Columns How I Became A Game Designer

http://www.bit-tech.net/columns/2007/12/05/how_i_became_a_game_designer/1

As part of a new series of columns by prominent indie and professional developers, James Silva talks about how he moved from being a dishwasher in an Italian resturant to being a game designer. Beware, the story contains ninjas, zombies and dishwashery!

 

Wow, cool column! I remember spending many a good hour on Zombie Smashers X. I even found a mod later that allowed you to play as a Zombie and kill all the humans, even more fun! I'll admit my only experience of ZSC was watching Joe drive down a street, armed with the lightning of God, in a shopping trolly, killing thousands upon thousands of zombies. And that brief introduction was all I needed to know that this was a good game.

Out of interest, how much background do you have as a coder, or did the idea for the game come and then you learned how to program the engines?

 

God, those Zombie games helped the hours pass when I should have been doing my dissertation - and were the main reason I James was one of the first names which sprang to mind when we decided to launch these developer columns. FYI, we'll be having a few new developers revealing themselves and doing weekly columns over the next month or so. Stay tuned!

 

Thank you Bit-Tech, this is the best thing you could have possibly published for me right now. I'm currently applying to go to Newcastle University to do Computer Science - Games and Virtual Environments and I've really been looking for an insight to how the wheels start moving when games are developed independantly. I can't wait for the next entry and I hope that first bit is true and more designers will be writing columns.

 

The second is already in hand, third is on the way too - short answer: yes there will be more!

 

A very insightful read!