game-designers

"you’re “…able to reason with the intuitive mind of a child, yet retain acquired knowledge and high I.Q"

"Back in 1973, a large lump of the school in which I taught detached itself and landed on my head. This put me into early retirement - and nearly killed me. Then, suddenly, on April I , 1982, apropos of nothing in particular, Continuo flashed into my mind. Such a simple concept. All players, regardless of age, could play together - or even play solo. My husband Alan and I formed a company, and five months later Continuo went on sale in the U.K., soon becoming Britain's top-selling game. Now, Continuo and its siblings have sold over six million sets around the world. A string of other successful games followed. Whilst I invented the games, Alan playtested them. The partnership worked very well as I proofread his bridge writing"

"If you can’t put an idea over in twenty seconds, then you’re dead"

"I invented the thing in about two seconds. It just came to me. I spent the next two hours cutting up cornflake packets and making the squares, filling them in with colours. My husband and I formed a company the next day. Continuo went into shops on September 1st; six weeks later it was the UK's bestselling game. By Christmas, we'd sold 205,000 sets in the UK — today, it's in over fifty countries; it's now sold six million sets, which ain't bad. That includes its offspring. It's not quite so popular at the moment; it just seems to have slid downstairs at the moment. Don't worry, it'll come back; in fact so much so that I've just licensed two games to South Korea — and those two are Continuo and Duo"

"Go away and find yourself a games agent; they know which companies want what, and they’ll present them for you"

"I just persevered and forced myself to learn. You realize the thing that you thought was good actually isn’t. You realize why and you improve on it. And that’s just an endless cycle."

"My strategy with the community is simple: no strategy at all. I think that, as an indie developer, you should just be yourself and be a real human. I try to act online like I do in real life: treat everyone with respect, and be as honest and straightforward as possible."

"It does help if you can absolutely convince yourself that you're destined for greatness. It's not even an ego thing--it's just a way to prevent doubt and insecurity from hindering you."

"I want to create a collection of games during my career, so that when I’m on my deathbed I can look back and see that I created all these wonderful things that brought people joy."

"I think it's a lot easier to stay driven when you're doing your own project, knowing that there are no limits to how far you can go."

"Music is somehow pure, you don’t think of it in terms of symbols. It just exists, it’s like magic. It feels like a way you can almost directly interface with the transcendental or divine."

"It all goes back to human nature and what we're meant to do as humans."

"It’s very important to me that I make good on my promises."

"There’s a balance you have to have between being very critical of yourself and your work while also maintaining a strong faith in your own ability. Your unique voice and perspective matter and if you can find a way to bring that out then you will create something special."

"My whole goal as a game creator is to create these moments where I want people to feel something, like actually feel this connection to something deeper than you would normally feel like in a video game. I want to go deeper, and connect with people in a real way that’s memorable, that they’ll take with them for the rest of their life. I think music is integral to that."

"I’m just making music, I’m not even thinking about what it’s for, and it gives me ideas for the game. It will make me think of a particular scenario or environment, and then I really envision it through the music and put that into the game. That’s my favourite way to develop, actually."

"What really makes me feel good, makes me feel like my life has been totally worthwhile, is the fact that Stardew Valley has brought such joy and happiness to people. People describe it as a therapeutic game. Because I know that this little game brings so much positivity to the world... that really feels good."

"You should be free to work yourself to the bone, but not to force someone else to do that for you."

"There is no "secret" to being successful, you just need to have great dedication and perseverance and adopt a "can do" attitude."

"Making art, making video games, is my way of sharing who I am with the world. My goal, deep down, is that I want to connect with the rest of humanity, and maybe have them connect with me in some way."

"If you’re creating music from the heart, you're basically tapping into this supernatural power."

"It feels like my life has been worthwhile because of Stardew Valley, even if I were to die tomorrow. It feels good to see it manifest in new ways, and see people appreciate it."

"I've always been obsessed with creating stuff, I spent my spare time doodling, making music, writing... basically all the different aspects of making a game. I just didn't know at the time that I would find a way to combine all those things to bring a cohesive vision to life."

"“I’ve always been ambitious, but I learned it needs to be something bigger than myself,” she said. “My old job, I was able to see what these guys wanted and give them transformational experiences. At the end of the day, that didn’t mean much. But I have this skill set. Now I want to create transformational experiences for women, whether it’s co-working spaces or a digital network involving blockchain.”"

"I was a fly on the wall, and I'm privy to all this inside information about all these different industries. ... And at the end of the night, people were tipping me and I made more money that night than I'd made the whole month.""

"Bloom went from working other people's games to starting her own – a leap that came with even more power and influence. "And then, ultimately, I started bankrolling the game and extending credit,""

"Game isn't actually about the glamour of high-stakes poker. "That was the back-drop for a much more personal, much more emotional and much more inspirational story."

"I saw some of the most famous people in today's world,""

"I was looking for this thing that would make me feel validated, make me feel like someone, make me feel significant. And I sort of found it."

"The creation of Bridget as a boy happened at the very last second; during development I was drawing him as purely a girl. It’s just that when there is a need to give a worldly backbone (to the game), in order for me to try to not forget each character, and in order to revive the character, I give them my very heart. As a result, the creation of Bridget as actually a boy instead of a girl was because I thought he could become my alter ego. Well, if there was a need for it the reverse— a girl that looks like a boy— that would be okay too, but it doesn’t look pretty game-wise. It’s also somewhat calculated (laughs)."

"両性具有なんです。まぁもう人間を超越した存在になっちゃってますしね。俺もだけど。 They're androgynous. In fact, they've transcended human existence. Just like me."

"While I was creating the characters in Guilty Gear, I had a spot for a cute character. I thought it would be too boring if the character was just cute, so I thought it would be interesting to make the character a guy."

"I guess I couldn’t pin the inspiration for the character on any one thing. But when we are making new characters, we are always looking for some new element to add to the character to make it interesting and fun, and while we were making Bridget, that was the element."

"Bridget is now a well known bounty hunter and has managed to greatly contribute to his home village and his parents, and is now at a stage where he's "trying to understand his true self""

"I guess from a design standpoint of transferring the character into Strive, yeah in Xrd there was Bedman who was on their bed, but since the character perished in that story it's just the bed remaining. And what I wanted to do was kind of take a little bit of inspiration from Annabelle and say the kind of fractured feeling of Bedman is still remaining inside the bed itself. So from a design standpoint, that's the basic backbone of the character."

"Rather than wanting to send a message using Bridget, what I can say is that when creating characters and deciding who gets what, I put a little bit of my own sensibilities in each of the characters. They carry those responsibilities. For example, if everyone in the world became vegetarian, you can say there would be good things about that, but from the opposite viewpoint there would be problems and demerits to the situation. When I see a discussion like that, I think both sides are valid, and my stance is that I want to cheer on both sides when I can. From that standpoint, the root of what I want to do is I find all kinds of topics and think, people with this background, I want to give them a story that has a so-called ‘happy ending,’ that has a traditional course. Rather than using Bridget to say something, my hope is that I can continue to create, even abstractly, a vision of what happiness looks like for people in all different kinds of situations."

"ブリジットの性別について多くお問い合わせ頂いているのですが、アーケードモードのブリジットストーリーを経て、ブリジットは自分を女性と自認するようになりました。 なので『彼』と『彼女』のどちらの代名詞が正しいかと聞かれたら、ブリジットは『彼女』にあてはまります。 前述のキャラクター説明にもあります通り、双子の弟として生まれたブリジットは、村の迷信から守るために両親が性別を隠して女の子として育てています。 しかしブリジットの両親は、迷信から守るためとはいえブリジットに生き方を強制させていると感じ、心を痛めます。 その事にブリジットは気づき、男として振る舞いつつ己の活躍で村を豊かにする、つまり迷信をくつがえすことで、彼女の両親が抱くブリジットに生き方を強いているという罪悪感から解放しようとしました。 結果として村から迷信は消え、両親も彼女も生き方に縛られる必要が無くなりました。 その後、ブリジットは男として過ごそうとして違和感を感じます。 アーケードモードのストーリーはここから始まります。ブリジットはゴールドルイスやカイとの交流を経たうえで、これまで敢えて目を背けてきた彼女自身と向き合い、彼女にとっての大きな決断をすることにしました。 彼女が勇気を出して、自分自身の気持ちに噓偽りなく選択したその道を、皆さんに見守っていただければ幸いです。"

"Bridget: You’re not taking Roger away from me! Bridget: I’m... I’m a boy. These girl-clothes are... It’s a long story. Bridget: Thank you very much! It’s all thanks to you! I’ve got to toughen up! Y’know, since I’m a boy and all... Heh heh... Bridget: Hey! I-I’m not a “kid,” okay?!"

"After the events of Bridget's story in Arcade more, she self-identifies as a woman. So, as to whether “he” or “she” would be the correct pronoun for Bridget, the answer would be “she.” As mentioned in her character profile, Bridget was born as the younger twin son and then raised as a girl by her parents to protect her from a village superstition. Despite their intentions to protect Bridget, it pained her parents to do so as they felt they were forcing her to live a certain way. Bridget, realizing this, attempted to bring wealth to the village while behaving like a man, thus overturning the village superstition, as a way to free her parents from their guilt. As a result, the superstition faded, and nothing remained to restrict how both Bridget and her parents lived. After this, Bridget tries living as a man, but it doesn’t feel right. This is where the Arcade Mode story begins. After her exchanges with Goldlewis and Ky, Bridget faces parts of herself she has tried to ignore, and makes a big decision for herself. I hope that all of you will watch over her path after her courageous choice to stay true to her own feelings."

"Not that there's anything wrong with wanting challenge for the sake of challenge, but it does make things that much more confusing when people are trying to evaluate spiky games. Again: the difficulty is only one part of the equation— it's the "heat" part of spicy food. I don't eat spicy food to feel pain, but the pain wakes me up— and it's the gateway to interesting flavors that you can't find anywhere else. The flavor is what makes spicy food good, and it gets easier and easier to withstand the heat the more you experience it."

"Unsurprisingly, not everybody likes spiky games! [They're] like bitter or spicy food— [they're] an acquired taste that you have to build up. [...] It can be hard for people who don't like spicy food to understand why spicy-food fans love it so much. If you're just starting out on your spicy-food journey, you can't taste the flavor— just the heat and the pain. Similarly, spiky games generate a lot of enthusiasm from their fans, but for people who aren't there yet, they can just seem hard."

"I focus as much on the process of making games as the games themselves, because I have the experience now to know how hard game-making is at any level. I don't just make a game because I want to make the game; I make it because it's also the right time to make it and the right people are around to help me make it. I never assume that a game is going to get made out of sheer will. A lot of the decisions that you make in the conceptual phase will either help you or haunt you, once the development starts."

"Miyamoto and Tezuka, at least when they were designing the early Mario games— I've seen interviews where they describe the genre that Mario is in — and that they're working in — not as platformers but as "athletic games". [...] When I read that, that really changed the way I saw these games— and I feel like it captures the spirit of them much better than "platformer". Even the platformers that Mario has inspired afterwards don't feel as much like "athletic games" [as] the Mario series itself. And one of the iconic Mario songs by Koji Kondo is called "Athletic Theme", which plays into that."

"Video games are an artform that's so limitless. In making a game, a big part of the process is putting these limiters on the game itself, so you can actually finish. And I think feedback is a great way to figure out what those limiters should be. It's a way to scope and rescope your game."

"Mario made more sense to me, thinking about it as an "athletic game". Even little details like Charging Chuck— there are just random sports characters that are in the Mario universe. And the fact that — at the end of a Super Mario World level — there's that bar that goes up and down, and you're trying to hit it— it kind of feels like hurdles. The fact that there is a timer in the game. [...] It all comes together to make each Mario level feel almost like a race where you can also explore."

"The instant kill is like an exclamation point on the end of a run."

"The instant death— it's like a punchline to this joke, where the joke is really just the tension of being in this dangerous situation. [...] The fact that when [a run] ends, it's instantaneous, I think is very humorous. And it's this nice release, in some sense. It's frustrating, but it's also a release— and it creates this pregnant pause afterwards, where you can really think about what happened."

"I think about making art, in general, as a dialogue. That's what it is, in the end— you're expressing yourself, and your audience gets their chance to express themselves. And especially with video games — it being interactive and it being software — it really is a continuing conversation— very directly now, and very literally. [...] In this moment, it is a conversation, as well as being this long-running conversation throughout history."

"A lot of design decisions that end up having a big effect on the gameplay start as thematic decisions. [...] It's like in chess, how the knight is the only piece that jumps, and that just makes sense-- you're on a horse, and the horse can leap. Those kinds of links-- they're things that game developers think about a lot, and it's not just a bunch of abstract rules. It matters what the game is about story-wise, character-wise, et cetera."

"No matter how built up you are [in any Spelunky game] and how powerful you are, there is always that slight chance that it could all be over. It's exciting. It's not done enough in games— especially in modern games. [...] Real life is a huge inspiration for me, in terms of how real life works. We're trying to move towards "realism" in terms of graphics and things like that, but it's stuff like instant deaths that I think are more connected to real life from an interactive standpoint, which is what games are all about."