作者：Lewis Pulsipher

下面是游戏开发新手的若干认识误区及相关解释。

不切实际的预期是不成熟新手的一大特点。是的，你可以树立自己的梦想，但梦想需要付诸很多实践。

Student Illusions from gamecareerguide.com

他们设计出游戏，其他人会负责完成所有其他工作。这主要围绕创造性，而非实际操作。

游戏设计趣味横生，富有创造性，但它涉及具体操作。思考是具体操作；通过文字描述具体构思也是实践操作，查看测试结果及如何完善游戏也是实践工作。伟大发明家爱迪生曾说过，成功=10%灵感+90%汗水，这在此表现得淋漓尽致。

构思会直接出现在他们脑中，从真空中漂浮而来——他们只要有此构思足以。

构思的质量（游戏邦注：拿最高质量的来说）通常和数量成正比。你需要从很多构思中找出最合适的主题。最后，将此构思落到实处非常关键。

制作AAA游戏轻而易举。

这些游戏是开发者多年心血的产物，预算通常超过2000万美元。任何规模的学生团体，即便他们和专业游戏设计师一样才华横溢，都需要投入很长时间，方能制作出一款AAA游戏。

他们会在工作中成天玩游戏。是不是游戏高手至关重要。

就连游戏杂志编辑也不是成天玩游戏。体验游戏非常重要，但这不在你的工作范围内。游戏体验技能其实和开发工作没什么关系。

他们能够设计期望的内容。

这不符行业实况，在此设计是合作性的工作，即便是较小规模的“休闲”游戏。就连Sid Meier之类的杰出设计师有时都得迎合投资项目的发行商的口味。通常，你会被指定处理特定的设计问题，无法做自己的事情。

得到工作不久后他们就能够在AAA游戏项目中扮演重要角色。

Madden football from mobilegames.about.com

致力于小型游戏的一位行业元老表示，制作《Madden football》之类的大型游戏，进而和别人说自己同这款足球游戏颇有渊源，他对此并不感兴趣。游戏规模越大，你在其中扮演的角色越小。对于一款需耗费数多年完成的游戏来说，你一年的投入也占不到整个项目的1%。

获得学位就能够让他们得到工作。

他们能够完成课程范围内的操作，无需付出额外努力，他们就满足各项成功必备条件。

学位能够让你同众多意图进军游戏行业但没有在此花心思的人士区别开来。但学生依然需要展示自己的才能，单凭学位远远不够。这意味着学生需要向着迷于体验电子游戏那样积极做好入行准备。打算入行的人士远超过行业的职位空缺。只有做好充分准备，方能够得到机会。

若他们能够制作出融入当前热门元素的游戏作品，那么游戏就会立即受到追捧。

事实绝非如此，这通常只会带来缺乏生气的不成功作品。

他们将在没有支付薪资的情况下事先组建开发团队，让他们按计划完成工作，承诺游戏发行后支付他们报酬（游戏邦注：虽然这种情况偶尔会出现）。

即便是在开发者以全职形式加入的工作室，游戏也经常会出现延误状况。获得丰厚融资的初创公司经常以失败告终。这些人士和你一样专注和狂热。你究竟有何与众不同之处？若你操作得当，你最终也许能够获得成功，但这不是通往游戏行业的常规道路。

他们一开始进入游戏行业就能够接触他们未来期望从事的职位。

和多数行业一样，你需要经过一些历炼，方能实现自己的目标。这里也存在“金字塔”格局，最令人向往的职业通常处在金字塔的顶部，其中位置有限，而鲜少被人关注的职位则位于底部，其中空缺较多。

认为大学课程是高中的延伸，然后基于这种观念行事。

优秀的大学和传统高中学校完全不是一回事。如今多数高中都属于培训机构，而且对此并不擅长。你在课堂测试结尾记住需要背下的内容，差不多就是这样。而大学则是个教育机构，你需要知道为什么事情会呈现特定运作模式，这样你将学会应对之前没有碰到或解决过的问题。

此外，在大学，你需要对自己的教育负责——你已成年。没有人会一直牵着你的手。你有机会学习丰富的知识，但前提是你需要付诸行动。

他们只投身硬核游戏的制作。

硬核内容只是游戏市场的一小个组成要素，是要求最高的领域。我们很容易就会低估休闲游戏玩家的规模。任何的成功作品都需要迎合休闲玩家。多数电子游戏都并非瞄准硬核群体。

工作总是充满趣味，他们最终会享受于自己创作的作品。

工作通常会充满趣味。若他们经常玩自己的游戏，他们将产生厌倦情绪。事实上，到制作过程末尾，他们通常会厌烦于“和自己的游戏打交道”。但他们会期待看到作品在市场发行。

他们制作的游戏作品，永远不会遭到撤销。

多数投入运作的项目最后都在完工前遭到撤销。行业的一个重要成功条件是，当游戏“缺乏可行性”时，开发者要能够及时发现。但游戏遭到撤销通常是出于质量以外的原因（游戏邦注：例融资、员工流失、公司收购或其他商业失败举措及市场的变化）。

测试就是体验游戏。

测试是项严肃的工作；你需要描述结果，在漏洞数据库中进行记录。测试一款游戏很长一段时间后，你多半会对游戏产生厌恶情绪，无论作品多么优秀。

他们会轻视及忽略非AAA游戏，仿佛它们存在什么问题，自己绝不会接触这类内容。

随着AAA游戏预算的提高，多数致力于这类游戏的开发者开始不再锁定这一类型。瞄准AAA游戏的工作室鲜少提供新手职位——为什么要冒险将钱投资在没有经验的人员身上？不妨自己算算看。

事情会很简单。这里总有“捷径”（或窍门），是吧？

绝非如此，如果你想要简单的工作，不妨转投其他领域。若你想要有趣的工作，那就加入我们。

游戏邦注：原文发布于2009年5月7日，文章叙述以当时为背景。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Student Illusions About Being a Game Designer

By Lewis Pulsipher

Here is a list of illusions and delusions of beginning game development (especially game design) students, with a brief description of why it isn’t so.

Briefly, what this list amounts to is, “Grow up and recognize what life is like, kid.”

Wildly unrealistic expectations are usually a characteristic of immature people. Yes, you can dream, but dreams require a lot of work to fulfill.

They’ll design a game and someone else will do all the work.
It’s all creativity instead of work.

Game design can be fun, it can be creative, but it’s also work. Thinking is work. Writing clear descriptions of what you’ve thought is work, figuring out the results of testing and how to improve the game is work. The great inventor Thomas Edison is supposed to have said that success is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration, a statement that certainly applies here.

Ideas will just come to them, floating in out of the ether — and that one idea is all they need

Quality of ideas — of the best ones — tends to be proportional to quantity. You need lots of ideas to get some decent ones. And in the end, it’s the execution of an idea that is most important.

AAA list games can be produced easily

These games are the results of many man-years of work, and of budgets running to $20 million and beyond. A student group of any size, even if they have as much talent as successful professional game developers, would take thousands of semesters to produce a AAA list game.

They’ll play games all day in the job. It matters that they’re expert game players.

Even game magazine editors cannot play all day. Playing games is important, but that’s not something you’ll do much on the job. Game playing expertise is virtually irrelevant.

They’ll be able to design what they want.

This is not the way it works in the industry, where design is very collaborative, even on smaller “casual” games. Even the most successful designers, such as Sid Meier, sometimes must satisfy publishers who are funding their efforts. Typically, you’ll be told to work on a particular design problem, and won’t be able to do your own thing.

They’re going to have a big effect on a AAA game soon after getting a job.

One industry veteran who works on small games said he isn’t excited at the thought of working on a huge game, such as Madden football, and then being able to say he had something to do with how the football flies! The bigger the game, the smaller your part in it. When the game involves more than a hundred man-years of effort, your work for even a year amounts to less than one percent of the whole.

Getting a degree is going to get them a job.

They can do just what’s in the curriculum, and without any additional effort, they will have 100% of what it takes to succeed.

A degree differentiates you from the thousands who want to work in the industry but haven’t taken the time to do much about it. Still, students have to show what they can do, the degree alone doesn’t count for much yet. That means students need to be as fanatical about preparing themselves for a game industry job as they’re fanatical about playing video games. There are dozens of times as many industry wannabes as there are jobs available. Only those who prepare themselves fully will get the jobs.

If they just make a game that includes all the currently-popular elements (a market-driven game), theirs will be instantly popular.

No, this usually leads to a soul-less, unsuccessful game.

They’re going to be able to assemble a development team without salaries and get things done on schedule with the promise of royalties once the game goes commercial. (Though at least this happens every once in a while.)

Even where developers are well-paid full-time employees, games usually fall behind schedule. Start-up companies with good funding often fail. These folks are as dedicated and fanatical as you. What makes you different? You may succeed if you do the right things, but this is rarely an avenue into the game industry.

They’ll start their career working in the position they want to achieve in the long run.

As with most industries, you have to “pay your dues” to get where you want to go. There’s also a “pyramid effect” here, the most desirable jobs are near the top of the pyramid where there are fewer jobs, the less desirable ones are near the bottom where there are many more jobs.

Think the college curriculum is an extension of high school and act as such.

A good college is nothing like a typical high school. Most high schools are now training institutions, and not even good at that. You memorize what you need to regurgitate on the End of Class test, and that’s about it. College is (or should be) an educational institution, you need to understand why things work as they do so that you can cope with something you haven’t encountered or solved before.

Moreover, you are responsible for your education in college-you are an adult. No one will hold your hand constantly. You have an opportunity to learn a lot, but YOU must do it.

They will only work on hard core games,

The hard core is a relatively small part of the market, and the most demanding part. It’s easy to underestimate the number of casual game players. Any very successful game must appeal to the casual players. Most video games are not designed for the hard core.

Work will always be fun and they will always enjoy playing the game they create at the end.

Work will often be fun. If they play the game enough, they’ll get sick of it. In fact, by the end of the production process, they’re quite likely to be sick and tired of “screwing around with that game”. But they’ll enjoy seeing it for sale.

They will never make a game that gets canceled.

The preponderance of games that are started are canceled before they’re finished. An important quality of success in the industry is recognizing when a game “isn’t clicking”. But games are often canceled for reasons other than quality, such as funding, loss of employees, corporate takeovers or other business failures, and changes in the market.

Testing is only about playing games.

Testing is serious work; you have to write up results, contribute to bug databases, etc. If you test one game long enough, you’ll come to dislike the game no matter how good it is.

They can sneer at and ignore non-AAA titles as though there was something wrong with them and they’d never need to work on such a thing

Given the increasing budgets for AAA titles, the majority of people working on games are not working on AAA games. The studios working on AAA games have few entry-level positions-why risk a lot of money on inexperienced people? Do the math.

It will be easy. There’s always an Easy Button, isn’t there?

No. If you want an easy job, look for something else. If you want a fun job, look here.（Source：gamecareerguide）