Exposition Dump
Everyone has their story of what inspired them to do what they do. For most of us creative types, it was experiencing something in our field of interest that sparked that passion. I am no different, so sit down and relax as I tell you the story of what inspired me to be a game designer.
My story begins way back in 2004 when I was only about 6 years old. I was in kindergarten, which back then was only half days. As such, I would spend many of my afternoons in the school’s after care program. It was here that I was first exposed to the gaming scene. Many of the older students in after care had Game Boys and one guy even brought his Game Cube in on occasion. I was immediately fascinated by this new world and begged my parents to get me one. Some time later, I was gifted my first gaming system, a silver Game Boy Advance SP (which I still have to this day).
Though it wasn’t one of my first games, I eventually came to own a copy of Pokémon Leaf Green. Even though I could barely read at the time, I fell in love with this game immediately. What attracted me the most was the colorful cast of characters (more so the Pokémon themselves than the humans). As I came to understand the game and its world more and more, I naturally began to fantasize about adding my own creatures into that world. Of course, I was only 6 so all of these ideas were total garbage, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that I was hooked. I knew from that point forward that I wanted to be a creator too. Pokémon sucked me into its world and I desperately wanted to be a part of it.
If you ask any of my teachers from grade school, they would undoubtably confirm that I was obsessed with this series. I worked it into every project I could and constantly made references to it to anyone that would listen. I even carried around a Pokédex book for a while. That series took over my life and still holds a heavy influence over me to this day.
Somewhere around this same time (maybe even earlier, I don’t remember exactly) I was introduced to another soon-to-be favorite of mine: sandbox games. The big influencer here was Roller Coaster Tycoon 2, though there were others as well. These games served a very important purpose, something that handheld and console games couldn’t handle at the time, and that was being a creative outlet. Being able to create things inside a game editor was fascinating to me. As opposed to school projects, these creations fulfilled an important aspect of play: being inherently purposeless. Making my own parks and coasters did not serve any real purpose as I didn’t even play in career mode. I favored the open-ended free mode where I could make whatever I wanted without limits. These games helped steer me more towards a designer role as, on a super technical level, I was creating experiences for people to enjoy.
Fast forward a little bit and the next big wave of inspiration came in the form of my first console, a GameCube. The most important thing the GameCube did for me was get me to ask questions. This was still in the early days of the internet, and game guides were not easy to find; especially for a young kid. So as I spent dozens of hours playing games like Sonic Adventure 2, Super Mario Sunshine, and Kirby Air Ride, I was eager to learn everything I could about these games and their secrets. The sheer number of things I didn’t know drove me to play more and more. I wanted to know everything, and the only way to find out was to play through.
The next milestone in my journey came around 2011. I had just received my first non-Nintendo console the previous Christmas; an Xbox 360. The main reason I wanted a 360 was for Halo, more specifically for Forge mode. The promise of a sandbox mode in a console game drove me to beg my parents for a rated M 17 game when I was only 13. It took a while, but I eventually got them to give in and I was gifted a copy of Halo Reach. Though this game did certainly fulfill my sandbox obsession, it ended up doing something even more dangerous. Just playing Forge and multiplayer got boring after a while and I became curious about the campaign. Turns out, between the world and the characters, Halo was an extremely enticing story to me. But this was different from what attracted me to the world of Pokémon. It was the feeling of adventure that I like in Pokémon, but with Halo it was much more character focused.
These two things – world and story – became my two pillars of design. Throughout my time at Full Sail, we had it repeatedly drilled into us that story doesn’t matter and that mechanics are key. Part of this I disagree with though. From a consumer standpoint, I don’t think a mechanically novel game is inherently interesting. I think those mechanics need to be tied together with thematic threads and some kind of intriguing story and/or visuals. This isn’t always true, of course, and I know that. To a degree it is more of a personal preference, but time hasn’t changed my mind.
These cores were further reinforced by two titles from my favorite series’ that followed shortly: Pokémon Black/White and Halo 4. Not only did these games reinforce their respective initial pillars, but they also crossed over into the other as well. Pokémon Black/White to this day has the best story of the series while making a huge contribution to the world. Halo 4 has, in my opinion, the best campaign in the series but it also pulled me further into the world of the franchise. If there was ever any doubt of what I wanted to do for a living before, it was gone now.
This mindset made some of the projects at Full Sail challenging. One of the classes (the one where I worked on Post-Op) forced us to work from a bottom-up mentality, and to be completely honest, I didn’t contribute a ton to the initial ideas for that game. As we began developing the game, I started to generate more ideas as I slowly fleshed out a backstory for the game, much to the annoyance of my teammates. This is also why I tend to lean towards the AAA scene. I have become accustomed to a top-down mentality and I’ve been having a hard time shaking that. As I wrote about in my postmortem on Scraps, I tend to massively over-scope things. It is an issue I am still trying to resolve but I’m not making much progress.
All the things I have played and that have influenced me have shaped me in this way. The recent boom of the indie scene has helped but they still don’t interest me nearly as much as AAA. For better or worse, bigger is better to me. This also ties into my love for open world games, which I didn’t cover in this post. Across all of my favorites, world, story, and freedom are my biggest draws and I try and incorporate as many of those things into my designs as possible.
I always find it interesting to read about what drives other designers and creators. We are all an amalgamation of our experiences and interests that inspires what we do and how we do it. Now you know mine. I hope this has given you a clear insight into what drives me. Thanks for reading!