So, What’s This About?
October 17th, 2006 by Pierre-Alexandre Garneau
Athletes going to the Olympics train hard for hours each day; that’s what’s required to become world-class athletes. The same is true in any field: to become one of the best in the world, you must train at it a lot.
While I already have a few years of experience as a videogame designer, I’m not at a world-class level. I want to reach that level however, so I decided to train myself. A sprinter trains himself by running a lot; a game designer trains himself by designing a lot of games. This blog will hold the resulting designs.
Here’s how it works. At the beginning of each week, I choose a random theme (eg. “Space Race”) and a random platform (eg. “Nintendo DS”). I must then come up with an interesting game concept that fits the theme and is appropriate for the platform before the end of the week (eg. a game about a space race for the Nintendo DS). As the week progresses, I plan on posting some bits of informations about how things are shaping up. The end result should be a description of the main characteristics of the game, that give a good idea of the overall vision of the game — what’s called a “pitch” in the business.
I hope to keep to that plan. I’m currently looking for work so I have more free time available for this, but even when I get back to work I’ll try to find time for this training. So come back often and look at how things progress! If you like or dislike something you see here, just leave a comment or send me an email.
