This here is gonna be one of my most spontaneous blog articles. I’ve been thinking about doing a how-to of games, but didn’t know where to start. Then today I got inspired by a lot of facebook traffic about marketing-driven games vs indie games and the creative process. This traffic was all spurned by a really well written article by Josh here that I felt went great as a companion to my first article in the series “Why you should love/hate Apple.” The indirect benefits/drawbacks of the Apple model had me thinking that a great place to start is the “common misconceptions” of what happens when you make a game. Stuff that’s not obvious from the outside. A lot of time it is also the dirty work. The un-fun stuff. So You’re Gonna Make a WHOLE game? You film dudes are gonna here something familiar. “Everyone’s a director.”  That’s the film saying, right?  Well in games, everyone is a designer. Here are all the people who think they are better designers than the best designers: Programmers Pimple faced 17 year olds That kid fresh out of school in his first design job The dude bagging groceries at the store Dogs Cats Single-Celled Organisms Aliens that are spying on us and pirating our games from another galaxy So that’s everyone right?  If you’re gonna be a designer, you have to really learn to accept that. The misconception is that designers make game ideas, characters and stories. Well some of that is true. We do that stuff. The misconception is that outsiders, even people in the game industry who haven’t designed an entire game, think that’s all we do. If that were the case, then yes, it would be all kitties and happiness and GREAT GAME...

My two favorite moments with Milan Stitt, the head of the CMU Dramatic Writing Program: Milan: Is you’re favorite color orange? Me: Yes. Milan: That’s what I thought. A woman’s favorite color is always what looks best on her. Mine is blue. Then he winked. Milan winked a lot. I would wink a lot, too, if I was as good at it as he was. He always looked like your kindly grandfather when he did it. I look like I have a medical condition. AND my other favorite moment: Milan: You’re late. You now have a B in this class, and if you’re late again you get a C, and if you’re late again you fail. The second conversation happened two days after 9-11. And I was never late to class again. I consider that the day I started learning discipline. Milan basically kicked my ass into becoming a good writer. He had moments of ego-crushing flip-of-a-switch meanness. He used to be a priest. And maybe his mother literally dropped dead when he came out to her — we were never quite sure if that story was true. He chewed Nicorette gum in class to get through to his next cigarette. He rarely, rarely acknowledged his mistakes, and I don’t have a clear memory of him ever saying “I’m sorry.” He was completely ridiculous. He was one of the wisest people I’ve ever known. He loved Spain. I think he might have loved us, his students, but found us rather tiresome. Being an editor now, I could see how teaching undeveloped writers could get old after awhile. There are only 5 to 10 real problems in writing. And only two of them or insurmountable: tin ear and inability to take and apply criticism. Milan...