From Schoolroom to Workroom

The job title I hold in my internship is game designer. Game designer in my internship experience encompasses many other job titles. A few of those titles could be graphic designer, editor, playtester, project manager, and researcher. All of these titles come from the responsibilities I have had at some point in this internship. When first creating the game I was creating a paper prototype for all of our decks. This involved researching the various jobs that a technical writer can be in. I then moved on to editing the cards and checking for flaws in the game mechanics. I am now creating the artwork for the cards and box.

A required qualification for this internship would be time management. In my internship I am working with a partner and everything we have had to do have been on our own. We do not have a regular time where we meet so we have to use time in the evenings to get work done. Another qualification would be Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. I have been using Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop to create all of our artwork. The company we are using to produce the game provides templets primarily in Illustrator and Photoshop. Another required qualification would be editing. We have a lot of written content and a lot of cards so errors and consistency are a big factor for producing a quality game.  

Some preferred qualifications for someone in this internship would be to know good design principles. A lot of what a game is composed of is the aesthetic and layout of all the components. Another preferred qualification would to know what makes a good game. Knowing what common traits are among games and how people interact with games. This can also include what other games do and how to take those ideas and relate them to a different game.  

A skill that I have had to learn and practice is writing creatively. Our cards are real world jobs that are applied to a fake game situation. Being able to relate that card to the real world job and to its game counterpart has been a challenge to do creatively. I have also practiced making elements with detail while also being simple. These elements also have to be similar in design so I have been able to practice branding those elements consistently.

A skill I thought I would have practiced more is editing. To equally divide the work between in the game my partner is editing more while I am designing more. I also thought I was going to have to work more with the game mechanics, but a lot of it had been already thought of prior to the internship.

The way that writing differs from school and workplace is somewhat blurred in this internship since it is based in the school. When writing for a game it is necessary to be more direct and spell things out for players. One also has to come up with wording that can resolve many different situations. This differs in school because often writing is done for a professor and they are knowledgeable about the topic so information can be left out because it shared in all parties.  As for working in school versus internship being able to consult the “boss” is not always immediate. In school the teacher is present in class and can answer questions when they come up. In my internship however we have had questions or wanted to make some bigger decisions that we wanted advice. We only had the once a week meeting to sit down and discuss what decision we had that may have been the wrong ones.

The writing context for my internship for the game has to be a low context whereas school can be a higher context. Throughout school we have learned some ways to format common game elements but I would have not ever thought too much about context. A game will mostly likely never be played in the same situation or context which is hard to write for and a meaning can be changed from just one word. This kind of writing is something that can be just learned from a school setting. Anson and Forsberg reflect on their observations of students in internships and they say “What her supervisors had was unspoken knowledge—something established that they were no longer were aware of thinking about.” This speaks to not being able to understand and get the entire context in school. One has to become familiar with the context which in this case would be playing different kinds of games. The hierarchy in my internship is simple, my partner and I are on equal level and report to our supervisor. We report to our supervisor because he has "the capacity to mobilize people and resources to get things done" (Katz 421). I would say that my partner and I have a negotiated authority between each other based on parameters set forth by the supervisor. Our atmosphere is laid back because even though we have someone to report to we are able to suggest changes and have them considered. This laid back atmosphere is sometimes difficult to navigate as it causes my writings with the supervisor to become somewhat sloppy on occasion.

Linda Driskill, “Understanding the Writing Contexts in Organizations”

Chris Anson and Lee Forsberg, “Moving Beyond the Academic Community: Transitional Stages in Professional Writing”

Susan Katz, “A Newcomer Gains Power: An Analysis of the Role of Rhetorical Expertise”