I learn from mistakes. This time, I am at the hallway/lounge area by 9:30 AM with an extremely empty stomach. Nice pastries and some kind of noodles (fried). The crowd seemed smaller too. What I heard was that many of the participants were still in bed. Late nights would do that to you.

As it reached 10 AM though, a whole throng of people started trickling into the main conference room (which could hold a maximum of 70 seated and 20 standing). It was packed. The reason? Simply one name: Chris Avellone.

Talk 1: How to Find a Good Designer
Chris Avellone, Chief Creative Officer of Obsidian Entertainment

Chris was THE main person everyone seemed to be waiting for. The session started with an impressive resume of his previous involvement, mainly as a lead designer from Interplay?s Black Isle and the current success launch of Star Wars KOTOR II: The Sith Lords. He is currently the senior designer on Neverwinter Nights 2. Obsidian Entertainment started out with only 5 people, and out of those 5, there was only one designer: Chris. That was a suicide situation as RPGs need lots of designers. Thus the need for them to hire more designers.

General Things on Game Designers
The main things that Chris wanted us to remember about Game Designers were:

• They had the role making things fun.
• They set the vision and tone of the project.
• In other words, they have lots of power in their hands.
• Good designers are hard to find.
• Even with training programs and education courses, it is not easy to get them.
• However, there are certain common traits that are shared with all designers.
• The session is to enable developers and managers to understand those traits and be able to identify them in their recruitment process.

The common things in game designers are easily seen in the general designers. Chief of all is that they are the odd ones. Chris prefers to use the word "odd" and NOT "weird." But the main thing is not to be sidetracked by the external appearances of the person but to be able to see the internal parts. The "oddness" must not only be physical/external in nature.

According to Chris, game designers must be well experienced in every facet of gaming. This should not be confined to only a specific game, or console, or even genre. They must have an all encompassing passion for gaming that would be reflected in the way things are done. This involves spending hours and hours on gaming, initiative in creating mods, a like for designing games regardless of the output quality and much more.

Creativity in these designers is shown in their ability to combine ideas that may not necessarily be unique, and they must have the right attitude (not only focused but is selfless). They should be proactive in thoroughly understanding the subject matter through research, and by involving themselves in discussions with a myriad of gaming stakeholders.

Finally, Chris emphasized the importance for the designer to know when enough is enough. He should know how to let go of a particular project even though ideas are still flooding in. Production must eventually start, and designers often are the ones who would hold it back. It is also important that the designer should not be "married" (the slide showed a vivid picture of a character talking over dinner with his idea about not seeing each other!) to any one idea and thereby doom the project with a myopic viewpoint.

Game Designers in the Industry
The points in the previous session are the common traits of any general designers in any industry. However, the traits that companies would like to see for their industry would also cover the following two main characteristics:

• Professionalism – know how to communicate with others and to convey their thinking through a variety of means (paper, phone & face to face)
• Team player – how well the designer interacts, bounces off ideas and even plays games with his/her other team members.

Testing
Finally, Chris covered practical things that a company may implement in their recruitment processes. Obsidian Entertainment relies heavily on their recruitment methodology and each process is created in such a way to address every point that was explained in the earlier part of the session.

Conclusion
Chris? advice is to find game designers who love their jobs no matter what and are willing to work hard, efficiently, able to critique comprehensively, professional, team players and who play myriad of games for fun.

There were about 80+ attendees for the first talk. The question and answers were fairly short as Chris Avellone covered the whole topic comprehensively. One thing for sure, he knows nothing about Fallout 3?s fate!

You can read more here