[kd5bjo]

If you have a computer science/programming background, don’t worry too much about the skills you listed— they’re not ultimately that different than what you’ve already learned and you can pick them up as needed.

The game design skills are probably what you should be focusing on first: as far as I know, nobody knows how to teach them and the only way to learn is to make (bad) games yourself. Come up with a small idea, make a prototype, and play it. Ask yourself which parts are fun and which parts aren’t; make an adjustment and try again, or start over with a different game idea.

As you go through this process, you’ll necessarily need to acquire some technical skills, but they’ll each be in support of a specific outcome. More importantly, you’ll start to understand how your decisions at the design/programming stage affect the players’ experience.

[AwesomeFaic]

I would argue against that nobody knows how to teach game design, I majored in Computer Science & Game Design at Northeastern University and their program taught us the relation between mechanics and emotion, asking the right questions, and understanding the challenge of player education. Of course, these are a minor subset of game design but are arguably some of the most challenging elements, especially to learn on your own.

In terms of self-education, I would recommend to play as many games as possible, and play them twice. The first, as a player: develop an emotional connection with the experience. The second, as a designer: look at everything under a magnifying glass and never stop asking "why did they do this the way they did?" Hope that helps, just my 2 cents.

[kd5bjo]

I tend to think of all creative disciplines (including game design) as both universally learnable and unteachable. They’re the class of things that fundamentally hinge on personal style, which develops only through experience.

There are certainly associated technical skills that can be taught effectively, where there’s a definite right and wrong technique. There’s also analysis, where you take an existing work and figure out how it produces the effect it does. That’s also teachable and can provide a font of inspiration of things to try, but there’s a world of difference between knowing why something works and being able to pull off the same trick yourself.

Beyond that, most classes in creative disciplines seem to be primarily a bunch of prompts to get the students to make lots of different things, and exercise their creativity.

[AwesomeFaic]

Fair points! I will concede the fact that my example + experience has taught me how to learn, but didn't necessarily teach me directly. Solid rebuttal. I think there are intricacies within game design that are quantitative enough (either due to their relation with technical or otherwise non-creative elements) that the systems can be inherently taught. But I do agree that plain-and-simple "good design" is something learned from experience and application.