I am starting my honours year! For honours in Game Design and Production we get to create a project of our choosing and spend the entire year on it. Below is concept art for mindreading mechanic… Right now I’m stuck between two ideas and planning to prototype them both.
For the development of it, I’m keeping a blog. Really it’s more of a journal with my thoughts and concept art and more. Some of the updates right now are still lacking, as the early development is rapid. In either case, if you’re interested in following this, access the blog here.
Back in 2020, I was having a problem. The question was the same as many people my age struggle with: Which university should I choose?
I had applied in January. I had known two things: I wanted to study in Scotland (inspired by a trip to Edinburgh in 2019), and I would want to study either game design or programming for games.
I decided to go with Abertay’s course Game Design and Production. This still gives me anxiety, as programming is more secure than design – but researching into this, Dundee was the place to study Games, and Abertay University had the best courses for it.
Although I was terrified, I had my fantasies about going to the campus. I thought I’d hit it off with a like-minded people and we’d form a game design group immediately, hanging in cafes and planning innovative games. COVID-19 was at its beginning at that point, mind you, but I was optimistic about not having to worry about it when we finally return to school.
Now, almost three years later, though feeling 10 years older, I have the whole two years in the university behind me. I’ve seen the campus, but only during very limited times and mostly worked on my own computer. What has it been like?
Here are some core takeaways from my experience.
Communicating virtually
Not a surprise, but it still hit me like one.
Game Design is teamwork. In the university this has thankfully been taken abroad, and in the first course we were divided into teams to construct a game design document together. This, though, of course was remote.
There is silence, and then there’s the silence between yourself and your new teammates with whom you should be making a game design document with.
I quickly learnt that often if I wasn’t speaking, no one was (depending on the team). It was a challenge to get everyone involved: It is a lot easier to ignore a Discord message than someone talking to you in real life. Eventually I learnt, instead of raging on people that didn’t do their work, to focus on people who did, and this improved my group work experience by a mile.
All in all, although it was disappointing not to be able to brainstorm in groups and all of that, group work went pretty smoothly. It was too bad for getting to know people, as game design students tend to prefer to be in their own spaces, but I even made some friends when I would hit it off well with people in the group calls.
Lectures
Lectures were mostly remote, although in second year we had more in-person classes.
One good thing about remote lectures is that they were mostly saved and you could watch them at a later time, or watch again if you were confused the first time. Also, not having to make it in time for class.
One bad thing was that if a lecturer wanted to make contacting them hard, they could. Some told us not to email them, and while I understand not wanting to be bombarded with emails from hundreds of students, the dedicated Q&A times were hardly enough to clear up the confusions raised by the assignments.
But then again, watching the lecture where you’re most comfortable and with a cup of coffee in hand was not all bad.
Assignments
The assignments had to be handed in online, and made either in our own computers or campus computers (sometimes accessible only in specific times).
In tech-heavy course this had its difficulties.
My laptop broke in the midst of second year, and while I was – with the financial help of my parents – able to afford a computer that could run all the programs needed, that was not the case for everyone, and if you were sick and couldn’t go to campus, tough luck. There was an option to borrow a laptop from our university library, which was really good thing to have, but it still would have been a struggle to make it through the year had I not been able to get the better computer.
What the assignments were depended on the course. We handed in art portfolios, essays on game studies, game exes, Game Design documents, numerous creative briefs… In game design, you truly have to do it all.
Mental Health
Yeah, about that.
Now with two years of pandemic behind us, I’ve talked to people about what it has been like. Pandemic seemed to be a time for mental health struggles for most people, and obviously the university experience was very different than what it would have been like with the pandemic.
I kept my marbles about me surprisingly well. It was thanks to few things, these being: Living with roommates, taking daily walks, getting enough sleep, and having a “morning routine” where I would make coffee very cautiously, prepare breakfast and start the day slowly. There were bad days, but it was okay for me. I saw a lot of struggle around me though, and it is a relief to have a lot of places opening now for third year (fingers crossed).
One thing that was and still is a threat to mental health in Games, is the amount of pressure there is to always be making games, and how competitive the industry is. I have seen people in burnouts and people dedicating nearly all their days to working on games. It’s hard not to get overwhelmed and give up, because there’s always someone better than you and who works harder than you. It’s also hard not to let the self-doubt and critique get the better of you WHILE you are working, so you end up not creating anything (since you don’t want to create anything imperfect).
I see it like this, and I told this to my friend who was struggling with same fear in art: Every time you do something, anything, for what you want, you are ahead of people who are too scared to start. So I do with what I got – I’ve done a chill game project this summer, but every time I do something for it I learn something, and hopefully I won’t be burned out by start of the year.
Final Thoughts
Studying Game Design during a pandemic has been more fun than I expected – nothing can take away from the magic of the creating a game.
I do look forward to being able to meet the team I’m making the game with in the real world, as it is a completely different experience.
And yes, game design was definitely the right choice.
In 2012, I was a bit of a Disney fan. I also loved to draw. I mostly draw traditionally, but my friends got together to get me a drawing tablet. This is one of the first pieces I drew in Photoshop:
(The love for using all the cool brushes, such as the grass textured one, can clearly be seen from here.)
Finding this old gem, I naturally wanted to redo the piece. I still quite love Disney and Tangled (thanks to the series), and I’ve really been getting into digital art lately, so the opportunity was too juicy to pass up.
This is the same piece now:
I think we all can agree that while practice does not make perfect (there’s still a lot of work to be done with the background, and the character looks a bit blurry, for example) it does make you a lot better. So: Keep at it and trust the process 🙂
Making your own game is a dream of many. For the past year I have been doing just that. What has it been like – was it the dream come true? What are the things I’ve learned? What are the things you should know before starting out your first game project?
Although realistically both, this game has felt more like teamwork than schoolwork. It is a story-driven puzzle game that takes place in a spaceship. I have been working as a lead designer and a lead programmer. This means I’ve kept everyone in check and on schedule, made final decisions, and written the code. I’ve also worked on the narrative and the soundtrack.
First thing you’ll realise is that if you work in a team, you can’t always get what you want. You’ll have to compromise and sometimes follow someone else’s vision. Had I gotten my way, I would have made a fantasy adventure with swords and dragons. But teamwork definitely is worth it – working with other people is rewarding in a way working solo can not be.
Second thing you realise is that things inside the group change quite a bit. I thought my main role would be storywriter and programmer, but I ended up in a leadership position. Here’s how it happened: At the beginning, there was a big team with talented, capable and motivated individuals. What the team lacked was a leading figure. Since no one else seemed to step in, I started giving people little jobs to do and it went from there. What to take from this: you might end up doing something completely different than what you would usually do. Every group has a different dynamic.
Joys of teamwork
Games are not made alone, expect if you are indie developer who works solo. However, if you wish to be on the industry, communicating with other people is necessary. Even if you wrote the story, the code, made the assets and models and animations and soundtracks, you still have to market the game.
One of the many challenges of teamwork is what I said earlier – everyone will want different things. At the beginning, many of the original team left to pursue their own project because of this. As a leader, I tried to keep this in mind and have something for everybody. I asked often, what people wanted to do or what people wanted to get out of this project. What it came to teamwork itself, sometimes I made us work in pairs or little teams, sometimes we brainstormed with the whole team and sometimes everyone did their own thing solo: I knew people would have different preferences, and I knew we all needed experience with both.
Obviously teamwork is trickier the larger the team, because different people work in different ways. For some people it was a lot better that I didn’t check in, because they worked best alone and had the necessary self-discipline. For other people I set little deadlines, so they’d have some external structure on their work (as somewhat disorganised person, I know how important this can be). The biggest thing to learn was not to check in all the time and trust that my teammates were doing their part.
Despite this, I believe teamwork is a way to go in Game Design – unless you are Toby Fox. In a team, everyone will bring their passions to the table, and people often have ideas you wouldn’t even think about. Brainstorming isn’t as overwhelming with a good team. And if someone oversteps, someone from the group can step in and call them out – that’s at least what happened to me.
Managing critique: How I learned to scope the game
Concept that never came to be
In Game Design, mistake many beginners make is having too large a scope. It is even mentioned in Extra Credits’ video on Making Your First Game. Aiming too high is born out of enthusiasm, and not recognising one’s own limits or the time things take yet.
I made this mistake. When we had gotten over the beginning stages and the things were rolling quite well, I was fairly certain that the sky was the limit. I kept coming up with new ideas that would take development time, assets, writing, you name it. I got idea after idea and presented all of them to the team.
Luckily I got called out. One of the teammates told me I was out of line: we were just students, not professional workers, and if I kept going this way we would never finish the project. I would really need to consider some realism and not just come up with a new idea every week.
There’s nothing wrong with being enthusiastic and ambitious, however, she was very much right about one thing: the game’s scope was going to get ridiculous if I kept going.
We as a team cut off big junk of the game, and it was more manageable at once, and still now that the finish line gets closer we have had to cut off big junks from the original script. One of the most surprising things I’ve learned is how long it takes to make a game, especially when you are just starting out and learning as you go. What to take away from this: keep the scope manageable.
Handling lots of work
At the beginning of development my workflow was absolutely chaotic. I had all my applications open: Unity, Visual Studio, Photoshop for concept art, sometimes Maya, our team’s Google Drive, Cakewalk, and Microsoft Word. I would shift between tasks and work very fast.
This didn’t work in my favour as multitasking is a lie. So, I challenged myself to concentrate on just one thing a day: one day it was code, one day it was story. I learned to unwind. Game Design is a passion career, and you are bound to think about your current project a lot. That is why breaks are so important. I made an effort to think and do other things in my freetime. This actually enhanced my work. What to take away from this: make sure to have a decent work-life -balance.
There is also lots of things that can help when you have tons of different tasks – which, if you work in smaller team, you almost certainly have. Writing everything you have to do and prioritizing the list is a great way to make all of it less overwhelming (or at least see everything you have to do). I often write out goals I have for the day before starting to work. It’s very important to keep goals manageable! If you have a habit of making your goals vague or too big, practice setting SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, which you are Responsible for and which are Time-Bound.
And remember – midst your chaos, you are not alone! Quite literally, there is a team around you in a same position. Talk it out, figure out together how to make process with your project without it being overly stressful for anyone. Just sharing the troubles you have can offer you solutions as well as strengthen the relationships of the team.
In Retrospect
So: Was it everything I dreamt about?
I think it was a lot better. I couldn’t have dreamt of the brainstorming sessions where something that had started out as a joke would later be developed as a working game concept. I couldn’t have dreamt of learning zillions of new things in a day with the help of Youtube tutorials, just because something required it. I couldn’t have dreamt of receiving criticism, and understanding with time how important it was. I couldn’t have dreamt any of the things it was because I hadn’t experienced it, and thus didn’t know it existed.
The experience was stressful and inspiring. Making a whole game is overwhelming, but exciting. What I learned above all, is that making of the first-game you make is a learning experience. The learning curve is not as steep as you would imagine – but the things you will have to learn for the first game to happen are numerous. I can’t count the things I’ve learned: besides managing team and my own time, I’ve learned C#-programming, Unity, Maya, Photoshop, writing, drawing, composing, Cakewalk… the list goes on, and even if I sat here all day trying to remember everything I’ve learned along the way, I would probably forget something. Game Design is something where you will learn tons of things, and sometimes you don’t even realise you are learning.
What you should take away from all this, then? Well, what you get. And then you should get to doing. You’ll learn along the way. Promise.
The bots, drawn by my talented teammate Oona Sairanen
Milla's Game Writing Portfolio 