I think we need more design-ders. Or code-signers. Whatevs.
The argument against it is that a lot of successful game designers don’t code at all and that it’s going to give something else as a result in games compared to the classic designers/coders team.
How is that not great? We need that. I wish I could like Jon Blow, Chris Hecker or Eskil code my ideas, right here. I’m trying, copying and pasting code, battling with assemblies in Unity and it’s awful and it’s barely the start. Ew.
For some reason, having a coder doing exactly what you want or sharing the same aesthetics, or making him work on what you need right now is not as easy as it sounds. Plus, doing a game is hard so you need a really strong relationship with him on top of that. That’s the reason we see more and more successful coder/designer teams being siblings, couples or friends from kindergarten. I wrote about it two years ago and in my case, it’s not easy to get someone to work on my concept and maybe because I’m a crazy control freak or so ferociously independent, I want to do it myself or understand as much as I can how it works.
So, good for Ueda san or Miyamoto to have a team of people dedicated and paid to please them and I wish I could have the same, but I don’t! And a lot of game designers don’t either.
The problem is, transferring ideas and mechanics into working code in the same brain, hurts. A lot. But it’s doable and as tools are making it easier and easier, more and more people will do it, just to go faster, spend less or stay truer to the original, designer vision, all of them being really good reasons. It sure will bring new challenges and its own share of conservatism, but I think that the business side of games is calling for people like that right now. People who can sustain a vision, thanks to having a precise design/build view. It’s still so rare!
This breed of game developers needs to get bigger, as we are stagnating so much in our little worlds. We can’t afford to be conservative in this area, as we are in others (fuck you WASD, fuck you; please no more pixel art chiptune, pleaaase).