Five Qualities

I attended the 3:00pm lecture by Rowland Cox.  Mr. Cox spoke about how a group of people develop an amazing videogame that people want to play many times.  He said that you need five things to be a great videogame designer are indestructible passion, death star exploding imagination, know thyself, show your joy, and a circle of trust.  With indestructible passion, you will be able to continue working, even when things do not go your way.  Without this passion, you will not have the willpower to continue a difficult task.  You also need to have vast amounts of imagination.  With this, you can create endless possibilities for worlds, characters, and story lines.  The third quality one needs to have is to know thyself.  Mr. Cox said that you must not just play a multitude of old videogames, but you need to read many books, or watch tons of movies.  You need to see why these books and videogames are well received by the community.  You will begin to see what elements of a game makes it so amazing.  He threw out a few examples.  For instance, Mass Effect is known for its story, Left for Dead is known for a plot that plays out like a movie, SWTOR has is great for story telling, and Zelda and the Phantom Hourglass does a spectacular job at presentation.  The fourth quality needed is that you must show your joy through videogames.  If you love your work and have a passion for your job, you will have the motivation to create videogames that the masses want to play.  However, if you have no joy in your field, you will not be able to produce the quality of games that people want to play.  Lastly, you need a circle of trust.  This is a group of close friend and collogues who can help you in aspects of game design that you are weak in, and who you can bounce ideas off of to judge how your game would be received if it were to be released as is.