Game Designers
Quotes from famous game designers and others

Even though I enjoyed the challenge of programming, ultimately the motivation was the fans, the gamers themselves. I kept asking myself, "Is that guy enjoying the game?" In those early days we got fan mail all the time.

Bob Whitehead (adapted)

I had no special training at all; I am completely self taught. I don't fit the mold of a visual arts designer or a graphic designer. I just had a strong concept about what a game designer is. Someone who designs projects to make people happy. That's a game designer's purpose.

Toru Iwatani

From the book Programmers at Work by Susan Lammers

'The player is paramount' is a phrase all game developers should remember. Great game designers have a certain amount of love or respect for their players. If you're not helping your players feel happy and fulfilled in some way then you shouldn't be making games at all. Don't make games just to express yourself. Don't make games just to impress other game designers. Think about the players too. Make games that are fun, games that satisfy, games that make your players feel like you care.

Duane Alan Hahn

The successful people are the ones who can think up things for the rest of the world to keep busy at.

Don Marquis

We need more 'Burger King' game designers; the kind that want you to "have it your way." Customization is king, so give me freedom. Give me more ways to play the game or get out of the business.

Duane Alan Hahn

I took the view that a game player was not playing the machine but was playing me. Depending on who I thought I was playing—the target market—I would come at you with different pieces of my technology arsenal. I would try and get into your head to challenge, tease, and test you. The objective was not to beat you but to take you for an emotional ride that would leave you totally wasted at the end, your mind and body spent. I have to laugh when I hear parents complaining that their kids play too many video games. They're not playing the machines, they're in a mind meld with the game designers. That is and was the rush for me. The technology, yes, the doing what no one has done before, but to be engaged mentally with millions of people all over the world is what kept me hard charging for four years.

Ed Averett from a Halcyon Days interview

You have to measure your success by the way your audience responds to your games. No matter how small that audience is, it's yours. Your game is part of the lives and the memories of those people in a way that WordPerfect or Lotus 1-2-3 or Windows can never be.

Orson Scott Card

Compute Magazine, October 1992

A game designer must communicate the vision to the rest of the team. So the game designer has to be able to write and speak well. And it helps a LOT if the designer can draw well enough to illustrate his or her ideas. Of course, it is also necessary that the designer be creative, that he or she have fun exciting ideas that will interest and engage others.

Tom Sloper

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