A Theory of None for Game Design

buh doo chh..

Somewhere out there, somebody just got the Raph Koster reference.

So I enter my final semester at Cornell, a bit world-weary. Ok, not world-weary, but perhaps jaded? A bit of a trick of memory: the past couple years are a blur, while my life before then seems more clear. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Stage IV (which supposedly will be on the GDIAC site soon) was really stage 1, I hope. Yeah, it was pretty worthless, but I’m not ready to go make GTA’s or Halo’s or even Spore’s for the rest of my life. The feeling is dimmer at the moment, but I still want to make things that are… awful, in the old sense. Spore is definitely in that direction, but I need something more personal, more human. I want to create dramatic, far-reaching, stunning games; heck, I’ll even settle for ponderous over another action fest.

A few problems:

1. I’m a programmer, not a designer
2. Related to #1, I’ve got grandiose visions of how I want my games to feel, but I’m sorely lacking in a consistent, fleshed out design to put together.
3. I aint got no job.

Maybe I’ll solve for all three (in inverse order?).

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