Renowned designer of the MMORPG Tabula Rasa Richard Garriott recently conducted an interview with PCGamer where, in an attempt to help promote his upcoming game Shroud Of The Avatar, he vented his frustrations with the apparent lack of other quality designers within this industry, informing interviewer Tyler Wilde that “most game designers really just suck”.
During their discussion, Garriot suggests that most game designers choose their profession not because of a direct interest in designing games, but because they lack the skills in art or programming, saying:
"If you’re not a good artist and not a good programmer, but you still like games, you become a designer, if you follow me. You get into Q&A and often design."
He continues:
"I usually find in my history that the artists and programmers are, in fact, as good of designers as the designers. They’re often better, because they understand the technology or the art.
“So we’re leaning on a lot of designers who get that job because they’re not qualified for the other jobs, rather than that they are really strongly qualified as a designer. It’s really hard to go to school to be a good designer.”
He then delves into his own design process, detailing how he uses spreadsheets ("before there even were spreadsheets") to distribute and carefully hone the lore aspects of his game, adding:
“Every designer that I work with—all throughout life—I think, frankly, is lazy,”
“I think there’s really very few great game designers…“I think Chris Roberts is one of them, Will Wright’s another, Peter Molyneux is another. They clearly exist, but on the whole, I think that the design talent in our industry is dramatically lower than we need, as an industry. It’s a very hard skill to learn.”
The full piece, while a bit smug and self congratulatory (perhaps valid for a man with Garriot's credentials, which includes the epic Ultima series and perhaps the first computer RPG ever, as detailed in the interview), is worth a read if you appreciate a debate on the games design talent pool and how it's cultivated. Head over to PCGamer for the interview in its entirety.
Shroud of the Avatar, which recently met with success in its $1 million dollar Kickstarter campaign, is now seeking to fund its stretch goals, which include pets and seasonal weather. It is planned for PC, Mac, and Linux and as of this date does not have a release window.
