What does Schelle offer to the would be game designer?

Notes from Jesse Schelles "In the Beginning, This is the Designer" 2009


After reading through the few pages of this text many thing become apparent and the advice Schelle offers designers can provide helpful and even inspirational information for the "would be game designer". Such as in the first few paragraphs it is easy to see that one of the biggest problems is that people who want to be designers are not confident enough to actually follow through in this. He states that a lot of people believe that they need to have a lot of experience designing games to become a games designer and that they don't have the confidence to find the experience. Then he informs the reader just to say out loud "I am a games designer" after saying that once you have said this, you are no a game designer.

A main point put across is that if you are not confident in your work or not passionate about your work then you will struggle a lot in the industry. Making a game is an art and for art you need to be passionate otherwise you won't enjoy your own games. This means that your games won't become the standard which they could be and might not be what you want exactly. Also, he says that failures are a large part of your job. You cannot learn without failure and you should not take the failures to heart but learn by them, improve on them and make everything better. He importantly says about how much more you will fail rather than succeed but this is good. He uses the quote from jugglers,

"If you aren't dropping, you aren't learning. And if you aren't learning, you aren't a juggler."

Then goes on to say,

"If you aren't failing you aren't trying hard enough, and you aren't really a games designer."

After this he lists a lot of skills vital for the games design industry but says no one could possibly master these all basically and that if you know one, that's good if you know a few that's even better. But he really emphasises how important one skill is. Listening, this is so important just due to the amount of people and/or bodies of people you need to listen to to be and expert games designer.

For example, while working you will need to listen to your team, your workers, your management, any clients, and especially the audience because you are making a game for the audience. You must listen to what they want because if they want one thing and you give them the other they won't buy your game and it will not succeed and not make money.

But listening goes so much deeper, Schelle says about how important body language is, like reading someone's tone of voice, how they are standing and how this helps read exactly what they are trying to put across to you. This means that you will be able to listen to and communicate with the person, be it the client or anyone you work with, much more efficiently making the game infinitely better.