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Modding yourself employable (Mar 1, 2006)

If my months of research, quantum physics knowledge, Excel spreadsheets and wild assumptions are correct, then most of the people who read this blog are modders with a passing interest in level design. Some of you enjoy it as a hobby, others are paid for it as a job, some are trying to get from one to the other, and one or two have clearly been tricked into coming here. Either way, you're here now. Ha!

Everyone knows that a good modding background helps get you a good job in (or at least a foot in the door of) the games biz. That's how I've got here, and that's pretty much how Valve and a number of other developers were created - by employing only the best hobbyist modders on the planet. That's not to say the traditional "do a degree, show us a CV" approach doesn't work, but these days more and more employers expect to see some amount of experience with a number of engines and practises from potential employees.

This doesn't always just mean, "the ability to make deathmatch AND CTF maps" nor does it always mean "the ability to make a map in both a Quake engine and Unreal." It means they're looking for someone who has particular skills in an area of game design, along with the supporting and surrounding knowledge they needed to hone them. Simply being a good level designer is rarely enough without also being able to produce textures, code, models, sounds or any other supporting assets.

The ability to switch between skillsets is important. At the very minimum, the ability to put in placeholder content is essential.

If I were the employer (as if!) I'd expect potential employees to be excellent at one thing, fairly good at another, and understanding of pretty much everything else. So you might be an excellent programmer with some sound creation/modification skills and enough knowledge of art, level design and modelling to understand the bigger picture and produce custom content when needed.

As modders, we have a huge advantage over traditional entrants. Good mods require everything, and the only way we can really get everything done it is to do it ourselves. Even if it isn't very good or professional, for a mod it isn't so much the quality, but the ability to do it. Technical knowledge is very useful.

Take ETC as an example. It taught me around the Half-Life engine, as well as giving me basic texturing (if you look closely), modelling (fat Barney) and sound skills (fat Barney's farts), although few people would have noticed them since the level design was the primary feature. ETC2 had level design, coding (basic physics for crates by an explosion in the opening level, and a respawn entity because I'm lazy), plus models (Gordon's head on scientist body), sounds (custom speech) and textures (somewhere...) None of the supporting content was outstanding by any margin, and few people would have noticed it, but it was necessary and exceptionally useful. Basic things like that are valuable.

However, being equally skilled at everything rarely works. That makes you a dogsbody, average at everything with no particular title. Always try to excel at a particular aspect (presumably level design!) unless you're the 1 in 6.5 billion who really is a master designer, coder, artist, modeller, sound engineer and musician all rolled into one. You'll know if you are because you're probably earning millions already.

So if you want to be employable in the games biz (especially if you haven't been in it before), at least be prepared to get to grips with some other aspects of game design and content creation. You don't need to be a master at any of them, just enough to get by and understand how they all link together. It will often mean the difference between an employer tossing your CV in the bin or giving you a call...

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user comments

Luke at 20:17 on Mar 1, 2006

Like the old saying: Jack of all trades, master of none.

Keegan Penney at 02:09 on Mar 2, 2006

Thats some good food for thought. Weird that you posted this around the same time I realised I wanted to work in game design :o

jiminy fuckstick at 03:11 on Mar 2, 2006

I hate you daveJ. it's taken a while and a forum thread to remind me, but you singlehandedly ruined counterstrike. before dust we had people carefully picking their way through claustrophobic environments and actually playing as teams rather than a free for all rushing fragfest. Your map attracted the worst possible elements to CS and kept them there with insta gratification, zero tactical gameplay. It might not have been so bad had you realised your mistake and made follow up maps with a different pace/layout and textures, but you re-hashed the same old simplistic nonsense over and over again for dollars. As a result, CS is an 8 year olds game. Well Done.

TheRecreator at 03:41 on Mar 2, 2006

harsh but true...Jimmy is right.

reaper47 at 23:12 on Mar 3, 2006

lol, jimmy just comes back from loosing a de_dust game. Oddly enough there is [i]some[/i] truth in that statement as I always thought that de_dust is too much about close-range combat and rushing the enemy for my taste. There are bascially just two ways to get to the enemy which makes rushing through the choke-points the best tactic.

What I like about cs_* maps over de_* maps (did you ever make a cs_* map?) is that they are often more free and tactical and generally offer more routes for some reason.

Addicted to Morphine at 20:15 on Mar 2, 2006

Criminey, if you hate him so much why do you read his blog? Sounds like jealousy to me...

Anyway -- its funny how you needed all those skills for ETC. I thought a widespread skill set was something that was required for this generation of mapping (so many custom assets are now necessary to make a map stand out) and it was surrpsing to hear that that's always been the case, but I guess it makes sense.

With that in mind -- which do you think is a harder game to make a successful map for: HL1 or HL2?

furrisch at 22:19 on Mar 4, 2006

dave made cs_tire(?) and cs_castle, castle was kind of a mess imo :p

tofu at 02:46 on Mar 5, 2006

« Simply being a good level designer is rarely enough without also being able to produce textures, code, models, sounds or any other supporting assets. »

I'd say the term "rarely enough" is somewhat overboard. Simply being a good level designer is more than enough in almost any case and this is because what makes a good level designer is more than just creating a layout and implementing gameplay - there is the understanding of gameplay itself, the understanding of the technical aspects to an engine and your control over the toolset: getting it to do what you want and if you can't, knowing what it needs in order for you to do so.

Having someone who understands all of the above is, in the role of level designer, far more valuable than a level designer without it but with knowledge of how to build models, texture or create sounds. Especially as we head into next gen.

It'll be different wherever people try to apply, but if someones goal is to enter level design, I'd recommend they stick with it until they're completely proven in all aspects of design, prior to worrying about other fields.

Dave at 09:24 on Mar 5, 2006

tofu: you're quite right, I think you just put it more nicely than I did! Provided a designer has some understanding of the bigger picture then they will find themselves more valuable and more productive. Understanding how it all fits together helps avoid running into walls, and knowing why it all fits together helps you scramble over them.