We can have a discussion of what I meant by "One Vision" if you want.  SVC invented the collaborative process that you use to make games today, I was one its earlier participants.  The meaning of "game design is a benevelont dictatorship ruled by an iron fist" is a little more liberal than has been interpreted in this thread.  It has always been true that a designer can only be "God" if they own the company.

I have always known what my problem is, and it has never changed. Right from the beginning, in your earliest days, you insisted that table top games were not relevant to what you do. You were doing a whole new thing. So you completely ignored the entire history of games and simulation design that came before you other than to make occasionally make an old board game as computer game. There were also a few of the earliest designers, hobbyist gamers who became programmers and made their own games, and today you speak their names with reverence. People like Sid Meier, Will Wright, and Dan Bunton. But being a programmer and being able to do it yourself wound up being the only way to do that because you were certain that our games were not relevant to what you did so you didn't need us as pure designers... even though you were programmers who had probably never played a game more complex than Risk.

This has always been my problem. You not having any respect for the very advanced and sophisticated methods of simulation design that had existed long before you ever came along. If that had not been, and was not still, the case then all I ever should have needed to say was... “I am a former member of the SFB Staff and I want to make space ship games.” If you knew the history of what you think you do, that is all I would need to say.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MarcMichalik/787769/

Kavik, who exactly is this "You" you are referring to that is insisting that table top games aren't relevant to what "We" do.

I've been professionally involved with hundreds of software/app/web titles, and board games have played a pretty large part of developing many of them. Of the titles I've been involved with from the ground up, probably half started out with hand drawn pieces on card stock with. They are especially important in early planning stages for anything top down and strategy related, as a group of designers can sit around a table together and talk through ideas in an afternoon rather than spending days/weeks/months prototyping the mechanics in code. But I've seen them used for pretty near any style of game I can think of, even FPS titles. Just the more abstract from a boardgame view the final game is, the more imagination is needed by the test players to judge how the end product is going to feel.

If the planning and thought process to play a game works well with a pen and paper, then odds are good it will hold up when the computer crunches all the numbers for you, but as a designer you need to watch out for issues like time-decision overloads if 'turns' are running forward in real time for the end user rather than running in 'bullet time' because you're slowly juggling all the numbers and tracking by yourself.

On 01/02/2018 at 10:03 AM, Kavik Kang said:

The committee can generally only recreate past successes, and innovates at a snail's pace.

Kavik, you keep talking about how "design by committee" is bad (you claim that tabletop designers think it's The Worst Way To Design™), but you're only actually credited for contribution to one product from that industry, and you are one of 40 designers credited on that product.

What about typical video game industry process is "design by committee" that didn't also happen in this product from your industry with fourty credited designers?  It's become increasingly obvious that you don't actually know much about the processes the video game industry use (example: you only recently discovered that we often use what you call "poker chip prototyping"), and honestly I have to question how much you actually know about professional table top design as well.

It's incredibly common for table top games to be a collaborative effort, just like video games.  In both fields, some games are the product of a singular vision rather than being collaboratively designed, and some are not.  Some games that have been "designed by committee" are actually really good.  Some games that are the product of one designer are really bad.  This depends on a multitude of factors, and whether or not the design was collaborative is only one of them. As some have said above, the important thing is really to have a "singular vision", and that's actually something that teams can do.

According to the design credits, your favourite games such as Star Fleet Battles are very much a collaborative effort, and this is no more or less "design by committee" than what happens for many video games.

You have worked on exactly one professional video game, and according to your description your time there was brief towards the end of a failing production where you had to quickly rush out a product. You have no basis to know what typically goes on behind the closed doors of a professional video game studio, and you are repeatedly demonstrably wrong about common practices.

3 hours ago, Kavik Kang said:

Right from the beginning, in your earliest days, you insisted that table top games were not relevant to what you do.

This is another thing you like to claim regularly.  I've seen you say that the video game industry ignore everything learned from table top design.  I've seen you say that there's no respect for table top designers, and that experience in table top design is not considered relevant experience by the video game industry.

These things are false.  All of the video game designers I have ever heard talk about it have a huge respect for table top design, and many of them are also avid table top gamers.

"Pen and paper" design (that is, making table top or card games) is a very common prototyping method in our industry, even when designing real time action games.  When people ask people from the video game industry how to learn design, it's incredibly common to suggest table top design to get started.

Many designers from the table top industry have been very successful in the video game industry:

• Steve Jackson (the one from the UK, not the US) was a co-founder is the very successful Games Workshop, but also co-founded the very successful Lionhead Studios in the videogame industry.
• Dave Arneson, co-creator of D&D has contributed to video game design and taught at Full Sail.
• Warren Spector who worked at Steve Jackson Games, TSR, and others also worked for Origin, Ion Storm, and Looking Glass.
• Colin McComb worked at TSR, and amongst other video game credits has worked at Black Isle Studios.
• Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The Gathering has a number of video game design credits.

These are just a few prominent examples found with less than five minutes on Google, I'm sure you could easily find loads more.

When you say the video game industry has no respect for video game designers you are wrong.
When you say table top designers aren't considered relevant to video game design you are wrong.

It's not table top designers in general that have trouble transitioning, it's specifically you, and it's not because you only have table top experience.

7 hours ago, Kavik Kang said:

I really can't believe that there is not a single person in this entire industry who is competent enough to hire the top person in the field of simulation design today.

Table top designers with a proven track record get hired all the time.

Let's be honest about your verifiable experience.

You were one of 40 people to receive design credit for one table top product.

You claim to have made a video game mod, but the only references to it online are from you, so it obviously wasn't all that popular.

You have design credit for one videogame, which was generally regarded as being pretty but poorly designed.

That's three credits in total, one of which is very questionable.

If a reference checks were favourable and you interviewed well, this could probably get you an entry level position, but it sounds very much like you have no interest in entry level positions, and I certainly can't see how you could possibly interview well based on your communications online.

Noone in any industry hires a random guy just because he says he's top of the field - generally if someone is genuinely the top of the field you will have heard of them and they'll have an impressive list of credits and released products.

Ya know what? I've got on a bit of a roll debunking ridiculous claims here, so we'll do one more.

I've seen you claim repeatedly that the video game industry does not like "rockstar" developers, and actively tries to keep them out.

Ridiculous.

Miyamoto Shigeru. Hideo Kojima. John Romero. Sid Meier. Roberta Williams. Chris Taylor. Markus 'Notch' Persson. Edmund McMillen. Jonathon Blow. Will Wright.

These are household names in the industry, and I just rattled off ten without even trying. More immediately leap to mind.

We write books about our designers. We make movies about them. We listen to them talk at conferences, read their blogs, follow their social accounts.  People buy games just because they like the designer's body of work.

The industry has no problem whatsoever with so called 'rock star designers', and loves to put them on a pedestal, put their name on things, and follow their every word and action.

You have also claimed that you are probably the origin of the term.

Again, ridiculous. I can assure you that noone thinks a random guy they've never heard of with three design credits for not-particularly popular games is a 'rockstar'.

The people I listed above are not 'rockstars' because someone recognised their untapped genius, or because of their methodology, but rather because they have an established body of released products that's successful and widely loved.

6 hours ago, Gian-Reto said:

Well, if anyone REALLY wants to discuss the importance of vision and direction in game development

I'd actually like that, and I think it could be valuable/interesting. Maybe start a spin-off topic in Game Design so we can discuss it without all the baggage of Kavik's martyrdom?

1 hour ago, Scouting Ninja said:

If Rube dies with you, then it's only a matter of time before a new Rube is born.

I think, in Kaviks case, there’s one born every minute...

On 01/02/2018 at 10:08 AM, Kavik Kang said:

I made the first mod for a commercial game ever made.

Wasn't your mod in 1998?

"Castle Smurfenstein" from 1983 has you beat by a couple of years... oh, and people other than the original designer have actually heard of that one and written about it online!