A great read for aspiring game designers - Honoring the Code by Matt Barton

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holoz0r3 K2 years agoPeakD4 min read

As I have rambled about in the past game design and development is one of my many interests. I’ve worked for a video game publisher, been paid to professionally interview, editorialise and review video games, and of course, it is one of my underlying passions.

I have a keen interest in someday developing my own game, beyond the rudimentary experimentations I’ve completed in the past, such as Isle of Steem, which is available on GitHUb. You can read about that process of game development in a rather lengthy post.

For regular readers, enough of my background and on to to the subject of the book I recently completed. I picked up Honoring the Code: Conversations with Great Game Designers as part of a Humble Bundle on game design and story in games.

It is a topic that has held my interest for quite some time, and I figured this would be a good place to start learning about the underlying theory of game design in a way that is more sophisticated than simply having the experience of thousands of hours of interacting with games, both on a personal, and professional level.

I was not disappointed at all. Not disappointed a single bit. Featuring interviews with the likes of Chris Avellone, John Romero, Chris Taylor, and other industry titans such as Brian Fargo, the book investigates the early career paths of these game designers.

While there’s wonderful morsels of “how to game design” in this book, the most charming part of the entire affair within its pages are learning about the humans, behind the doors of an industry that invented itself, its own way of working, and how gaming and business intersect.

The underlying message delivered by all of the designers interviewed in the book is “to keep it simple”, and importantly, to not allow the scope of a project to creep beyond the means (be they technical, or conceptual) - master a single idea or mechanic, and do it well, rather than including many different mechanics which are implemented poorly, or in a broken fashion.

I particularly enjoyed the interview with Chris Avellone, which offered numerous insights into the development cycle of Planescape Torment; which was one of those games I always (And constantly) wanted to understand as a young gamer in my early teens, but never did.

Sad to say, I never finished it, but to hear about the design methodology, philosophy, and subterfuge of design put into it makes me want to sit down and deeply enjoy this title in the future.

I’ll get there one day (I’m only up to “F”, in my A-Z of Steam, after all!) - but it gives a new appreciation to a timeless classic of game design, old school game design, where the game itself was the important element, along the side of a concept that is honed, refined, and not over extended. A complete package, if you will.

The other important message held consistent in the interviews throughout the book is the fact that you have to grow with the times. The story of the rapid pace of computer programming languages in on display here, with so many of the designers talking about how they quickly had obsolete languages hold them back in their game designs.

The book feels pretty dated, and is written in a time before the enormous uptake of gaming via mobile devices, with many of the designers speculating on what this could mean for game development industry as a whole.

There’s a certain sense of optimism, with a bit of caution about how the democratisation of gaming and game design may just well come about due to simple tools such as Unity, and the availability of powerful tools such as the Unreal engine making game design and development available to more and more people.

The interviews are of a high quality, and they’re a flowing conversation with many passionate people at various stages of their careers, but importantly, people who are at the top of their class.

If you have a burgeoning interest in game design or development, this book is a very good investment of your limited time.