A Day in the Life of a Game Designer

It may come as a shock to those of you who don't know me, but I design games for a living. Hey, it's not like I make a decent living from drawing cartoons. At any rate, when folks hear about my profession, they invariably say something like, "It must be great to play games all day." Well, yeah, we play games. Usually, the same game, over and over again. We play it over and over again because it either (A) is broken and someone has to figure out how to fix it or (B) sucks and someone has to make not suck so badly. Every so often we get to play someone else's game to see what other folks are doing right or wrong.

But it's work - folks are depending on me to come up with answers that will make a product that other people will want to buy and therefore justify my continued collection of a salary. It's often hard work, because it depends on the designer's ability to come up with flashes of insight on a regular basis.

That doesn't mean I don't get to play games "for fun," but that has to happen on my own time. You'd think that I'd get burnt out on games, but they're still my favorite form of entertainment, particularly when I'm enjoying playing a game with some good friends. So if you're ever in my neck of the woods, drop on by and we'll play a game.