Archive for the ‘Rant’ tag

Gamer != Game Designer

I could finish this post right now and I would consider I had said enough. This is sort of a re-post of a post on my now dead Portuguese blog. The basic premise is that a gamer is not a game designer and a game designer is not a gamer.

When I play a game as a gamer, I play the games I like to play. I have fun with the games, I truly enjoy the moment. When I’m playing a game with the game designer hat on, I don’t have to enjoy the game, but rather try to understand its mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics.

Being a gamer is for sure the start of being a game designer, as much as driving is the start of being a race driver, but no one is a game designer just because it plays games, the same way no one is a race driver because it knows how to drive! Game design, like it or not, is a technical work. Game design is not about having ideas for games, but to fill the blanks from the idea to the finished product.

While this is true a bit everywhere, flash market is a great way for gamers to start their crazy journey on game development and as soon as they put a box moving in the flash player they are automagically extraordinary game designers and awesome coders. Well, it’s a start, we can only hope that they work it out with time. I know I went through an automagical phase of my own only to find out that there’s a world of things to learn everyday.

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