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Length: ~4hrs, 21 lessons

My rating: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)

My one-liner takeaway: Successful video game design requires as much creativity as it does savviness in project management.

I haven’t played video games in almost a decade, mostly out of the guilt I’d feel when considering the hours I’d sink into what would ultimately amount to nothing. I felt the temptation arise when hearing Will Wright break down the process for designing a game. Will Wright is the genius behind Sim City, The Sims, and Spore. He deftly explains how a special kind creative process is needed from the game designer to allow for a game player to flex their creativity and externalize their imagination. While much of the course material wasn’t relevant to me, I did find a threads of relatability to my job as a product manager. Replace ‘player’ with ‘user’ (along with a few other words) and the parallels are apparent. There are phases of concept discovery, beta testing, researching the market, pitching for funding, iteration, and analysis when it’s out in the wild. One concept I loved was what he described as a local maxima, essentially optimizing your way to the wrong target, a common pitfall for my industry. I also enjoyed watching him provide real-time feedback to other game developers; it’s satisfying to hear any master of their craft explain their perspective to a young grasshopper.

If you’d like to hear it directly from Will, check out his course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!

This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.