How we teach is as important as what we teach.

The purpose of teaching is to develop competence. Unfortunately, the game design field seems to have forgotten about this. Teachers mistake Practice for Experience and ditch Theory because “it’s useless”.

On the other hand, students get stuck in bad situations that turn the hiring process into a never-ending nightmare. How we teach game design to beginners has as many issues as how we hire them.

And, to not much surprise, these 2 issues are closely related.

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Let’s make some clarity.

First, we’ll establish the difference between two main concepts in teaching and learning: Study and Experience. Then, we’ll look at the shape of the current game design teaching along with its 3 major mistakes. In the end, we’ll discuss the main issue of judging the competence of beginner game designers during the hiring process (along with a practical solution).

So here’s today’s menu.

• The Non-Trivial Difference Between Study And Experience
• How We Teach Game Design Today (Not Good)
• The 3 Hurting Mistakes Of Game Design Teaching
• Getting Out Of The Absurd Deadlock Of The Game Designer Hiring Process

Here we have it.

We have a lot to discuss.

Get comfortable, grab your favorite beverage (I pulled out a delicious hot tea 🍵), and let’s dive into it.

The Non-Trivial Difference Between Study And Experience

First things first, we need to define what we’re talking about.

Study and Experience are not the same thing. And neither are they enemies, as some would like to push for. They are the 2 engines by which you can become an expert.

Let’s explore them one by one.

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Studying means collecting, acquiring, and understanding concepts.

The typical mental image of studying involves someone focused on reading text materials or attending a class. A passive activity to absorb content. However, as we saw in the previous episode, Theory and Practice are equally important. If we focus on just one of the 2, we’re not learning but “half-learning”.

In fact, sometimes Practice is treated as “the real thing”.

The one that kicks into the learning process to somehow “correct the Theory part” (which is considered incomplete). This view has always harmed both learning and the discipline as a whole. This directly links to the concept of a “good qualitative theory-practice relationship” we saw in the previous episode. The point is that a Theory that doesn’t correctly represent Practice doesn’t mean theories are useless; it means you just need to change that specific theory.

But what about Experience?

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Learning through Experience means catching patterns in a dynamic environment.

We could end the explanation here, but I want to address a widespread misunderstanding. Practice and Experience are 2 different things. As we’ve said, the first is about the “what”, and the second is about the “how”. But let’s go deeper.

The main difference has to do with the number of variables at play.

In Practice, we’re exploring the practical consequences of a theoretical model. The goal is to get more used to it and learn how to use it in a controlled (and safe) environment shaped to test our skills. They’re exactly what you think: exercises. They differ from “real-world scenarios” because the teachers intentionally leave out some variables to simplify the situation and better test competence. For example, a physics student messing up with gravity equations uses a simplified model that he would use in a real-world situation.

Of course, the value of Practice as learning content is structured thinking. Although real-world scenarios have more variables to consider, the way we need to think is the same.

This also tells us that Experience is not a substitute for Practice; more on that later.

Let’s now get into Game Design specifically.

How We Teach Game Design Today (Not Good)

How does Game Design feel about Study and Experience?

I'll admit, it's not so good. Both sides have flaws that hinder both beginners and veterans. The firsts have no clear path to follow and can't develop actual competence. Most of the seconds won't update their knowledge, becoming "game design dinosaurs" with old ways of thinking.

But let's see the details.

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On the “Study” side, there are no source materials.

Yes, it’s as simple as that. Most Game Design school programs don’t teach game design from the inside, but they do it from the outside. After a simplified introduction, they either jump directly to Practice (which is always trial-and-error-based) or turn everything into a psychology class. If you remember the lack of theoretical models, this should be no surprise.

In the world, there are few Game Design-only schools.

Not to mention Game Design branches only schools; pretty much nonexistent. Most are Game Dev schools (or random Universities) with a Game Design course.

Yeah, true, you may find some only Level Design programs. Yet, it’s the exception confirming the rule since Level Design is the most structured branch of the 6. For example, there is no single Gameplay Design course.

The reason is super simple: no one knows what to teach about Gameplay Design alone. So, there’s not enough material to create a learning program only on that.

And what about the Experience side?

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On the Experience side, we have a more nuanced scenario instead.

Considering the difference between Practice and Experience, the issue has 2 faces. Low availability and high variability. Let me explain.

Real-world scenarios are hard to replicate and, overall, to have access to.

Schools would need a huge infrastructure to recreate a real development team scenario. Anyone who participated in an end-of-year project knows how difficult it is to manage. Also, there can't be an internship for every student on earth.

On the other hand, each company is its own world.

I'm not pointing at the obvious "different games require different design skills". I'm looking more at the often huge difference between how Game Design is intended in companies, which can vary, a lot. They can have totally different design thinking principles and methodologies. Again, this sounds like a formal model issue. And it is, indeed!

But there's more (unfortunately).

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Another major problem is using experience as the only learning method.

Here lies the most common advice to absolute beginners: attend Game Jam. I have nothing against Game Jam per sé; they're fun and great for networking.

However, many issues arise when considering them a good starting point for the game design journey. They are not a good example of how companies work or how a Game Design process is laid out. Furthermore, it's a random mess of many things for a beginner to manage. He doesn't have a mental model of how games are made, and he can't learn anything actually useful.

It's not a great learning process, isn't it?

It's like throwing a kid into the ocean to teach him to swim. If he manages to learn, it's only by sheer luck.

But let me give you a game design reference about this. Starting directly with real-world experience is like having a game without a tutorial and pretending to ease the player into the game. We don't do it for the player, and there's no reason why we should treat beginner game designers differently.

Challenging them with tasks they have no mental model of is a terrible mistake.

So, speaking of mistakes, let's examine how Game Design teaching negatively shapes game designers' journeys.

The 3 Hurting Mistakes Of Game Design Teaching

As we've just analyzed, Game Design Teaching has many issues.

We can rant about it all day, detailing every inch of things that we could improve. However, we can easily group these mistakes by spotlighting the major ones.

There are 3 main mistakes every beginner game designer faces:

• The “Theory Is Useless” Mindset
• The Learning Path Is Governed By Luck
• Experience Is The Main Learning Method

These are structural mistakes and are not necessarily someone's fault.

The worst thing is that they often hide behind your passion for games. But now you can spot them quickly and focus on how to get yourself back on track.

Let's see them one by one.

Mistake #1: The “Theory Is Useless” Mindset

Game Design learning nowadays is fundamentally random.

A beginner game designer can choose between 2 opposite yet equally problematic learning paths.

• Randomly rummage through contradictory materials online
• Take a leap of faith to catch the right course or school

Both are as dangerous as common situations that many beginners face at the start of their journey.

Online, you can find everything and its opposite, and school programs are often very different from one another. The reason is there's pretty much nothing to actually teach. It's just trial-and-error with guidance and a bunch of "web content" and "best practices" to make mass.

And that's exactly where the phrase "Theory is useless" comes from.

Considering the scenario, I empathize; honestly, the conclusion is quite granted. However, this spreads wrong thinking and hides the real issue. It's not by throwing away theory that we can solve the challenge of understanding what we're doing when designing games. The lack of design tools is still there, compromising both learning and teaching.

So, it's not Theory as a whole that is useless; "bad theories" are.

Frameworks that don't explain anything and don't improve your decision-making skills. Concepts that remain too high-level and ignore underlying mechanisms. And ultimately, theoretical models that don't directly link to and influence the practice of the design process.

If we stick to those "bad theories", we can't teach anything to new generations.

Mistake #2: The Learning Path Is Governed By Luck

Game Design relies too much on Experience as a learning method.

Again, the main issue here is the lack of standards and models, but let’s not repeat ourselves. Instead, I want to focus on what it means.

A discipline progresses only when practical knowledge is “solidified”. We need to stabilize understandings and methodologies so we can replicate those results in the future. And, most importantly, teach them to the next generation entering the field.

Relying only on Experience means reinventing the wheel every time.

Newcomers have nothing to learn; they just need to do the thing and learn from themselves. This way, frustration and getting lost kick in very quickly. Methodologies remain hidden behind veteran automatisms. Veterans are often exceptional at the craft, yet they have a hard time explaining how they do it.

From the student’s perspective, learning becomes an endless trial-and-error.

Understanding how things work is mainly a stroke of luck based on one thing: encountering the “right scenario” and driving the “right conclusions”. Yet, since this is never guaranteed, the student doesn’t need a course or a teacher to do this. So, teaching becomes self-learning, with all the issues that come with it.

As we’ll see at the end, this is the base of the distrust from companies to game schools.

Mistake #3: “Experience" Is The Main Learning Method

Experience by itself is a bad teacher for beginners.

This is an unpopular opinion, so let me explain. Experience seems covered by an aura of mystical effectiveness. This explains advice like “Jump into Unity and make something” or “The only way you learn to design games is by designing games”. And here’s the worst part.

It leads to lessons laid out “in reverse”, where students face a new problem without any prior mental model. I get the “learn by doing”, but we’re going a little too far here.

When we face something new, our brain tries to come up with a mental model of it.

It will be a mash-up of similar concepts. The closest mindset regarding games a beginner has is the “player’s mindset”.

However, it’s too superficial to actually understand something as counterintuitive as game design. This way of teaching grounds itself in a fact: making mistakes triggers learning. And it’s true, but there’s a catch missing.

It’s not the mistake that makes you learn, but the understanding of how and why you made that mistake. You improve your mental model about that concept.

So you’re not making the student “experience a real scenario”.

You’re just ditching Theory, skipping to Practice, and turning learning into guesswork. It’s like there’s a granted belief that Game Design can be somehow intuitive starting from scratch.

First, “intuition” is not a thing; concepts and ideas don’t appear in our brains by magic. Everything is always a re-elaboration of something else. Second, a Game Designer is not just a passionate player who makes games. The player’s perspective is superficial and often flawed when it comes to designing games.

You can’t unlock Game Design knowledge in your head just by merely experiencing things.

So what’s Experience for, then?

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Experience is an enhancer of your competence.

Discarding Experience would be 100% a huge mistake; don’t drive the wrong conclusions from what I said. It just needs its proper place.

By facing complex and different real-world challenges, you learn how to manage hard scenarios. Also, you develop heuristics, making your understanding of Theory and Practice more effective. So, Experience is an extraordinary mentor who helps you improve what you already have a mental model of.

You can quickly spot details and advanced nuances and adapt your studied methodologies. This improves your competence since you know what you’re doing.

And speaking of competence, let’s address the main point where all these issues converge and shape a worrying state of the game industry.

Getting Out Of The Absurd Deadlock Of The Game Designer Hiring Process

With no theoretical models, being skilled in game design only means having working experience.

But this implies that gaining experience makes me a better designer no matter what I do. Yet, “working experience” is a value of time, not competence (not necessarily at least).

The truth is if you now have working experience, you had the opportunity to enhance your competence. If you’ve done it or not that’s another matter. So, despite experience being an important element, it’s not a metric for game design skills. Combine this with the lack of trust between game companies and schools, and the current state of the game industry becomes pretty clear.

Real-world experience is what moves the needle in getting hired.

Of course, it’s not the only factor, but it’s often required even for junior roles. However, the only way you gain experience is by being hired by those places that want it from you in the first place.

There’s a term for this in Computer Science: Deadlock. A stall situation where each element requires something from another and vice versa. The beginner game designer needs experience from the game company. And the game company needs experience (to leverage through work) from the game designer.

How do you solve a Deadlock scenario, then?

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In an isolated environment, a Deadlock has no solution, so…

You must bring in the resources you need from outside. Since education is insufficient, you can only gain experience from other game companies. Of course, you can end up in a deadlock scenario as well, but they're often smaller studios. This means they usually step back by loosening the requirements or because they're in a hurry to hire. So you manage to get the experience you want.

Yet, the problems don't end here.

Let's assume the game company can provide you with the experience you need (not necessarily the case, though). You often have a mismatch.

A disconnection between what you're seeking and what the company hired you for. A company (especially a small one) doesn't hire you to learn the craft but to do it. They're not a boot camp or a school company; it's not their job.

Yes, some big companies have training programs. They're the great exception, and they can't welcome everyone.

So what can you, a beginner game designer, do?

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From a student's perspective, you can't do anything.

You can't shape the rules of the game. Trying to solve this issue is the wrong approach; you're doomed to frustration. Let me give you a different perspective. Problems don't exist; if there's a solution, solve it; if there's no solution, it's not a problem; it's a fact, so deal with it.

You can't play against the rules of the game.

You need to play with the deck of cards you have.

So the only thing you can do is focus on the 3 elements that make you a kick-ass professional:

• Game Design Knowledge
• Portfolio
• Industry Connections

The stronger these 3 factors are, the more you leverage the system's rules.

Industry connections grant you access to people, a portfolio proves your skills, and game design knowledge helps you keep your job.

They should be the focus of every beginner game designer. Every action you take should be to improve at least one of these 3 factors. The reason is simple but not obvious.

Companies who are hiring need signals of your competence.

If you're not visibly strong on those 3 factors, they will 100% rely on working experience. The keyword here is "visibly".

Remember that there are no standards in this industry. They can't check if you've studied something and call it a day. They have only 2 ways to check competence: working experience and portfolio.

The catch is that the portfolio needs to be exceptional. Working experience can be just a company name in a CV.

That's unfair, I know, but it's that way.

Don't waste energy by fighting the system from the inside; focus on those 3 factors.