How did you get into the game design industry?

The game industry has always fascinated me. At the age of 14, I got my first C64 which was a key experience for me. Since then I have always wanted to get deeper into game development. Both, the design and the production of games represent a big challenge.

What are the necessary skills for doing game design well, and can it be taught?

Game design is not easy to do. You can have many ideas but nobody is really able to predict if a game is fun to play before it is implemented and tested. That is the major difference to "regular" software development. Unfortunately there is no standard education in game design - that is why people most people learn it on their own. But there is a need for good game designers - I hope that game development will be taught more at universities in the coming years. Necessary skills are technical and graphical knowledge and a good understanding of gameplay logics.

Of the game designer's we've interviewed, we have identified three approaches to starting a project - develop a scenario, follow a game-genre heritage, or start from a technological premise. Is there another method?

I would suggest to look at the market first before starting a game production :-) Many game productions start with just a "cool" game idea or from a technological premise, but that is often not enough to be successful in this business.

How do you initiate a project?

Before we start a game project we do alot of work in the field of market research, competitor analysis etc. Once this work is finished we start the conceptional work on the game.

How do you organize your work? Do you have a predefined working process?

Over the years we developed our own game development process which is basically adapted from the processes known in the software development industry. Without a working process you're probably not going to be able to keep a project on track and to hit the milestones. While working on Urban Assault, we learned a lot from Microsoft (the publisher of the game) - they have a well organized production process.

What are the tools of your trade and what is your relationship to these tools?

The tools we use are basically modelling tools, realtime render engines, prototyping tools and compilers to create the gaming environment. Unfortunately, it is still impossible to set up the complete game production of a full price title without developing some tools by youself . TERRATOOLS focuses on the development of the content of a game - the development of technologies and tools is important but just a necessity.

What is the biggest technological limitation of your profession, and how do you deal with it?

During game development you often reach the limit of your target platform - the PC or game console. You try to make the game as interesting and realistic as possible but the hardware is not capable i.e. of drawing the millions of polygons you need for the visualisation of your scene. Another good example is the computation time needed for AI-controlled characters. Intelligent AI requires more computing power than game consoles normally have. That is why game designers must have a good understanding of the technology. Game ideas and conceptions are often downsized to make them work on a mass market platform.

Where do you get your inspirations? Who are your mentors?

A good example of a great game designer is Sid Meier. He produced really great titles in the past like Civilization, Pirates! and Railroad Tycoon. I take a lot of my inspirations from looking at these old game titles.

How do you see your profession evolving?

We have to cope with the rapid evolution in the fields of online games. These games require completely different contents and ideas as not every single player game can be used as a basis for a massive multi-user online game. TERRATOOLS is actually developing concepts to be ready for this generation of games.

What do you want to do in the future?

I want to keep on working in the games industry, and I dream of producing a lot of fascinating titles ...

What was the last thing (book, film, music, game) that really pleased you?

A game that really fascinates me is Age of Empires II by Ensemble Studios. It was just released, but I can't stay away from it ... :-)

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