In The Beginning, There Is the Designer

I recently read an excerpt from Jesse Schell's The Art of Games Design: A book of lenses (2008), specifically chapter one, entitled "In the Beginning, There Is the Designer". I would share with you the exact notes I made on the intriguing section of text, but I suspect they are somewhat incoherent to anyone but myself; so I shall put them into a more understandable format!

Firstly, however, although I didn't note these things down I would like to briefly write about how entirely correct I feel Schell was in beginning his book with a chapter talking only about the actual people who are to become the designers. I feel too many approaches jump straight into designing games, and people seem to forget that designers also have to be leaders, they must know how to work within a team, and how to view themselves and the people around them. Moreover, I am quite fond of the way Schell actually writes and chooses to address the reader. Although his tone stays largely formal, I felt a sense of his personality was displayed through his writing, and I found this to make the text far more engaging.

I tend to take most of my notes as a series of titles and bullet points, so that is how I shall present them here:

Notes on The art of Games Design, Chapter 1

•  Self-confidence
• An attitude of "just do it"
• Understand every aspect of the phrase "I am a game designer"
•  Do not fear failure, it is necessary
• A working understanding of all skills involved in making a game
• Listening is the most important skill
• Five kinds of listening, listening to:
• Team - Working together
• Audience -They are the judges
• Game - Knowing everything about it
• Client - Creating what it is they want
• Self - Source of true creativity
• Deep, thoughtful listening
• Assume nothing, think everything through
• The Gifted
• Minor Gift is the talent
• Major gift is the passion, it can create the minor gift

I confess my original notes were certainly more of a mess than what I have displayed here. however I have here captured the main essence of what I was taking note of without including my route to arrive at these key points that I feel are the main things to take away from this particular example of text.