This week I’m taking a topic suggestion from C. M. Perry. He asks, What has helped you grow most as a designer. For me, the answer is other designers.
When I started designing games I didn’t know any other designers. My play testers were my family and friends. Who, for the most part, were not very experienced playing games and only knew of what I showed them.
This created an echo chamber with very little new information coming in, usually from podcasts. Once I met more designers, first online and then at design meet ups, there was a ton of new information coming in.
Other designers are a great resource. They have a lot of shared experience from their own game designs, but they also have a lot of different experiences and I think it’s this partial overlap in experience that makes it so easy to gain new knowledge from them.
Go meet other designers. Play their games, have them play yours. Talk about design. Talk about what resources you use. I’m sure you’ll have a lot of the same information, but you’ll also have some different information and sharing that is how we grow as designers.