Whether you’re an established or budding Flash game designer, you’ll likely relate to Ethan’s story of balancing his inner idealist and artist with the external demands of the industry. In this article, Ethan recounts his experience and offers some advice for those interested in entering the field. Feel free to leave your comments and questions below or on the MochiAds forum thread.
Growing up, I always knew that I wanted to be a game designer. Video games seemed magical, and I was excited about the idea of crafting their incredible, imagined worlds. Every month, I labored over every syllable of “PC Gamer” and “Next Generation” magazines. I went to college, got an internship at Pandemic Studios and started living the dream when I landed a job as a designer at the casual game publisher PlayFirst. Since then, I’ve worked at a number of casual games companies and contributed to a handful of published titles. And I just recently started working as a designer at Electronic Arts. Everything I could have reasonably wished for at this point in my career has come true. If my high-school self could see me now, he would be incredibly jealous.
“The Real World” … or Whatever That Means
But while being a professional game designer is just as fun and creative a challenge as I imagined, the reality doesn’t really match up to the fantasy. I’m sure that my high-school self thought I would have already released my magnum opus, “Zombie Headstomp 3000,” which would gather universal acclaim and prompt “Electronic Gaming Monthly” to herald me as the next game design god. Warren Spector would welcome me to the club by sending me a congratulatory bottle of his favorite single-malt scotch. And the next time Tetsuya Mizuguchi visited the US, he would insist on meeting me for lunch so we could compare our philosophies on game design.
Clearly, the real world could never live up to my grandiose delusions about life as a game designer. If my time at the casual game publishers PlayFirst and iWin are any indication, my career will be a long string of making the games that senior management thinks will be successful in the marketplace, given current trends and sales projections. This doesn’t mean that I don’t have license to inject my personality, creativity and humor into these properties. But I don’t live in a world where I’m asked “What game do you want to make today?” I live in a world where I’m asked “Can you make us a competitor to Wii Fit today?”
Before Flash Was Cool
My high-school self’s dream was to bring the strange and vivid worlds of my imagination to life. At the time, the only path towards making that dream a reality was pursuing a career at a traditional game publisher, designing games for PC or consoles. Sure, there was the shareware scene. Flash games and NewGrounds existed on a dial-up internet, but they were not the mature distribution platform of today. There was “Click and Play,” but there wasn’t “Game Maker Studio” or “Torque Game Builder.” There was the Independent Games Festival, but there wasn’t XBLA, PSN or WiiWare. There were indie games, but not the tools, resources or — most importantly — the awareness that makes the indie games scene of today a real force within the industry.
The Emergence of the Flash Indie Ecosystem
Today, designers and devs can easily make “Zombie Headstomp 3000″ or whatever twisted creations their imaginations spawn. They can code them up in Flash and reach an audience of millions on Kongregate, One More Level or Addicting Games. They can monetize their creation by integrating MochiAds, getting a sponsorship or winning a weekly competition. They can be the next “Flow” and sign a three-game deal with Sony. They can be the next “Alien Hominid” and create one of the most exciting independent studios working in the industry today. They can be the next “The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai” and be promoted as the poster child of Microsoft’s XNA initiative. But even if their game isn’t an industry-changing hit, they can do something that is rare in the world of professional game designers: They can finish a dream project and share their unique creation with the world.
Balancing Art with Commerce (and Work-Life Balance)
So, with this infinite new world of possibilities, why have I been spending my time designing games like “Mystery of Shark Island and Polly Pride: Pet Detective”? This is the result of a side effect of adulthood: responsibility. I need to keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach. I can’t live without health care. My career provides me with the essentials that were handed to me in high school and college. It also leaves me with a scarcity of one of the most important resources when making games: free time.
Even with today’s plentiful cheap tools and resources for game creation, it still takes a lot of time and dedication to finish a game. Being a creative professional requires a different sort of energy than an enthusiastic hobbyist — more of a persistent, slow burn than an all-consuming passion. It’s difficult to work on game design all day and then come home and stoke that same fire for side projects. I value my career, but I also value my personal life and try to invest in both equally. It’s a difficult thing to say, but there is more to life than just video games.
Passion, dedication, ambition, creativity; I still possess all these traits. As I have grown up, they have undergone a necessary evolution to accommodate the complex realities of adulthood. And I’m excited to now see the growth of opportunity out there — the opportunity to follow your vision, regardless of whether or not it fits into nice, neat, risk averse, easily marketable boxes, and the opportunity to craft the incredible, imagined worlds that live inside of you. These opportunities are out there, dangling in front of your eyes, just waiting to be grasped.
This is a really great article that I think a lot of young developers need to read. I’ve really had to considered whether a gaming career is the best idea for these same reasons. Is it going to over-saturate my life to work for a game company like EA while also attempting to run my own flash projects?
“the opportunity to follow your vision, regardless of whether or not it fits into nice, neat, risk averse, easily marketable boxes, and the opportunity to craft the incredible, imagined worlds that live inside of you”
- well said!
If you want to share thought on “where did the industry went wrong?” (a more than urgent analysis for those working at responsible jobs in this industry, which is quite mature too), the right place would be gamasutra.com, and it would really help to improve the quality of future games. There are big budgets at stakes, you know ;)
It seems that you consider Flash gaming as a new El Dorado (but take a closer look at monetizing figures), land of freedom (more probably, but it would be interesting to exam why: lower risk? quality bar lower? more culture of innovation or distinction (clone-averse)?) or whatever. But when you say “Today, designers and devs can easily make “Zombie Headstomp 3000″ or whatever twisted creations their imaginations spawn. They can code them up in Flash and reach an audience of millions on Kongregate [etc..]” Please let me remind you that it’s much more “possible” at EA: there are budgets, there are skilled people, there are tools, etc.. Lol at EA too, “These opportunities are out there, dangling in front of your eyes, just waiting to be grasped.” … so.. what is wrong then? Please develop ;) hehe..
On the Flash side, Alien Hominid probably required huge efforts, not only to make the flash game, but to port it on console, networking, distributing etc.. Same for “flow”. Regarding this examples, it would be interesting to study which actors favored the transition from a Flash game to a console game: connections between 2 distant worlds (industry vs flash) ? Or flash being just a “toy” for actors part or about-to-be-part in the industry?
Interesting article from an interesting position, though (I’m curious about the opinion of other “veterans” game designers of the “industry”).
“So, with this infinite new world of possibilities, why have I been spending my time designing games like “Mystery of Shark Island and Polly Pride: Pet Detective”? This is the result of a side effect of adulthood: responsibility. I need to keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach.”
This makes it seem like you have to sell your soul to work in the flash gaming industry. If being a flash designer meant I had to design for Pokemon or Hanna Montana I’d quit right away and pursue something else. Sure, you need to make money, but freelance is 100% freedom and you can make REALLY decent money from sponsorships alone.
The article seemed a little strange overall, it was like praise for the creative freedom that has manifested in the industry, but then that paragraph comes along and totally negates the whole thing…
I agree with the previous commenter. The article is a bit confusing, the intro had me expecting it would be about a flash designer only partially “selling out”, but Ethan Levy doesn’t even seem to be involved in any independent flash projects at all. If he is, he doesn’t mention it in the article.
I kept waiting for the payoff…”and then MochiAds empowered me to make the games I love, AND pay the bills doing it.”
Is that in next month’s installment?
So…. how’s it end?
This is a great article depicting the internal struggle to balance passion and responsibility. I believe that there are many of us that get caught in the middle of doing somethings as a means to an end versus doing something that really fulfills your creative passions. While Flash games are no where near providing the financial returns as a AAA title would in the console world it at least provides hope and inspiration that there are some rewards to pursuing creations from the heart.
Agreed.
…but… are you saying that I’m not going to get rich with Mochiads?
C’mon! Where’s the love?