Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #451: Becoming a Game Designer

Episode Date: July 7, 2017

One of the questions I get most often is "How can I become a game designer?" I answer that question in this podcast.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. Okay, so today's topic is an interesting one. I get a lot of mail, and one of the questions that I get a lot from younger people is, they go, I want to be a game designer. How can I be a game designer? Which is an interesting question, so much so that I want to talk about it today. So, okay, so let's say, for example, you like playing games and you seem intrigued by becoming a game designer. What are the steps to becoming a game designer? Now, it's funny you ask me because when I got into this business, things were really different. So I'm going to talk a little bit more about sort of how you can become a game designer because how I became a game designer was a different time.

Okay, so let's start off with the most important thing. If you wanted to be a writer, I would say make sure you read a lot of things. If you wanted to be a musician, I was like, listen to lots of music. Well, if you want to be a game designer, first and foremost, you need to design a lot, I'm not design, sorry, you need to play a lot of games. Like, one of the things about game, and this is why game playing is so important for a game designer, is there are, you need to learn the basics. You need to understand,

like if you're going to get into an art form, and I consider game design an art form, you have to understand the art form. You have to experience the art form. And that, so Richard Garfield, Magic's creator, who is,

I consider the greatest game designer I've ever met. I've not met lots, I mean, I'm not saying he's the greatest game designer of all time, although he's up there. Plus, I've not met a lot've not met lots, I mean, I'm not saying he's the greatest game designer of all time, although he's up there. Plus, I've not met a lot of other great game designers. But of the people I've met, he is an amazing game designer. And one of the things that was fascinating about Richard is Richard loves games, loves playing games, and he's constantly trying out new games. Like one of the most interesting things when I first got to Wizards was kind of you know Richard

really had this whole belief of hey you're making games but you should be playing games and we used to play you know Richard was constantly playing games and he would introduce us to games like he would introduce games to us in languages that you know weren't English or like I'm gonna teach this game to you and you couldn't learn it unless I teach it to you because you can't even read the instructions. You know, a lot of the German games I got introduced by Richard before they even existed in English. Like Settlers of Catan, I still think of as Siedler because when we learned how to play

it it wasn't in English yet. It was just a German game. So the first thing first is you need to play a lot of games. And not just play a lot of games, but a lot of different games. I'm not saying play the same game an infinite number of times, although not that you can't, but you want a sort of breadth of games. And what I discovered is as you play different games, you'll start to realize that a lot of game design, like, you know, I've done

podcasts upon podcasts and podcasts about sort of the basic building blocks of game design. How do you make a game? And what are the components you need? And what are the lessons? And I've done lots of those kind of podcasts, which you should listen to. But the thing that sort of ties it all together is, look, there's a lot that goes into making a game. And that kind of experiencing what other people have done, how other people have cracked certain problems or solved certain things, it's very illuminating because here's how I like to think of it is, you as a game designer need tools. You need tools to be able to, you know, build what you're going to build. And a lot of those tools come from seeing what other people do and then learning that.

A lot of times I'll play a game. I'm like, oh, that was really clever. I got to check that away. That's a neat way they handle that problem. Maybe someday when I make a game, I can handle that problem that way. Now be aware, I'm in a unique case where a lot of what I'm doing is I keep game designing the same game. You know, I'm in a very peculiar place in that I happen to be, you know, making the same game for many years in which I keep doing variations of a very particular game. That's a different skill set. And obviously there's important skills there, but most people will not be making the same game for, you know, 20 plus years. And that when you're making a new game, it's super, super important to be able to say, oh, how do I crack this problem? How do I solve this problem?

And the more breadth you have of games, the more you've experienced different things, the more you can say, oh, I think I know how to solve this particular problem. different things, the more you can say, oh, I think I know how to solve this particular problem. Okay, so the first thing is play a lot of games. Here's the second thing. Experience a lot of everything. You know, I talk about how if you're a writer, you want to read books, and if you're a musician, you want to listen to music. Well, guess what? Do all those things as well. One of the things that I find about games is the more I realize the importance of resonance, the more I realize that what good games do is tap into things the audience already knows, the more I realize that being a good game designer isn't just knowing games, it's knowing life, it's knowing pop's knowing it's knowing what people know

you know a lot of making a game is entertainment so part of understanding how to entertain people is seeing how they're entertained in other medium because one of the things I have learned is some of the best places you get I you get inspired aren't necessarily games I've definitely been inspired by movies and by comics and by TV shows and by songs. I've been inspired by art. That I, when making games, I don't just look to games to find inspiration.

I look to life to find inspiration. So part of becoming a good game designer isn't just learning about games, although that obviously is important, but it's learning about life in general. It's understanding what do people do. I have found, for example, that nonfiction reading is very valuable for game design. I mean, not that fiction isn't, but just learning about things, learning how things work, how they function.

Because a lot of times, there's two completely different reasons why they might be valuable to you. One is, sometimes you learn lessons you can apply. And when I talk about creativity, for those listening to my podcast on creativity, I believe that creativity is connecting things that aren't previously connected. Finding connections between things

that other people haven't found the connection between. And that a lot of that comes from experience of interacting with different things. Also, a lot of gaming is finding the right sort of treatment for your game, finding the flavor for your game. And the more you know about different things, the more you can find in that. So part of becoming a great game designer is not just knowing games backwards and forwards, which you definitely should do, but just having lots of life experience.

You know, one of the things that served me well is, for example, I have a background in writing. You know, before I became a game designer, I was a writer. And I have found that a lot of the lessons that I've learned about game design were things that I applied from writing. I mean, if you just listen to those podcasts, I talk all the time about how there's just inherent lessons that apply to writing that apply to game design. Okay, so you don't just study games.

Games is good. Play a lot of games and study life in general. Okay, the next thing that helps you become a game designer. Okay, when playing games and life in general, but we'll apply this to games, you have to have a willingness to try games differently. And what I mean by that is, whenever I play a game, I usually play,

the first time I play, I try to play the game as it was intended by the person who made it, you know, as a game designer. If they say, do thing X, okay, I do thing X. Let's see, you know, they spent a lot of time on it. Let's make sure that I'm trying, you know, they're the experienced people. Let's try the experience they're trying to give me.

Okay, after the first time I play a game, all bets are off. So one of the ways, I think, to become a good game designer is think about when you play a game, is there a way to make this game better? is there a way to make this game better? Is there a way to make this game different? Like I said, always play it first the way it's intended because sometimes what they're doing is the best way to do it and you should experience that. But if you don't like something about a game, something doesn't make you happy,

change it. Try something different. I think sort of the training wheels of game design is changing existing games. You know, before you start making your own game, take games that somebody else put the work in and then try tweaking little things. Saying, hey, what would happen if I did thing X or thing Y? You know, what if I, you know, like, you know, there's a lot of classicists. Monopoly is kind of famous for the audience sort of coming up with solutions to things. Like free parking, for example. The idea of getting money off free parking. That actually, maybe it's now in the rules.

It wasn't originally in the rules and it wasn't in the rules for years and years and years. I don't know if it's currently in the rules. But that was just people saying, oh, the game-wide needs a little bit of a catch-up feature. Maybe this could be our catch-up feature. You know, just parking doesn't do something. Let's make it do something. And so I really want to encourage you when you're playing your games, experiment. Try things out. Okay, so you want to play games, you want to experience life in general, and when playing games, you want to be adaptive. You want to sort of try different things. And when I say try different things, by the way, what I mean there is figure out what

about the game you don't like, and then figure out how you can change something that the thing you don't like, you know, how can you adapt it? What part of the game is upsetting you? What seems off to you? How can you change it so that what you're doing re-enhances what makes the game fun? The idea is when you're making changes, you want to reinforce what the game is. Not contradict it, not make it a different game. Reinforce what the game is and figure out how to make the game better at what it's trying to do.

Okay. The next thing, if you want to be a game designer, some of these early ones seem very obvious, but I guess I want to cover the obvious ground. So the next thing is make games. You want to be a writer? Well, write. You want to be a singer? Well, sing.

You want to be a game designer? Well, design games. And one of the things that I recommend to start with is to take a genre you like, to take a kind of game you like, and make another game kind of like it. Magic, for example, is great training grounds. Make a magic set. I mean, you can start by making magic cards, but eventually make your own set. Make a magic set.

There's a lot to learn about taking an existing game and making your own version of it, or taking a genre of game, a kind of game, and making your own version of it. No one says when you start designing games you have to reinvent the wheel. You could just do subtle things. I think a great place to start if you're a Magic player is to make a Magic set. Make some Magic cards. And the reason I like a Magic set versus just making cards is I want you to sort of think of a system as a whole.

That a lot of game design is understanding game design systems. And so part of that is designing a whole game. Not just pieces to a game, but a whole game. So a magic set is like, okay, make a magic set, then play with that magic set. And then you get the whole experience of understanding how to learn from it. And one of the most interesting things about game design is that you don't really realize the problems you're going to have

until you're actually trying to make a game. So the next step is if you want to be a game designer, design games. Like I said, the first step is take existing games you know and adapt them. The next is try to design a game from scratch within the genre of the game that you like. So if you like playing, you know, if you like word games, make a word game. If you like strategic games, make a strategy game. Pick something that you like and try to make it. Okay, so some tips for your first game. Number one is don't bite off more than you can chew. One of the most common mistakes I see in early game design is that people

just put too much in. They're too big in their goals. They're too big in their design. And that their eyes are bigger than the stomach, as they say. One of the biggest things about getting a design is you need to go through the iterative of playtesting it. So in order for that to be true, aim small. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. Take a game in a genre

you understand and make it small. Get it done. Make a game. Don't worry about having lots of pieces. Make a small game. In fact, one of the things I say, if you want to learn how to make a game, make a game that you can play in five minutes. That's a great place to start. Make a game that's only five minutes long. So why is that important? Why is a five-minute game important? And the answer is that it just forces you to strip a lot away. You can't have a lot of complication if the game can only last five minutes. So that's a thing that I mean.

Now, ironically, making a really good five-minute game is hard. But making an okay five-minute game, not quite as hard. And that I think when you first start, you want to aim small. good five minute game is hard. So making an okay five minute game, not quite as hard. And that, I think when you first start, you want to aim small. You want to aim manageable and you want to aim something where by definition you're not trying to do too much. That is by far the greatest error made by young designers, or new designers I should say, is they bite off way more than they can handle. The game is too complex and there's too much going on.

And so what I say is slim down. Try to make things simple. And when you're making your own game, you want to make a mock-up. So there's a lot of ways to mock up a game. In this day and age, there's a lot of tools available for you. There's nothing wrong, by the way, to,

for example, get some cards. You can use your old magic cards. If you have old commons you don't need or whatever you could use. Whatever you need. You can always make cards by you can go and get stickers from Office Depot or something

that, like, you would use on a manila envelope. And you'll find those stickers. You have to cut them a little bit, but they'll fit on top of a magic card. And you can use ad cards or some cards you just don't need. And then you can write on them. And a card game, for example, is a really good place because there's not a lot of tools for it. good place because there's not a lot of tools for it.

But anyway, design your first game to have not a lot of pieces and not a lot of play time so that you can design something and you can iterate on it. It's really important if you want to learn how to design a game to get to the iterative process where you're making something and playing it and making changes and playing it. You know, I talk a lot about playtesting. Find people that aren't emotionally invested in your well-being. You know, once you have a game

or you want to try something, let them play it and listen to their feedback and, you know, sort of figure out what is working and what's not working. Okay, so you've played games. You've experienced life. You have, you've tweaked other people's games. You've made your played games. You've experienced life. You've tweaked other people's games.

You've made your own games. You've done all the stuff you can do in your home. What is the next step? How exactly do you become a game designer? There are a couple of different routes to doing this. The first route is you can now actually go to school and study game design. The reason I know this is I keep running into people teaching game design. One of the things that's really interesting for me is like a lot of people, I joke about how I've been chided how I didn't have any formal game design training. And my answer to that is when I

started into game design, there was no training. You couldn't major in game design training. And my answer to that is when I started into game design, there was no training. You couldn't major in game design. You couldn't minor in game design. You couldn't go to school and study game design. It just wasn't a thing. But that has changed.

There are now whole programs that are dedicated to game design. I've had numerous professors contact me. I know that a lot of the stuff I've written, people will read for classes. That still boggles my mind,

that stuff I've written for my column is like homework. Like 10 things every game needs, you've got to read this article and write some words on it or something. So there exists right now means by which if you want to study game design um there are there are whole um colleges and departments and there are places that you can study game design that you can go and you can learn um that is one avenue uh and then the nice thing about that

is that they will get a lot of resources. You will meet people who have interests that you do. You will meet people that also love games. You can study about games. Like a lot of the, one of the interesting things that I find, and this is something Richard did, for example, is not only did Richard like to play a lot of games, Richard really studied the history of games,

and he's actually taught classes in it. And one of the things that if you're going to become a game designer, that there is learning about the history of design itself, of game design, how were certain games made. That also is very valuable. And you don't even need to go to school to do this one. Just using the internet of,

you know, there are a lot of interesting articles and Wikipedia and like, how did Monopoly get made? What exactly was Monopoly? You know, there's a fascinating story about how Monopoly got made. How did Scrabble get made? How did Clue get made? How did Risk get made? How did Tribal Pursuit get made? Find your favorite game, whatever your favorite game is, and go and see if there's history on it. I mean, obviously, for example, I spend a lot of my time as a magic historian. And one of the reasons that I do is I want people, I want the future game designers out there to be able to go and read about game design.

And I'm not the only person that writes about game design, by the way. You know, when I talk about studying game design, like I said, you can go formally study in a school, which is great. And there design, like I said, you can go formally study in a school, which is great. And there are, like I said, do some research. There are a lot of schools right now that offer game design as a minor or a bunch as a major. But even independently, go study things. I mean, for example, you know, if you're unaware, real quickly on me, is I've written a comic called Making Magic. I just finished my 800th week writing it.

There are 800 or almost 800 articles that I've written. Now, mine's focused on magic design, although a lot of it's applicable, and probably if you listen to this podcast, you play magic. There's that as a resource. Obviously, I'm on my 450- 450 something podcast that's a resource for me I did a GDC speech that's on YouTube there's a lot of resources

that I've done but I'm not the only person there are a lot of other people out there writing about game design Justin Gary who is a former pro magic player who's a good friend of mine who designs his own games he made Ascension and a bunch of other games. He writes regularly on game design.

Dave Sirlin, I know, writes regularly on game design. There's a whole bunch of people. You know, go on Google, write in game design. You'll find a bunch of different people who write on it. There's a lot of material out there. Like I said, Brian Tinsman wrote a book on game design. Jesse Schell wrote a really good book called The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell. That's a really good book.

Brian's is called, what's it called? Game Inventors Handbook, I think it's called. You know, there are a bunch of books now. 20 years ago when I got into this, I wanted to read everything there was to read, and there was nothing there. One of the reasons, by the way, I write so much and I do so much is when I wanted to get into game design, there was like nothing there. There was very, very little written on game design.

And I just wanted to make sure that wasn't true for future generations. But while I was busy making lots of content, other people have been making lots of content. So you can go out there and you can read the different books. Now, once again, when I say to study game design, I don't literally mean, I mean, I literally do mean study game design. But there are a lot of other things. Like one of the things I love is studying other elements. Like I'm a big fan of creativity. I mention this all the time.

But a whack on the side of the head if you've never read that book. It's a book on creative thinking. And there's a bunch of really interesting books on creative thinking. There's a lot of interesting books on teams, on working, you know, on processes. I mean, there's a lot to learn. So my next thing to you is become a student of game design. You can literally go to school and literally become a student, or there's a lot of resources out there that you can read and study and you can learn about so become well versed in what people before you have done um and like i said i i i did a gdc talk in 2016 that's on youtube call if you just put in google um 20 years 20 lessons you can listen

to that if you never have obviously i've been breaking it up and doing podcasts on it. But if you never listened to that, that's very valuable. You know, and like I said, go out there and read that. The next thing that I would recommend doing is pick a game that you love. I mean, obviously, listen to me. There's a good chance of Magic is that game, but it might be a different game. Understand the community. a good chance of magic is that game, but it might be a different game. Understand the community. One of the other big things that's going on now is the internet has allowed the audience to not have a voice as much as the creators to have a voice. So not only do you

want to go and read the creators, which is very important, you want to read the audience. So what I recommend is pick a game that you really care about, that you know well, and then you go read everything you can by the people who play the game. Magic, for example, has bulletin boards upon bulletin boards. There are rumor mills, and there are Reddit threads, and there are so many different places where people that play Magic hang out and talk about Magic. And one of the things I recommend is it is very valuable to take a game that you understand and look at what the audience has to say about the game. Where is the audience happy? Where are they upset? Sort of learn the nuances of, you know, study the present.

Figure out something and figure out where people are and what they're saying and understand how that relates to the game that you love. I'll use magic example here. If you want to understand magic, for example, there are so many different facets that you can look at. So A, I want you to sort of look at the criticism and read people commenting about the game

something like Reddit does a good job of that I want you to go look at room rails and see people sort of guessing at what we're doing there are a lot of places where people make up their own stuff I can't read this stuff but you can go look at when people make their own cards what they make and what are the means by which they do that

and how do they go about it there's contests where people make their own stuff. There's judging and there's whole communities around card creation. Then learn about the other communities. For example, in magic, there's a cosplay community. There's people who like to dress up and they dress up as magic characters and there's a whole community there. There's people that are really into the art. There's people that are into the story. There's people that are into all sorts of different facets of it. Like you know, spend some time, like there are websites dedicated to Magic Story, that

all they do is they talk about the nuance of the story and how, hey, there's this tiny reference here, maybe those people are referencing to this thing, and here's all this explanation, you know, people just taking time and energy sort of digging deeply into into every aspect of the game and that what i find is when you dig in deep and you study about the people that make your game that site that the players of the game you really start to understand like one of the things that i do is i try really hard to interact with the audience because i want to understand what they want. And then if you want to become a game designer, it helps to sort of start to learn the skills of reading and learning by looking at the audience. So

I recommend definitely doing that as well. Okay. So let's say you, okay, so you've done a lot of studying. I want to be a game designer. What do I need to do? Okay, but next thing you need to do is you need to study the game companies. Okay, you want to be a game designer? Well, figure out who could you work for? Because if you want to be a game designer, so basically there's two routes to being a game designer. One is you can be an independent game designer, and what that means is you make your own game. And the second is you can work for somebody else that makes games. So what that means is you make your own game. And the second is you can work for somebody else that makes games.

So let's talk about working for somebody else first. So the idea there is you've got to find someone who's hiring. And there's not really a lot of companies. I mean, when push comes to shove, there's not a lot of companies that have a staff, that have a staff of people who design games. I mean, Wizards of the Coast is one of the biggest,

but there's not a lot. Being in an R&D, in a game design, being in game design, there's not a lot of full-time jobs that do that. So if you're interested in doing that, you need to study the companies. You need to understand who's making games. And be aware, the biggest avenue for game making

is not in analog games, but is in digital games. Way, way, way more digital games are made. A lot more money is spent on digital games. So if you want to be a game designer, be aware that's a big choice for you to look at is digital games. And be aware, I mean, there's some difference in the, there are some differences between designing for digital games and analog games, but the difference is slowly melting away every day. And, you know, there are some skills you have to be good at in digital that are a little different than analog, but the differences are really not as different. Now, also, if you want to be a game designer in digital games, there's a bunch of other skills.

This is all about going to school and stuff. You know, are you want to be a game designer in digital games, there's a bunch of other skills. This is all about going to school and stuff. You know, programming. I mean, there's different things to look into if you're in digital. But anyway, study the skills. So you want to study the companies and you want to look. And that the big place to get a job at an existing company is to figure out who is hiring, how they hire, and figure out how best to get on sort of their radar. The way I recommend to do that is you want to become a fan of the games they produce and then the places I just asked you to read, you know,

if you love Game X, we'll go learn about the community, the audience of it. Well, you've got to go there. You've got to go to that place, and you've got to produce content that they can see. For example, if you want to get into magic, produce content that demonstrates that you understand magic. You know, one of the things we're always looking for is people that kind of get it, understand how magic ticks. is people that kind of get it, understand how magic ticks. And one of the ways to do that is to demonstrate sort of that you understand that. And that for any company, one of the ways is you need to get on people's radar.

And so the way to do that, and there's two different ways to do that. Version one is you become knowledgeable of the companies, you become knowledgeable of the people who make the games, and you become knowledgeable of the audiences that they deal with, because game designers will look at their audience, become part of that audience, make a voice, and make a clear voice where they get that you understand what makes their game tick. That's the best chance in that avenue. Okay, the other avenue that's a little more fruitful but has its own perils is design your own game.

You want to be seen as a game designer? Well, start by making your own game. And once upon a time, that was a daunting task. But really, technology has changed so much that the ability to make your own game with stuff like Kickstarter and just different tools out there, that it's a lot easier than it ever once was to self-produce and make your own game because what happens is one of the biggest ways to become a game designer professionally a once you've made a game and sold it you are a game designer professionally starters and b it's a lot easier to find other people like it's a lot easier to get a job in game design when you have a resume which is here's games I've made.

That, you know, when we look, for example, to hire people to make magic, usually we enter, you start in one of two ways. Either you demonstrate to us you know magic, at which point usually, you know, we make you a contractor and see if you work out, or you show to us that you're a game designer that understands games. And that is the way to get in the door that, you know, if we're going to hire you full-time without going through sort of the intern contractor status, usually that's because you've demonstrated through actual thought. Like, I've made games. Here are the games. You can play my games.

You can understand. You can, like, one of the ways for me to understand somebody's game design skills is to play a game they made well if you've made games and published them and I can see the response to your games and understand

and play them wow that's a huge you know it makes it a lot easier to hire somebody when they have a resume of games that are about

so if you want to become a game designer the easiest way to do it is to just make your own game self-produce your own game now that is challenging there's a lot to making a game. The thing I say to people is, if you want to be a game designer, you have to truly, truly love the art of making games because

A, it is not necessarily, it is not one of those businesses where A, there's a lot of jobs or the jobs even necessarily all pay great. Part of those businesses where, A, there's a lot of jobs, or the jobs even necessarily all pay great. Part of becoming a game designer is the love of making games. I'm not saying there aren't good jobs to be had, they exist, but you're going to have to earn your way to them. It means you're going to have to put a lot of work in. And so part of that is you need to demonstrate what you're capable of.

And so the strongest and most successful way to do that is to produce games. I would become familiar with things like Kickstarter, for those who don't know what Kickstarter is. And then there's other things like Kickstarter. Kickstarter is just the biggest. Kickstarter is a company that allows you to put out something and get people to finance your project. So the way it works, it says, here's my game,

and it doesn't have to be a game, but here's my thing I'm doing. Let's say we're games, because I'm a game designer. I'm making a game. Here's the cool thing about my game. It has some resonance that's really cool, or has a game component that's really cool,

or something about it's cool. And you gotta, I mean, if you're gonna sell your game on Kickstarter or something about it's cool and you got to i mean if you're going to sell your game on kickstarter something about it's got to be cool um and then you know you say hey if enough people put in money that i get what i need i'm going to make this game and you're all going to have a chance to buy it you know you're going to get it so basically what people do on kickstarter is they say hey that sounds cool yeah i want to buy it if you're able to make it. I'll put in my money for you to make it. And if enough people do that and you meet your goals,

then you will make it and I will get to buy the thing. And Kickstarter is a very valuable tool for people that are trying to sort of start out. Because one of the biggest problems in making games is getting enough money to generate it. Now, you can self-produce. You don't have to go through Kickstarter. If you're able to sort of self-finance your game and, you know, usually if you're self-financing, you make a small amount to start with and you want to build buzz. And what that means is you want to get your game out where people are going to see it to get people that are influential in games. Another good place to go if you're a budding game designer is a thing called BoardGameGeek. That is a website dedicated to people who love games. Another big thing that's important if you're getting into games, understand the game conventions.

Understand Origins, Gen Con, Gamma, Essent if you live in Europe. Understand where are places that people gather together to play games. Because if you're going to sell games, you need to go to places where the gamers hang out so that you can sell the games to them. And like I said, becoming a game designer is a very, it is not an easy task. It is not something that you do easily. But it comes from having a love of games and a love of game design and you know really sort of following through.

I believe that anybody has the capability to be a game designer. Like I said, unlike when I got into this, there are now so much material for you to learn. There's places to go to learn. There's places you to learn. There's places to go to learn. There's places online to learn. There are places that you can get formal education. And the tools to self-publish have never been better. It is cheaper than ever to be able to do self-publishing.

There are a lot more places that you can interact with that will do small printing jobs. Oh, that's another thing, by the way. If you're going to make your very first game, not only do you want to make sure the game is something that's flavorful and has a hook to it and stuff, and go listen to my 10 things every game needs,

but also, you need to make your first game with not a lot of components. One of the best things you can do is make it only out of cards. Cards are really cheap to produce. Cardboard, you know, paper is pretty easy to produce. As soon as you start adding more and more components in, it becomes harder and harder to make.

And what I would say to a young game designer is when you're making your first game, it's really important, like part of understanding the business is understanding what you need to make to make your game. And the fewer your components, the easier your components are to make, the easier it's going to be to make your first game. So not only do you have to study sort of game design itself, you've got to do a little bit of studying of game business. Okay, if I want to print something, where can I print it? How much does it cost to print it? How much do I need to print?

How many copies do I need to make? And get a general sense of what I would recommend is go out and look at games and look at the components of games and see what the games sell for. And be aware when you self-publish, when you mass market something, when you produce it in high volume, it's a lot easier to get the price down. So one of the things that when you're self-publishing, things are just going to either be more expensive or you're going to make a far less percentage of the profit. You've got to figure that out for yourself.

But early on, a lot of what I would say is when you're first self-publishing, the early part of self-publishing is not really going to be a giant money-making venture. It's going to be about getting your game out there, getting people to experience your game, getting people to experience you as a game designer, and starting to build your rep. Because part of becoming a game designer is building a reputation. And one of the easiest ways to get hired as a game designer is impress people with your skills. I'm almost a racial today, but really what I was trying to say today is

I never want to discourage someone from being a game designer. Is it a hard business to get into? Yes, it's very hard. But you know what? Most jobs of passion are. Most things that go, oh, I can't believe it. The thing that drives me, my dream job is to make something. Okay, well, if you want to do that, I embrace you wholeheartedly. But that means dedicating to what you're doing, understand what you're doing, and

wholeheartedly embracing it. You want to design games? Well, play a lot of games. Study games. Learn about games. Learn about game designers. Learn about game business. And interact with game designers. You know, one of the things that happens all the time is

find people who make games for a living and talk to them ask questions of them I don't I'm a busy man so I might not always be the best person for this but there are people out there there are a lot of game designers that are a little younger for me and have a little more time

and are more than happy to walk through I mean I try to do my stuff on podcasts and things because I want to share and I don't have the time to sit down individually with lots of new game designers so I try to do my stuff on podcasts and things because I want to share, and I don't have the time to sit down individually with lots of new game designers, so I try to do it through this means. But there are game designers, and if you go to Gamma and Gen Con and Essen and stuff, you will actually meet game

designers. Go to where the game designers are. Go on BoardGameGeek. There's all sorts of people talking about all sorts of stuff. And you can go and you can read and join in and talk. Find the communities. Find the game designer communities. Talk to game designers. I mean, that really is the big thing.

You want to become a game designer, you need to understand the components to games, how games are made, who makes games. You know, you've got to sort of become part of the community. And there is a very vibrant game designer community. Become part of that. Go to the places. Go to the places. Go to the conventions.

You know, talk to other people who are making games. If you find someone that's kick-starting, talk to them about their kick-start. You know, find the components. Learn about it. That a lot of becoming good

at something is putting in the energy to learn about the thing. And if you start getting the chops in, if you start getting reputation, there are companies and places that you can go that will hire game designers.

That is a real job. I do it for a living. I have a lot of coworkers that I also do it for a living. But the key for that is there's a lot of work that has to be put in. There's a lot of stuff on your time has to be done. And so you're going to have to put that time in and sharpen your skills and meet the people and learn the things you need to learn

but I will say this before I end today that I've met a lot of great game designers that have done that that have said you know what I want to be a game designer what do I have to do and they take the steps to do it they pursue it with passion

and they've become great game designers so that my friends in about 38 minutes is the how-to to how to become great game designers. So that, my friends, in about 38 minutes, is the how-to to how to become a game designer. Hope this was valuable for you, and I'll talk to you guys next time. But I hope, well, I'm not here at Rachel's school, so you all know what that means.

It's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic and game design, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll talk to you guys next time.