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[Rareboy]

Hello guys,

Last night I watched video about game design of World of Warcraft and I thought that it would be the most beautiful thing in the world to design worlds, character, environment, stories, mission and art style of games similar to this one. I am already interested in film making for year or so and I still love films and film making but now matter what I do, I always miss that part of interacting with the world that I created and I always feel that I want people to touch my imagination and suddenly I thought about game design because when I was little I played WoW and I remember this game as beautiful art piece and similar to film, final product consists work of many artists and people who teamed up for one vision but every single person did put his own language to masterpiece.
But now, I want to ask directly some people already in business ...
I can say straightaway that programming and more technical aspects wouldn't be my cup of tea, but everything else represents for me a great creative opportunity. but as I know human mind, playing the game and creating the game is not really the same and both sides represent very different type of view I think.
So now, how do I find out if the game design is truly for me and that my decision is not just some insane idea that began just from the players perspective and didn't experience creators point of view?
Maybe starting to analyze some classical board games? or even creating one? I think it doesn't matter to heart
if game design is for cardboard or pixels on the screen...
And second, I know that game designer position requires very wide variety of knowledge but, what do I need to learn first? What is the key knowledge for game designer to learn right away in order to start and to begin creating his own games?
I know this guy Chris Metzen from Blizzard and from now on, it is my new hero who consists of everything that I want to do and who I want to be...
I want to create beautiful worlds that can people fully interact with and be entertained and I want willing to do anything to bring this visions to life...

[Zaeche]

Oh my, this is such a vast topic. I'd say work your way through all of the resources in the sticky. As a rule of thumb, starting out, it is better to engage with the stuff that appeals to you.

Note: I'm no professional (least ways, not yet if you get my drift, heh) and I'm speaking from a place of passion. My words are not gospel, and my intention's to help a fellow autodidact.

You mentioned film--composition in level design, directing the player: these are the sorts of topics you should look to. I'm not sure if there's a de facto starting point but the basics of crafting a game should be a good place to start: what makes a game? What's the definition of interaction? And so on; general stuff.

As far as analysing games goes: start with the games that are near and dear to your heart. Play them. Then play them once more, but this time wearing the lens of a designer (and don't forget to wear your film lens too!). Seriously, if you've analysed films, analyse games.

Don't hold back: take 'em apart, deconstruct how things work: where am I supposed to be going? How am I being told/suggested this? How do I know what to do? Do I feel like I have a choice? ((The film analogue to this would be: how has the director staged the action? Blocked the scene? Directed the watcher's eye and focus? That sort of stuff))

I think a stirring example of this (doubles as a video on 'teaching through play') is this:



Board games are fantastic for design. I cannot emphasise this enough. I consider Chess to be one of my favourite designs ever. That said (and it keeps coming back to this): you've got to be invested in the game. There's a benefit in taking apart games that bore you, or the ones you hate, but I find (for me) it's easy to get burnt out.

Some games I think teach design in their ways (flawed or not): Dark Souls, Portal, Braid, Space Invaders, Tetris.

Go play Frog Fractions by Twinbeard (seriously). Tangentially, go follow Liz England (website, twitter).

Start participating in Game Jams. LudumDare for one, among others. Just dive in--fail often and fast. It's a good way to learn and I've been trying to push myself to participate in more jams too.

Finally - I hope this doesn't come across the wrong way - would you mind formatting your paragraphs (spacing etc) so it's easier on the eyes? The easier it is to read what you're asking, the more inclined folk will be to respond.

Hope this helps!

[s0]

Board games are fantastic for design. I cannot emphasise this enough.

agreed. i think if you use videogames as your only reference point, you pick up lots of bad habits. board and card games teach you to streamline and clarify your designs. for starters, you can't hide or obfuscate mechanics in a physical game, the rules need to be known to players. they also teach you to not add too many stats and variables to your game (because every new variable means more bookkeeping for players). i'm not saying it's always bad to do these things in a videogame, but they need to be done carefully and familiarity with physical games gives a better grasp on which elements to leave out vs which ones to include (imo):

it doesn't necessarily have to be chess or other abstract games either. there are lots of good thematic board games that do interesting things w/r/t conveying theme through mechanics. too many videogames only use visuals and audio for theme.

[Rareboy]

Thank you guys for your advices so I think I will start to analyze couple board games, actually I have Settlers of Catan available in my hand so I think I can start off with that, what do you think?

But what I am most curious about is, what I need to learn first so I can start making games and attend to those jams that you mentioned previously?
I want to say that I am willing to learn basic programming so I can be more independent, because I think its really hard to make first games yourself without any knowledge in programming am I right?

I would really appreciate if someone would show me some path but I also understand that it can be different for every single person,
I love to learn about art,history,design and all sorts of stuff that game designer needs but how do I transform these things into digital world? I mean, programming seems to me as a only way to craft the ideas ...

[Evilperson]

I strongly recommend GameMaker: Studio for making games. When I began making games (and I'm still pretty newbish), I tried Unity3D, Construct 2, Stencyl, and GameMaker, and GameMaker is the only one I could grasp.
It organises everything neatly for you and its language is pretty newb friendly imo.
If you want examples of what it can achieve, Spelunky, Hotline Miami, Undertale and Nuclear Throne were all made in GameMaker, so yeah it's pretty 'professional'.
You can also use drag n' drop instead of coding, but if you want more control over your game, you'd want to learn GameMaker Language.
There's a free version with a few limitations(which can be overcome). Also I recommend this tutorial:https://www.youtube.com/user/letslearngamemaker?&ab_channel=Let%27sLearnGameMaker:Studio

If you don't want to program, there's also Construct2 and Stencyl, but I can't recommend them as I gave up on them pretty quickly.
And don't forget, if you have trouble programming, there are many forums that got your back.

[Photon]

Can't speak for GameMaker myself, but I do hear its pretty dependent on GML to do its more "fancy" work. I'd take that with a grain of salt personally (more on that later.)

The pro of platforms like Stencyl and Construct are that they can streamline your development with their toolsets (stage editors, animation handling, etc.) but a typical con is that you accept its benefits and limitations together. What you want to make can largely determine whether that toolset is viable or not. Of course, you should consider starting very small to begin with, which can give you more leeway on experimenting with different toolsets. At any rate, its not a bad place to start; I used Stencyl for almost two years despite actually having a programming background because I liked being able to get stuff working so quickly. Here's one of my best works from my Stencyl days, made for Ludum Dare, as a reference if you wish:

http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/26060

Nonetheless, and I saw this plenty of times with other Stencyl developers, a lack of basic programming knowledge can leave you confused when your game starts misbehaving. Though drag-and-drop "actions" are written in plain English, their implementations are often more complicated than they appear. Changing value A may in fact cause a chain reaction that affects value B, and before you know it you have no idea what's going on anymore despite the "English" making rather good sense.

If you are serious about it, I would definitely recommend learning an actual programming language. Personally, I use Haxe. However, it is worth noting that toolsets like the above often give an option to write code in their native language (Stencyl uses Haxe, for instance,) so you could consider learning a toolset and language simultaneously. Some have their own proprietary language, such as GameMaker, but obviously that IS proprietary and that language knowledge is somewhat exclusive to that platform. If you learn an actual language, then you can use that language wherever it is applicable or even develop directly in it later on.

Hope that helps. 

[s0]

i've been using game maker for 7+ years and honestly, using GM without using GML is a waste of time. the drag and drop stuff is so clunky and limited that you will get a headache once you try making anything more complex than a pacman clone. GM is very flexible though, probably the second most flexible game making toolset thingy behind unity.

the thing though is, programming really isn't that scary, especially in a simplified language like GML. there's an initial hurdle of getting your head around the basic concepts, but after that it's smooth sailing.

[starsrift]

But what I am most curious about is, what I need to learn first so I can start making games and attend to those jams that you mentioned previously?
I want to say that I am willing to learn basic programming so I can be more independent, because I think its really hard to make first games yourself without any knowledge in programming am I right?

This barrier of entry is more psychological than difficult. It's not hard to learn some basic programming and use game-making suites or engines. Speaking as a programmer who started in Fortran and BASICA, I would actually not recommend coding your game from scratch to anyone unless they had a specific technical issue that a game engine wouldn't overcome.
Just getting over that first psychological hurdle of, "I can learn this" will open up everything for you.

And in addition to that - ideas are worthless, implementation is everything. Everyone has ideas, and some people even have good ideas that could make money, but no idea is worth a single penny until you make it happen. So, yes, learn how to do a little light programming and scripting, with Gamemaker or Unity or whatever you'd like for your poison. And board games are a great start; I try to design a new board game every couple weeks.

[skaz]

I can only recommend Game Maker. I started making games something like tow years ago, and I started by learning the language of game maker. Note that I knew nothing about programming before that, and I have no maths/programming background AT ALL. I always thought programming was not for me, until I tried. Wished I tried earlier.

[s0]

also here's the thing: you basically don't need any kind of talent to program a good game in this day and age. in fact a lot of successful indie devs are not good programmers.

[skaz]

I suppose being a good programmer helps, but it's not an absolute requirement thanks to all the middleware we have today. I hope you're right, I'll never be a good programmer :p

One thing I'll add for the OP is, you can't become someone how makes games without making games. Programming simple games in a simple language is probably a requirement. Thing is, game design is not about having cool game ideas, but making good games. As soon as you start making games, you realise that thing don't work as planed when you implement your ideas. That's why someone says earlier it's about implementation. No matter how cool it sounds, it may not play well. It's a common misconception, a lot of people think the game designer thinks, and the rest of the team does the job for him while he simply enjoys his cleverness.

Having the skill to make games yourself, make quick prototypes, fail and try again is invaluable.

So, make games!

[J-Snake]

also here's the thing: you basically don't need any kind of talent to program a good game in this day and age.

This only explains why so many games look nice, but are mechanically broken or have frame pacing issues. I would argue that you need to take good care of programming in any day and age, there is no easy way out if you care how your game runs.