountain
Before I left to work on Enhanced Wars, I was a producer and manager at BioWare’s San Francisco office. The majority of my time at BioWare was spent as a producer leading the Dragon Age Legends game team. During my most crunched state I had a team of 25, 19 of whom I managed directly. Hiring truly takes a team to do right (and I was lucky to have a strong team at EA between the […]
Game Design for Middle School Students
Click the Play button to listen to audio of the talk Slides and audio from a game design lesson given to middle school students participating in the Comic Book Club at Aim High in July ’12.
On Game Design with Andrew Mayer
I spoke with Andrew Mayer, Creative Director at Sojo Studios, about game design and creative direction. Andrew’s 20 year career includes working for PF Magic, Cartoon Network, PlayFirst, Mob Science and Sojo Studios, where he recently launched WeTopia for Facebook. In addition to designing games, Andrew is the author of the steam punk series Society of Steam. EL: So the question I start everybody out with is, what is game design? AM: Okay. How many […]
Jenova Chen on game design
The following are excerpts from a conversation with Jenova Chen, Co-Founder and Creative Director at thatgamecompany. Jenova’s meteoric rise began at USC after a viral success with Cloud led to a fortuitous meeting with Sony. Jenova’s hit games include the PSN exclusives Flow, Flower and Journey. EL: Can you start by introducing yourself, talking a little bit about what your background is and the games you’ve worked on? JC: I grew up in China, went […]
What is Game Design? – IGDA SF Microtalk
Click the Play button to listen to audio of the talk This Pecha Kucha style microtalk was given at the IGDA San Francisco meetup in April ’12. If you enjoyed the talk, check out some of the full length interviews on the “What is Game Design?” project page.
On Game Design with Ray Mazza
The following are excerpts from a conversation with Ray Mazza, Lead Designer Worldwide for Playfish. Ray’s titles include The Sims 2, The Sims 3, The Sims Social, and a whole host of Sims expansion packs. Find out more about the multitalented Mr. Mazza on his blog. EL: To start with, what is game design? RM: What is game design? It’s figuring out what is fun. It’s trying to understand the concept of fun and then […]
On Game Design with Dan Chao
The following are excerpts from a conversation with Dan Chao, Lead Designer at Funzio. Dan’s work runs the full gamut of design, including releases in the Core, Casual, Social and Mobile segments of the industry. Dan has worked as gameplay engineer on Xbox launch title New Legends, lead designer on the casual game Wandering Willows, and most recently lead designer on social/mobile games Crime City, and Kingdom Age. EL: To start with, what is game […]