I hate answering that question because my answer is “10 years”.

“Oh wow!” they say.

After 10 minutes, however, it is clear that I look like a n00b.

Why is this? I have a few theories:

I’m a Yoga Idiot

Maybe I’m just not very good?

Changing Schools/Teachers

I don’t think changing schools or teachers is a bad thing, but I do think it can make you feel like a yoga idiot.

Different teachers have different aspects that they focus on, they have different asanas (poses) that they practice, and different pose sequences. I had a class today where we did some poses that I’ve never done before, so obviously I wasn’t good at that pose. But triangle pose? Bring it!

Conditioning

There are sports where technique and muscle memory are not enough for proficiency. Taking 2-4 weeks off a sport like rock climbing or yoga to nurse an injury, or because life gets in the way, will significantly reduce your strength and endurance. It could take weeks to get back to the level you were at before taking a break.

Summary

Getting a new teacher, practicing infrequently, or returning from a break can shake your confidence in an activity. Don’t give up. It is hard to be good at some things without doing them frequently and recently.  Bear with the embarrassment for a few weeks and get back to a level where you feel less like an idiot and more like a practitioner.

Also, try not to let your preconception of the right way to do something get in the way of the opportunity to learn from a teacher who has a different emphases or style than what you’re familiar with.

Know What is Essential

Designers need to understand the soul of their product plus its constraints (including technology and platform limitations, budget, corporate goals, and their team’s skills). Once they have an understanding of what they want to make, and what their constraints are, they can finally set about the task of providing solutions.

Communication

It is no good if only the designer knows what is essential; they must communicate that knowledge to the rest of the team. Designers must be able to communicate ideas verbally, in writing, and visually. They are in a key position to facilitate cross disciplinary communication within a team as they have one foot in the arts and the other in the sciences. They’re a better programmer than most artists and a better artist than most programmers. They serve as a bridge, translating artist speak into engineering speak and vice versa.

Right Attitude

Designers must have an open mind. They need to be receptive to critique, others’ ideas, and new ways of doing things. They should be eager to learn and to continually improve their skills and knowledge. They must be proactive in providing solutions.

This is the most important trait for newbies since it is the foundation for them getting good at any of the other traits.

Provide Solutions

At the end of the day, design is all about providing solutions. A good habit is to provide three solutions to every problem, stating the strengths and weaknesses of each solution. These solutions need to be presented through clear communication.

This is a document about creating documents, or as we jokingly said at the office: “the Inception of documents”. The entire seven step process is covered in this blog post, but due to the limitations of the blog layout you don’t get the benefit of seeing the embedded version of this document’s state at each of the steps.

• Here is a link to the printable PDF layout of this material. This is what this document looks like at the completion of step #7.

• You can also download this zip of OpenOffice files. This is probably the trippiest way to experience this content since the step 7 document has all the steps — including itself — embedded within it. This version won’t print in any meaningful way and it probably won’t look good in MS Word either.

Overview

How do you get started writing a document or a presentation? There are many ways you can approach this task. The following is a description of the process that I personally use – in fact, I used this approach when creating this document.

The Seven Steps

The Goal of Creating Documents

The main goal that you should have when creating a document is to clearly communicate your ideas. I hope that the process described in this document will help you to make documents that more effectively communicate by:

• Promoting the organization of your ideas (by continually re-visiting and updating your Table of Contents)
• Having ideas that are fleshed out through repeated refinement
• Presenting ideas professionally with a consistent use of visual style
• Supporting ideas through images, diagrams, and a page layout that considers the contextual relationship of ideas (images should be placed physically close to the text that they relate to)

Note: While I’ve presented this method as seven discrete steps, in practice you will be working in one continually evolving document. You can be “at step 7” and still add new ideas.

Step 1:Brainstorm

Write down all of your ideas as they come to you, this can be rough – don’t worry about getting things in the right order, or formatting, or even about proper punctuation, capitalization, or grammar. Alternatively you could use a mind mapping diagram, but for me just writing things down as I think of them works fine.

Step 2: Assign Paragraph Styles

Assign paragraph styles such as “Heading 1”, Heading 2”, “Body”, etc. This is necessary for generating the Table of Contents in Step 3 and is a key factor in helping you to organize your ideas. The proper use of paragraph styles will result in a much more visually consistent document or presentation – no matter what your output media is. These paragraph styles are easily converted into CSS styles for the web, Indesign paragraph styles for print or PDF generation, and slides in presentation software.

Step 3: Create a Table of Contents

Place your ToC on the first or second page of your document, after your Document Title but prior to any of your content. In OpenOffice you can create a ToC in the following menu:

Insert > Indexes and Tables > Indexes and Tables

Look at your table: does it make sense? Maybe something that was a Heading 1 should be a Heading 2 or vice versa? As you continue to refine your document, be sure to update the ToC frequently. This will allow you to see how your changes are fitting into the big picture. To update your ToC:

Right click the ToC and select Update Index/Table

Step 4: Refine Your Content

1. Flesh out your notes (add details to each section)
2. Rearrange the information (move sections around, change the heading level, etc)
3. Remove unnecessary information
4. Update your ToC frequently

Step 5: More Refinement

Repeat all of the refinement steps. Do this as many times as necessary.

The default formatting of Heading 1 and Heading 2 starts to bother me by this point in the process; so I edit the style – even though I know I’ll be doing my layout in a different program. This may seem like wasted work, but I feel that the improved line spacing, improves the readability of the document and my ability to see if the information is organized well. The main parameters I adjust are the “spacings above and below paragraphs” and the fonts styles (I don’t like my headings to be italicized). Depending on the program you may also need to adjust the font sizes. I also try to remove any double line breaks from my text at this point, opting instead for achieving my desired line spacing in the style definitions.

Step 6: Visual Clarification

What points of your document are hard to explain in words? Maybe a diagram can explain your point more clearly. My preferred tools for most diagrams are either pencil and paper (use a scanner to capture the image) or Adobe Illustrator. The reason I like Illustrator more than Photoshop is that it is easier to move your elements around and it encourages a design that can work in silhouette. You can make notes about what kind of visual support you will need as they come to mind. Here’s an example:

[IMAGE: include a screenshot of X here]

If you plan on using Powerpoint or Indesign for your final presentation then you don’t need to include those images in your word document. If you plan on making your final presentation in Word or Open Office then you can start to include those supporting images in-line at this point. Don’t worry too much about the placement or text wrapping mode – save that detailed alignment for the Page Layout stage.

Step 7: Page Layout

Don’t worry about the layout of your document until your table of contents (your document outline) is close to complete. If you move into the layout stage too early you will avoid making changes to your content since a change in content will likely mean a change in page layout too. Once you are happy with the content, you can begin to format your document using something like Word, Powerpoint, or Indesign. Because you’ve already used text styles, creating a consistent style in your layout will be a lot easier. I recommend:

1. Never edit the formatting of text directly, always edit the paragraph style that the text’s formatting derives from.
2. If you do edit the text directly, be sure to update the style from the selected text right away to ensure that you don’t have miss-matched styles down the road.

Depending on the Length of your document, you may choose to remove your table of contents once you’ve reached the Page Layout stage.

An Alternate Method

An alternate method to the one presented here would be to write an outline first. In my method the ToC becomes the outline and changes over time. An outline first method would be good when:

• You have a strict set of points that you need to cover – your boss or client gives you a list of topics they are expecting to see covered.

• The kind of document you’re working on is new to you and you don’t know where to start. In this case you may chose to start with a template such as a Game Design Document template or a Business Plan template. This may help you to write about things that you may overlook otherwise. My first game design document was created in this way, though as you become comfortable making documents you will probably find that you stop using templates.

In either of these cases, you could follow a slightly modified process from the one presented in this document:

1. Write down the template subject headings or the required points
2. Assign text styles to those points (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc)
3. Brainstorm content for each section
4. Refine the Content
5. Visual Clarification
6. Layout

Polish Checklist

Here are some important points to keep in mind when polishing your document:

• Does your document tell a story? Looking at your ToC should let you know if you’ve put your ideas in the correct order.

• Are there any obvious spelling or grammar mistakes? Proof read your document before publishing it. After you proof read it, have a friend proof read it too.

• Writing style: my friend David Sirlin recommended that I read The Elements of Style by Struck and White. This is a great little book that can improve your written English and your writing style. The most quoted piece of advice from that book is this:

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”

• Use consistent formatting. Are all of your Heading 1′s using the same font/weight/color? Are they all aligned and placed in a similar manner? How about your call out boxes? Your supporting images? Your slide backgrounds? By keeping as much of the design from slide to slide – or page to page – consistent, we allow the reader or the viewer to focus on what content is different.

Pro Tips

Page Orientation

If you want a layout that is readable on-screen and also printable, I recommend setting your page properties to landscape A4 (or Letter if your audience is in the USA). This will look good full screen and is also compatible with printers.

Physical Handouts

If you want to make the best handout ever, then a sheet of A3 or Tabloid paper folded in half will give you a nice four page handout without needing any staples.

You can have sparse presentation slides, but please do not print those slides as a handout, that is a waste of paper and also lacks the detailed information that you presented verbally.

Bespoke

There is no right way to present your information, just better ways. Find a level of detail and a layout that most effectively presents your ideas.

Further Reading

• David Sirlin: Writing Well Part 1 — Sensibilities
• Edward Tufte: any book or handout by Edward Tufte
• Anna Johnson: Good Handout Design — How To Make Sure Your Students Are Actually Learning From Your Lecture Notes
• MS Word Team: How to Make the Formatting in Your Document Consistent
• Tzvi Freeman: Creating A Great Design Document

Definition

Scrum is a framework for developing complex products.

Basis of Scrum

Scrum is based on four main ideas:

1. Kaizen (continuous improvement)
2. Timeboxing (a fixed period of time for an activity)
3. Self Managed Teams (trust them to accomplish their goals)
4. Prioritizing Value (working on the most valuable features first)

Scrum’s Kaizen

Kaizen in Scrum is accomplished by using the three pillars of Scrum in conjunction with timeboxing.

Scrum has various timeboxed events. The main one is called a Sprint. Sprints are generally 2 weeks to 1 month in duration. Each Sprint has the following sub-events which are also timeboxed: a Sprint Planning Meeting, Daily Scrum Stand Up Meetings, a Sprint Review, and a Sprint Retrospective.

These timeboxed events give formal opportunities to employ the three pillars of Scrum which are:

• Inspection
• Adaptation
• Transparency

These pillars are active in the timeboxed events in the following ways:

• Daily Stand Up Meeting — an opportunity for transparency. Everyone knows what everyone is working on. There is a small amount of inspection and adaptation going on here too: “Oh, you’re waiting for me to do X before you can do Y? Ok, I’ll work on X today so that you can start on Y tomorrow.”
• Sprint Review — all the work that was done during the sprint is presented. It is an opportunity for the team and the stake holders to inspect the progress and quality of work. It is also an example of transparency.
• Sprint Retrospective — this is an opportunity for the team to discuss what went well, and what didn’t go so well. They can make a plan on what to do differently during the next sprint. This is an example of inspection, adaptation, and transparency.
• Sprint Planning — a chance to apply the agreed upon adaptations.

Scrum teams also generate various “artifacts”. These can include a Product Backlog, a Sprint Backlog, a Release Burndown Chart, Sprint Burn Down Charts, and Task Cards. These serve to visualize the project status and are viewable by all team members and stake holders and are yet another opportunity for transparency.

Prioritizing Value

Scrum has this great artifact called a Product Backlog. This is a list of every feature or requirement for your product. It isn’t just a feature list though; every feature has an effort estimate (determined by the Development Team) and a value estimate (determined by a Product Owner).

The Product Owner’s role is to represent the interests of the client/customers. Based on what is valuable to these stakeholders the Product Owner prioritizes the Product Backlog to maximize return on investment. Generally the higher value/lower effort features make their way to the top of the list.  By following this method, if a product development time get’s cut short, at least the most important features are already done.

Self Managed Teams

The Product Owner can determine what features a development team works on, but not how the work gets done. Development teams take the top priority features from the Product Backlog and determine what tasks need to be done to complete the requirements of said features. They estimate how long the tasks will take to complete and they verbally commit to completing them during the daily standup meetings. Because the “how” is in their hands, and because they verbally commit to completing tasks, members of development teams are more likely to become highly functional teams capable of solving complex problems.

The Contract

Stakeholders agree not to interfere with a development team during the duration of a sprint (if they have a new top priority item, it can be added to the product backlog and worked on in the next sprint if it really is top priority) and the development team commits to transparency and delivering value by the end of each sprint. That means a working increment of the product composed of the highest priority features.

Implementing Scrum

The easiest aspect of scrum to implement is the daily 15 minute stand up meeting. In this meeting, each member of the development team says:

• What they finished since the previous stand up meeting
• What they plan on finishing before the next stand up meeting
• Anything that is blocking them from finishing their tasks

You don’t even have to be using Scrum to take advantage of this short daily meeting.

The rest of scrum is a lot more confusing. For instance, the classes and books don’t really tell you exactly how to implement a Product Backlog, nor the right way to do it for your organization. My advice is to follow a kaizen process for all of this other stuff too. Just start to make a Product Backlog. Don’t care about writing the perfect story or making the perfect estimate or doing the perfect grooming or the perfect prioritization. Just get started and make adjustments as you come across problems. Scrum is fairly open to tweaking so long as you don’t do anything to reduce the three pillars of inspection, adaptation, and transparency.

By the way, I’ve talked a little bit about Product Owners and Development Teams but there is one more role in a Scrum Team that I have yet to mention: the Scrum Master. The role of the Scrum Master is that of a “servent leader”. Their main responsibility is to ensure that the Scrum framework is being used properly — that means educating the organization, development team, and product owner about Scrum; facilitating the timeboxed events as needed; and maintaining the artifacts as needed (the team can do these things too). Their other main tasks are to identify and remove impediments to the development team, facilitate communication between the development team and the product owner, and to otherwise be an advocate for the development team.

Further Reading

• The Scrum Guide (PDF)
• Agile Game Development with Scrum (Amazon)
• Scrum (Wikipedia)

A recent conversation gave me some crucial insight on the culture wars. Those who are against social programs are afraid of a mythical couch surfing, baby popping, freeloader who is lazy and looking for handouts. Those in favor of social services are more optimistic about the state of most people.

History

About 2,300 years ago there were two prominent philosophers in China.

Xunzi argued that mankind was by nature bad and it was society that shaped them into proper people.

Mencius argued that mankind was by nature good and it was society that corrupted them.

The specifics of the argument are different today, but the core theme is still there. So, one reason why I think the culture wars won’t end any time soon is because they’ve been going on for so long.

If you’re optimistic about humans then you’re likely to want to extend the benefit of the doubt to all of society; if you’re pessimistic about humans then you’ll only want to lend a helping hand to those who you personally know.

Truth, Folded Thrice

As for why we have these wars, I think a loose interpretation of the Threefold Truth doctrine offers some perspective:

The Tiantai school took up the principle of The Threefold Truth, derived from Nāgārjuna:

1. Phenomena are empty of self-nature,
2. Phenomena exist provisionally from a worldly perspective,
3. Phenomena are both empty of existence and exist provisionally at once.

Even if we could scientifically prove one side of the cultural wars “correct”, let’s say “ultimately true” as in the first truth, it does not exclude the subjective experience of the opposite viewpoint being “true” for the person holding it.

And, in any case, the world is more analogue than binary in my opinion. The question is, where do you draw the line? How large of a circle are you able to draw to include your friends and family? The original conversation was spurred by one of those horrible images with a caption that grossly oversimplifies a complex issue. Arguments on both sides were initially overly simplified too. As the conversation progressed we reached more nuanced arguments that were mostly agreeable to eachother. As long as national politics are steered by oversimplification, the war will continue.

Ignorance is Bliss

One of the things that I like the most about living in Vietnam is that I don’t feel suffocated by the culture war in the USA. Political discussion is such a central part of life and identity in the US and that doesn’t seem to be the case here. Maybe it is because people in the USA still believe they can effect the political process whereas no one in Vietnam is under that illusion? Maybe it is because the US is divided into two political parties and Vietnam only has one? Maybe there are big dividing issues here but they’re talked about in Vietnamese and I’m just blissfully ignorant? Whatever the case the repose is refreshing.

Tiantai emphasizes śamatha and vipaśyanā meditation.

In fourteen years of studying Buddhism (and even more years of studying meditation if you include my childhood kung fu and chi kung experiences) I had never seen the term samatha. The wikipedia article is somewhat informative but it does’t really tell you how to do it. Searching the internet didn’t lead to many good results but it did lead to one.

This author basically says that samatha is concentration meditation where the practitioner focuses on a concept. In contrast he says that vipassana is an insight meditation where the practitioner focuses on present sensation (though he uses the term “ultimate reality”).

If you are counting your breath or thinking “in, out” as you breathe, then you are doing samatha because you are concentrating on concepts. If you instead focus on sensation such as the feeling of your nostrils as air passes through them, then you’re practicing vipassana. If you focus on the idea of air passing through your nostrils you’re back to samatha.

In my experience you normally begin zazen by concentrating on your breath or your koan. If you’re doing Soto and you reach a state of “just sitting” (shikantaza) then you’ve transitioned from samatha to vipassana. If you’re doing Rinzai and you’re concentrating on your koan then you’re doing samatha. As long as you’re doing samatha you will not pass your koan because the koan is an object that you are thinking about. That’s ok, it isn’t that doing samatha is bad or vipassana is good. One is a gateway to the other and they seem to flex different mediation muscles. But to pass the koan, it seems to me that you’ll need to transition the koan practice from samatha to vipassana.

If this topic has peaked your interest at all, then I suggest you read all of the links in this post but especially that one good one. Then you can help me to flesh out the following idea:

How does one practice koan as a process instead of a concept?

It seems to me that it can’t be the question “who am I?” but rather becoming aware of the process that is “who am I”.

Looking at the Wikipedia entry on koan I found this quote:

..in the beginning a monk first thinks a kōan is an inert object upon which to focus attention; after a long period of consecutive repetition, one realizes that the kōan is also a dynamic activity, the very activity of seeking an answer to the kōan. The kōan is both the object being sought and the relentless seeking itself.

OK, so there you have it. Concentration on the koan and awareness of the relentless seeking — koan practice as samatha meditation and as vipasyana meditation!

If you were using the “marking” technique in vipasyana then you’d say “seeking” every time you noticed that you were working on your koan

My friend Stefan and I organized the first Gameloft game jam in Vietnam. It was held two weeks ago, we had 8 teams competing, most of them using Unity for the first time. The results were fantastic. Stefan and I spent our time split between helping the teams to solve their bugs and working on our own game entitled Roll!.

Notes:

• After the game loads you’ll need to click on the web player once more to bring focus to it.
• Controls: left/right arrow keys to move, space key to jump

Just a few days before moving to Vietnam I gave a presentation about Multi-Directional Top-Down Shooters at the San Francisco chapter of the IGDA in our first “Pecha Kucha” style event.

1. Paperwork/logistics
   1. Taxes — I ended up doing my taxes in both Turbo Tax Online and TaxAct. I wasn’t sure about TaxAct as I had always used an offline version of TurboTax in the past, but the numbers worked out just fine. TaxAct was significantly cheaper so I ended up filing with it.
   2. Procure necessary travel documents — this was way too hard and deserves its own post.
   3. Book airplane tickets — if you’re coming from SFO the best itinerary and price is with Cathay Pacific.
   4. Find a shipping company — I didn’t end up using a shipping company. Instead we brought six check in suit cases (each exactly 50 lbs, the maximum limit), three roll-ons (each at 50+ lbs, each well over the limit), three backpacks (way too large to be considered hand luggage), two strollers, and a car seat. I still wonder how we managed to make it here with all of these bags and only two able bodied adults to move them. Some social engineering was necessary to hack airline representatives along the way…In the end some of the items arrived a bit damaged (ironically everything in the double corrugated cardboard box was fine but some of the items in the hardshell roll-ons collapsed under the weight of 50 lbs of books). It was such a hassle getting through security with so many bags and a child, that I will more seriously consider shipping the next time I do a big move.
2. Books — Green Apple Books in the Richmond district of San Francisco boasts “top dollar for quality used books in every subject area”. This is true, I brought about 200 books to them, they only took 20, but they payed me well for them. It would be nice if you could read their mind so that you don’t have to haul in stuff they’re not going to take. I put a few select books with inscription into storage, send some reference manuals to Vietnam in my luggage, and put the rest on Fulfillment by Amazon using their Easy Sell program. Thumbs up to Amazon so far. Here are the book that I brought with me:
   1. The Elements of Style by Strunk and White
   2. Hagakure by Yamamoto Tsunetomo translated by William Scott Wilson
   3. Tao Te Ching (the version I highlighted in Ziporyn’s class) translated by D.C. Lau
   4. The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti translated by Robert A. F. Thurman
   5. The 4-Hour Work-week by Timothy Ferriss, with an inscription from my father
   6. The Sword & The Mind translated by Hiroaki Sato
   7. An Introduction to Zen Training by Omori Sogen
   8. Fudochi Shimmyo Roku by Takuan Soho, translated by Tenshin Tanouye
   9. Zen & Budo by Omori Sogen, translated by Tenshin Tanouye
   10. Tao of Jeet Kune Do by Bruce Lee
   11. Crucial Conversations given to me by my friend Marco to help me with my new management job
   12. Being and Ambiguity by Brook Ziporyn
   13. Real-Time Cameras by Haigh Hutchinson
   14. A few Haruki Murakami books leant to me by my friend Marco which I hadn’t read before leaving
   15. I would have brought a few Edward Tufte books and pamphlets that I was borrowing from David Sirlin but fortunately he left his hermit cave of game design to attend my farewell party
3. CDs / DVDs / Vinyl — I sold all of my DVD’s to Amoeba Records, with the exception of my Ghibli collection. I was happy they took them all but I felt a bit raped by the price they gave me. This event left such an unpleasant aftertaste that I resolved to figure out Fulfillment by Amazon. If I had to do it over, 100% of my collection would have been packed up and shipped off to Amazon. Vinyl ended up in the capable hands of Dave Siska as I ran out of time to deal with anyone on Craigslist anymore.
4. Electronics and Baby Gear — Ebay and Craigslist. I need to write a post dedicated to how sub-optimal selling things for less than $1000 on Craigslist is. Ebay is the way to go if you have time, which I did not. A lot of my stuff went into storage or was given away to friends. Some of my more sentimental gear did find new homes with paying customers but it was a slow trickel and responding to low ball emails or requests for additional pictures of a $5 item was a real distraction from the gargantuan task of packing.
5. Game Consoles and Games — reference quality games took up half a large suitcase. The rest were sent to Fulfillment by Amazon. I did not ship any non-portable consoles since it turns out that Vietnam uses 240V electricity and all of my systems were only rated for 120v and power transformers seem unecological to me. Attempts to sell my like-new consoles on Craigslist was a complete disaster and they all ended up in storage, much to my chagrin. I will need to buy locally.
6. Cloths — we brought a ton to Goodwill, and visited a few consignment stores to sell our nicer items, 95% of which was rejected. If you have the time it is worth brining your nicer items to more than one place since the buyers do have different tastes. The lesson learned is that if you want to sell cloths, they need to either be 6 months old or 30 years old. All in all it wasn’t worth the time it took for us.
7. Sentimental Items — went into storage.
8. Kitchen Items — most went into storage but we did bring our three most used pots and our three most used knives. Probably silly since you can get everything in Vietnam.
9. Road Bicycle — no option was clearly the winner, I ended up putting it in storage.
10. Going Away Party — it was the best ever. Phear Lotek.

1. How did you first became interested in video games?
I don’t know how I first became interested in video games, but if you mean working on video game or designing video games: I had ideas for video games from as early as 1st grade. I always assumed that I’d eventually make a game with my friends, though it never really occurred to me that it was something you could have a career in. It wasn’t until I attended my first GDC in 2003 that it became clear in my mind that I wanted to work in the video game industry. Before 2003 my background was in new media design and documentary film making.

2. What is it like working as game designer  from your experience?
There are different phases in game development and in that regard I think game design is an interesting profession. Also many people in game development work on a project basis; either contractually, or because they are laid off at the end of a production or they decide to move on to a project at another company. This can be a bad thing if you want stability but it is more interesting to experience many different projects and company cultures in my opinion.

3. How would you say game design has changed from when you first started out?
When I first started it was hard to imagine a small team affording the tools necessary for making commercially viable games. Now you can get started with a powerful tool like Unity for free. That’s the biggest  difference, the democratization of game development. The other change has been the industry landscape. I started in the PS2 era, then there was huge uncertainty as to what “next gen” would mean in terms of budgets and art pipelines. Now next gen has matured but it feels like all of the industry and venture capital focus is on mobile and web.

4. From your experience how was it like taking this major in college?
I did my undergraduate at a liberal arts university with a focus on film and television production. I later attended a graduate program with a focus on game art and design. The liberal arts education was vital for giving me a wide base of knowledge to draw from. The art school was helpful for developing domain specific knowledge. I wouldn’t recommend majoring in game design in university, unless the program involved lots of programming and you were trying to become what’s known as a technical game designer. Otherwise you’re better served in a program where you can learn a bit of math, a bit of literature, a bit of history, a bit of business, etc.

If you’re interested in becoming a game programmer a general CS degree is probably best but be sure to make games on the side, and if you want to be a game artist, learn to be a good artist but also learn some domain specific things like optimized texture maps and polycounts.

5. From my knowledge, I know being a game designer can be competitive, what would you have to say would be the most important part or detail to be aware of as a game designer?
Maybe the most useful attribute of a game designer is the ability to communicate clearly, using visual, spoken, and written communications, to all team members regardless of specialty. To do this, not only do you need to become a good communicator and a good designer, you also need to have some experience in or understanding of business, math, logic, art, animation, and scheduling.

6. When going into the gaming industry, what would be the be the best strategy in starting with a company even if you’ve just major in game design?
The best strategy is to have some finished games, playable prototypes, or visual prototypes on hand. That means you already need to be a game designer before you can find work as a game designer. Most companies don’t want to take the time to train you up — so it is up to you to prove that you already have what it takes. If you don’t have any of these prototypes then you’ll have to start as a QA tester unless you happen to luck out and find someone willing to take a chance on you. Programmers and artists are going to have an easier time getting work right out of school because 1) everyone seems to be in need of programmers all the time and 2) an artist has an easily assessed portfolio. Of course I’ve seen many bad artist portfolios and I’d never give them any work.

7. In your opinion , what would you have to say game designers today lack in when making games?
1) Knowledge of the process of making games — how to mitigate risk, find the fun, and tune/polish. The secret sauce to game development is in many cases handed down from master to disciple and it is hard to find masters to learn from.
2) Focus — too many people focus on the story without getting the basic gameplay loops done right.
3) Time — ten months is not enough time to develop an original movie tie in game that can match up to Call of Duty.

8. What would you say would be the most difficult part of being a game designer?
It is expected that you’ll have to fight hard to prove the validity of your ideas, that’s fine, but the most frustrating part of being a game designer is when you’re working at a studio that is too egalitarian; where an animator, artist, or programmer might not follow through on the direction because they personally disagree with it. Design by committee doesn’t normally work out too well. Game development should be more of a meritocracy to avoid mediocracy.

9. What would say makes a game good in such areas like the gameplay and the development?
A clear focus. My friend David Sirlin wrote an article about Subtractive Design which would be a good starting point. Furthermore, in action games, here are some things that make them good: responsive and intuitive controls, interesting yet somewhat predictable enemy behavior, and interesting setups (where the enemies are placed and events) in the level design.

10. What role do you think game design plays in society or the media?
Some think that games have the power to improve the ways in which we learn about complex systems, or on the job training, or elementary skills, and they can also be a vehicle for fostering communication. They’re probably right, but for me, I’m happy if I can help someone unwind after a hard day of work.

11. What would have to be your most memorable moment working as game designer?
There is no single moment but the project that was the most exciting to work on was an elaborate speculative pitch for Street Fighter IV.

12. From viewing your resume on your blog, I see you’ve worked with different companies throughout your career such as Sega Studio and Backbone Entertainment and work on  some major games like Iron Man 2 , Sega genesis collection and Super Puzzle Fighter II HD Remix; out of all of the games, what would you have to say would be the most hours you put in on ?
So far that would be The Spiderwick Chronicles — I put in a lot of extra time, not because I was forced to, but because I wanted to. The job was also a big step up for me in terms of responsibility and tasks and I needed to put in extra time to make up for my lack of experience.

13. What advice would you recommend for anyone majoring in game design in the future?
It doesn’t pay as well and it isn’t as fun as you assume. I keep trying to figure out different careers I could do that would pay better, like something in finance maybe, but I really enjoy making stuff and find it hard to imagine working in a non-design job outside of games. I would love to try my hand at other kinds of design though, transportation, architectural, fashion, etc.