About
I’m a 32-year old game designer “in development” living in Munich, Germany. I originally studied Business Informatics because I thought of it as a good career opportunity. It turned out that I’m not exactly made for office environments and I hated my job. I was already working as a freelance consultant / developer before, now I have reduced this activity to a minimum – as long as my financial situation allows it – to concentrate my work on something that is more important to me: Video games.
Video games have always fascinated me for various reasons:
- They never seem to get boring for me
There were various occasions where I thought that I have somehow “grown out of gaming”, when no game that I had or bought would be able to capture my interest for longer than 20 minutes. But then there is always, always one title that brings me back on track in no time. Most of the time I can almost “feel” the love and attention the developers have put into that title, and I can spend hours in the virtual world they have created.
- They develop and redefine themselves
Video games show a constant development in all directions since they appeared as a form of entertainment: graphics, sound, hardware – everything seems to be evolving all the time. But it does not stop with improvements in fidelity: with mobile gaming, browser-based games, VR headsets etc. the way we game does change as well.
- They combine various art forms in one single experience
Video games consist of graphics, animation, sound, writing, sometimes even directing and acting. I love to see how developers pull all these strings together to create a meaningful experience for the player. Also I’m interested in how these assets are created during game development. How does one create and texture a 3D model of a monster? How does one compose a powerful background score?
- They seem to tickle our inner sense for self development
This is my favorite bullet point: Playing a game is actually hard work. Often you have to learn a tremendous set of rules, of which some are written down, and some are hidden, unwritten rules that can only be learned by collecting gameplay experience. You are then forced to repeatedly apply the knowledge you have gained (most of the time in small variations) until you have “won” the game. Why is this regarded as “fun” when the outcome of the game has no impact on your actual life? I think that all human beings want to see themselves to succeed in one way or another, and games provide us with a safe, sandboxy environment to do so. If one did fully understand the underlying psychological mechanisms that make us want to play, one would have understood the greatest part of human motivation.
Because all of these factors (and maybe even more), games are important to me (unlike the activities I had to take part in in my previous jobs). I hope when I concentrate my energy into things that are important to me, that someday, somehow, I will be able to make my living out of it.