thread: 2005-06-16 : Craft and Innovation
On 2005-06-16, Eric Provost wrote:
Very inspiring Vincent.In that light, I see myself as the journeyman designer. I've learned the basic lessons and now I'm onto a basic project. I'm excited about it.
And I'm going to agree and disagree with Jay's first post up top there. Too much theory is distracting, confusing, and disheartening to a novice. Like throwing an advanced calc book at a kid learning fractions. But, there are some lessons the novice really has to learn before they can be considered a journeyman.
The most important lesson that comes to mind is that you've got discover what you really want from gaming before you can design a game that can give you what you want.
Some Forgites, theory-heads, and other denizens of the Ivory Tower tend to forget this early lesson as a given then turn about and get confused and frustrated by the novices that answer the basic question with "I want a game that's realistic!" An answer that only demonstrates how many budding game designers there are that not only don't know how to answer that basic question, but don't even know that it exists to be answered.
I had some other gibberish about the indie-designers that follow the theory-heads, but it got out of hand without a solid point. So I scrapped it.
-Eric
