Author Spotlight: Ernest Adams on game design
16 Jul 03

PE: How did you get started in game design?

EA: I knew from the first moment I played a computer game (in 1970, on a Teletype printing terminal!) that I wanted to design and build games. Of course, at that time there was no game industry, no way to earn a living at it. So it became a long-nurtured dream. I taught myself programming, created a few little games of my own, and waited for my chance.

I first got started in game design professionally when I was hired to program a new baseball game for Electronic Arts. The design script had been written by somebody else, but I read it carefully and wrote a number of comments for my producer. He liked my ideas so much that he asked if I wanted to stop programming and be a full-time designer in his new group. I agreed enthusiastically, and my first published design was John Madden Football for the 3DO Multiplayer
machine.

PE: Why did you decide to write this book?

EA: Teaching is in my blood; I've always enjoyed sharing what I know. So I knew that someday I would write a book that encapsulated the learning from all my years in the industry. When the opportunity came along, I didn't hesitate.

PE: Who will need to read this book?

EA: It is designed to be useful to professional game developers, amateurs (there are thousands!) and students. Academic game programs are starting up at universities all over the world, and I m hoping many of them will adopt it as a textbook. In addition, people who already have other jobs in the game industry (producer, artist, programmer) and want to move into game design will find it
helpful.

PE: The games industry is the fastest growing sector in the entertainment business. Where is most of this growth occurring?

EA: If you mean where in the world, the answer is chiefly in the United States, Europe, and Japan, in terms of sheer volume. However, probably the fastest growth is occurring in Korea at the moment, the Koreans have gone crazy for multiplayer online games in a way that far surpasses anywhere else in the world. I believe the next big untapped markets for games are South Asia and the Eastern European nations as they enter the European Union. These countries don't quite yet have the leisure-time dollars to spend a lot of them on video games, but before long they will. In particular I believe that India represents huge, huge potential. The explosion of Hollywood movies demonstrates that there is a real appetite for popular entertainment.

If you mean where in the various gaming sectors is the growth, for the most part it's in our classic strength area: action games on console machines. This includes sports, racing, action-adventure, and first-person shooter genres. Growth is also occurring on the PC, and in role-playing games and strategy games, but not at the same rate.

PE: What developments in the games industry excite you the most?

EA: I believe that electronic distribution of games via broadband networking is going to blow the whole industry wide open creatively. The current situation is analogous to television before cable in America: the big three TV networks controlled the broadcast spectrum, so all programs were designed to try to appeal to everybody -- there was no such thing as "niche" television programming. As a result, it was all OK but none of it was terribly good. But when cable TV came along, with dozens of channels, it became possible to make TV shows for every taste and interest, we have channels devoted to nothing but golf, or nothing but the arts and music now.

In games, a few distributors control all the retail shelf space in the software stores, so we have the same problem. But when broadband distribution comes along, I believe the same thing will happen to games that happened to TV: we will begin to get demand for a much wider variety of games, and in some cases the quality will go up significantly. This is the most exciting thing that I see on the horizon, probably in 5 to 10 years.

PE: What are your plans for the future?

EA: I'm an independent design consultant at the moment, but as time goes on I expect to do more teaching. I may even take a full-time job at it if I can find one. I would like to have the opportunity to do research at the cutting edge of gameplay, the artistic rather than the commercial aspects, shall we say. Computers are an extremely powerful entertainment medium and we have only begun to scratch the surface of what they can do -- it's far, far more than running around and shooting things. I want to explore this potential, and an academic position may be the best way to do it.

Indispensable to professional game designers, developers, hobbyists, and students, Game Design has already received rave reviews from both academics and professionals. Game Design, published by New Riders, and written by Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams, is available now. To buy this book now, click here.

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