Well, on TQ I made a big chunk of the game’s levels and on TQ:IT I must have made half of them, including the secret passage with some help from Arthur and Parnell. Funny story about that. I got in a bit of trouble for putting it in the game. It was added just a couple days before we made our gold master. The producers were livid but I thought the game needed an Easter Egg that paid homage to the team. So we crammed it in there at the last minute.
The biggest challenge for me during the development of TQ? This is a tough one but I think it comes down to this one thing. The creative direction of the game was frustrating for me, at times. I wanted to see it be a little more grim and hardcore. In retrospect I think it worked out fine.
The most important things I’ve learned about game design.
1 - You’re often wrong when you’re convinced you’re right. I always fight for my own ideas, but I take other people’s ideas and opinions very seriously. I’ll often go off and obsess over them for days until I come to the realization that they are right (or sometimes wrong). This is something I learned from Arthur.
2 - (This is directly tied to #1) A designers job isn’t always to have the best ideas or the right solutions to a problem. His job is to develop the best ideas or solutions, which often means going out and finding them. New designers frequently feel like it’s their job to have all the answers and this leads them to assume they’re right all the time.
3 - It’s easy for game devs to get so jaded and over experienced that they lose sight of what their audience really wants.
4 - I must be a damn robot because I can’t read the CAPTCHA image verification on this forum.