Jon-Paul, who is a Game Designer in EA Redwood Shores Studio

On November 06, Jon-Paul, who is a Game Designer in EA Redwood Shores Studio, who was also an ETCer, come and gave us a great talk about how to become a game designer in one easy step as well as how to design a game.

The key point he would love to point out is “A designer is a developer whose main job is to create the fun.”

To different projects, even a same designer could be involved in different roles.
He mentioned himself that he has experienced many design stuff such as story design, quest design, AI design, and level design, etc. Jon-Paul told us it might be a good thing if we realized that as a designer, the tip is to always keep in mind to prepare ourselves to face different sorts of design issues, not only focus on one.

Then he talked something about different duties to different roles in a team. Producers must think about the team as develop directors must think about schedule. As a tester, you must think about the bugs. As an engineer, you might concentrate on your code structure and the frame rate. If you were an artist, take care about the look.

To become a designer, you might start with the fundamentals (don’t jump to electronic right away), and then educate yourself (take a class, read a book). Another important thing is a game designer should practice designing anytime and anywhere. After designed in your head, try to design it on paper, and then design it on the engine. The last step is to play it and iterate on it (time to think about the balance).

As designer, everything is a game! A Game Design basically is like a tree: each pillar is a game, as each feature is a game; each branch, leaf and node, are all games!

Game design is modular.

We could get so much of knowledge about Game Design from Jon-Paul at that time. We really appreciated his talks.