Rare is the leader who can actually write well(online.wsj.com)
online.wsj.com
Rare is the leader who can actually write well
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123154076720569453.html?mod=rss_Politics_And_Policy
9 comments
It's because writing is really hard to fake. You can fake friendliness, you can fake efficiency. Some people are bright but have a hard time speaking quickly. A lot of that stuff isn't really indicative of a person.
You can't fake writing. You've got to have the right skills to write or else it won't work. And a lot of the things that make writing good - empathy, flair, organization - are things that help in any situation.
You can't fake writing. You've got to have the right skills to write or else it won't work. And a lot of the things that make writing good - empathy, flair, organization - are things that help in any situation.
As a CS grad student with an undergrad degree in creative writing, I always feel like I have to explain how I got here.
I usually tell people I have an affinity for metaphors, and remind them that their desktop, folders and files are all electronic metaphors.
I usually tell people I have an affinity for metaphors, and remind them that their desktop, folders and files are all electronic metaphors.
I'm double-majoring in CS and creative writing--I'm trying to synthesize a curriculum that leads directly to being an optimal choice as a game designer (not developer.) People who think I'm trying to be a developer don't get the writing part, and people who think I'm trying to be something like a screenwriter don't get the CS part. It's all very frustrating, but I think it'll work out.
What is a game designer, out of curiosity? I mean, I get the basics, but game designers don't do most of the programming, do they? They just need a general overview of how the game is working?
I could explain it, but it's easier to just show you an example. A game designer writes things like this: http://www.squidi.net/three/
Coming up with new game ideas is the holy grail of game design, but a game designer's day to day work is creating and refining game content, often working with programmers to tweak the implementation.
For instance, take Super Mario Bros.: the developer would write the graphics rendering code, physics, make a level editor, etc, but it's the game designers who decided beforehand what the concepts would be, and work afterward to create and playtest the levels themselves until the game is fun.
For a more modern example, in World of Warcraft, developers push all the polygons and worry about collision detection and timing of spell effects, while game designers say "the fireball spell should do n damage at x range, and the Whatzisname questline should have such-and-such a set of rewards; here's the dialogue script."
If you prefer, you can think of developers as providing the toolkit, and designers as building the game with it, but in a much more iterative process.
For instance, take Super Mario Bros.: the developer would write the graphics rendering code, physics, make a level editor, etc, but it's the game designers who decided beforehand what the concepts would be, and work afterward to create and playtest the levels themselves until the game is fun.
For a more modern example, in World of Warcraft, developers push all the polygons and worry about collision detection and timing of spell effects, while game designers say "the fireball spell should do n damage at x range, and the Whatzisname questline should have such-and-such a set of rewards; here's the dialogue script."
If you prefer, you can think of developers as providing the toolkit, and designers as building the game with it, but in a much more iterative process.
I decided that I do want to take a crack at explaining:
It's important to make the distinction: fun doesn't only apply to games. A ludologist would be perfectly at home in UI design, for example, or education (and also obviously things like toy and amusement-park design.) You could hire a "game designer" for those positions right now, but people would look at you funny because the branding's wrong.
However, just as there's a difference between computer scientists and programmers, there's a difference between ludologists and the risen-through-the-ranks game designer that we see today, so it wouldn't be a perfect fit. The game designer may know some facts about how to make things fun, and have some theories as to why certain game design patterns produce fun, but they've been "hard-won" on the street; they've never formally studied it, mostly extracting it from their practice in other game-related disciplines (art, coding, level design, etc.) That kind of game designer is half-developer (or artist, or playtester, or what-have-you) working in a sort of cowboy fashion to advance the field.
Of course, ludology is in its absolute infancy (it's about 20 years younger than formal Computer Science) so it's still not even recognized as a separate discipline; thus, the only ones working on it are making their advances in the field, similar to the original computer programmers who had to be Computer Scientists, because no one had thought the thoughts they needed to think to base their work on.
As I said, I'm taking CS and English courses. Tack on a bit of psychology and sociology, some media history courses, and whatever it is that teaches game theory (economics? basically, "fairness" as it relates to fun), and you'd have a good starting program for the actual teaching of formal Ludology. I was always thinking about being a CS professor one day; I might have to change that plan a bit, and perhaps write up my own curriculum ;)
game design : fun :: computer science : information
It's important to make the distinction: fun doesn't only apply to games. A ludologist would be perfectly at home in UI design, for example, or education (and also obviously things like toy and amusement-park design.) You could hire a "game designer" for those positions right now, but people would look at you funny because the branding's wrong.
However, just as there's a difference between computer scientists and programmers, there's a difference between ludologists and the risen-through-the-ranks game designer that we see today, so it wouldn't be a perfect fit. The game designer may know some facts about how to make things fun, and have some theories as to why certain game design patterns produce fun, but they've been "hard-won" on the street; they've never formally studied it, mostly extracting it from their practice in other game-related disciplines (art, coding, level design, etc.) That kind of game designer is half-developer (or artist, or playtester, or what-have-you) working in a sort of cowboy fashion to advance the field.
Of course, ludology is in its absolute infancy (it's about 20 years younger than formal Computer Science) so it's still not even recognized as a separate discipline; thus, the only ones working on it are making their advances in the field, similar to the original computer programmers who had to be Computer Scientists, because no one had thought the thoughts they needed to think to base their work on.
As I said, I'm taking CS and English courses. Tack on a bit of psychology and sociology, some media history courses, and whatever it is that teaches game theory (economics? basically, "fairness" as it relates to fun), and you'd have a good starting program for the actual teaching of formal Ludology. I was always thinking about being a CS professor one day; I might have to change that plan a bit, and perhaps write up my own curriculum ;)
Okay! That makes a lot of sense. Thanks a lot for explaining.
Are you in that job right now, to my parent post? What sorts of things have you learned from it? What trends do you see developing within the industry?
Are you in that job right now, to my parent post? What sorts of things have you learned from it? What trends do you see developing within the industry?
I don't work in the game industry. I'm just a lifelong player who has talked from time to time with game developers. So don't take this as gospel, but here's my take on long-term prospects.
"AAA" games, the real earthshakers like Halo and World of Warcraft, can only be made by large teams with multi-million-dollar budgets. Inescapable truth. Success in conventional game development has come to depend more and more on a corporate lifestyle: no loose cannons, no lone geniuses. Game developers have to master their C and C++ and perfect their 3D optimizations; game designers have to be very lucky, very hardworking, and very low-paid. (The design side is much harder to break into.)
Games from established studios have to be guaranteed moneymakers, mostly appealing to 15-to-35-year-old males, which is why we see lots and lots of online gunplay and me-too rhythm and karaoke games. The sudden upswing in rhythm and karaoke games points out the increasing mainstreaming of video games, though, which brings me to point 2:
Independent development. The internet has made it extremely easy to write a simple game in Flash or something and get it plastered all over the internet. You go viral with a decent business model, you can cash in, and quite a few games have already been optioned for downloadable console ports after an online success. Especially for casual games -- pick-up-and-go entertainment, usually in the puzzle category -- this can be a great road to recognition, and it's the only one available to the reclusive-genius solo programmer.
Solo development with internet distribution is also the only way to release game types that just aren't that popular these days. I've been playing a game named The Spirit Engine 2 [ http://thespiritengine.com/ ] lately; if you look at the screenshots, you can see that it's not the kind of game that would fly on the mass market.
In fact, my advice to anyone who wants to "make games" is just to make games. Don't go work for a game company. You'll do more work for less pay than you would in any other programming job, and you probably won't even scratch your game-creation itch -- you think you'll be slaving away on Doom 7, but it's far more likely that you'll be fixing graphics buffer glitches in Horsez [ http://www.amazon.com/Horsez-Nintendo-DS/dp/B000GJ0J1K ].
"AAA" games, the real earthshakers like Halo and World of Warcraft, can only be made by large teams with multi-million-dollar budgets. Inescapable truth. Success in conventional game development has come to depend more and more on a corporate lifestyle: no loose cannons, no lone geniuses. Game developers have to master their C and C++ and perfect their 3D optimizations; game designers have to be very lucky, very hardworking, and very low-paid. (The design side is much harder to break into.)
Games from established studios have to be guaranteed moneymakers, mostly appealing to 15-to-35-year-old males, which is why we see lots and lots of online gunplay and me-too rhythm and karaoke games. The sudden upswing in rhythm and karaoke games points out the increasing mainstreaming of video games, though, which brings me to point 2:
Independent development. The internet has made it extremely easy to write a simple game in Flash or something and get it plastered all over the internet. You go viral with a decent business model, you can cash in, and quite a few games have already been optioned for downloadable console ports after an online success. Especially for casual games -- pick-up-and-go entertainment, usually in the puzzle category -- this can be a great road to recognition, and it's the only one available to the reclusive-genius solo programmer.
Solo development with internet distribution is also the only way to release game types that just aren't that popular these days. I've been playing a game named The Spirit Engine 2 [ http://thespiritengine.com/ ] lately; if you look at the screenshots, you can see that it's not the kind of game that would fly on the mass market.
In fact, my advice to anyone who wants to "make games" is just to make games. Don't go work for a game company. You'll do more work for less pay than you would in any other programming job, and you probably won't even scratch your game-creation itch -- you think you'll be slaving away on Doom 7, but it's far more likely that you'll be fixing graphics buffer glitches in Horsez [ http://www.amazon.com/Horsez-Nintendo-DS/dp/B000GJ0J1K ].
That's a great explanation!
I wonder: do a lot of CS people feel connected to writing? I never thought so, though I know music is a common connection. But most people here write fairly well, and you get a lot of eloquent posts. Is that a common trait among hackers, that they write?
I wonder: do a lot of CS people feel connected to writing? I never thought so, though I know music is a common connection. But most people here write fairly well, and you get a lot of eloquent posts. Is that a common trait among hackers, that they write?
I think it may depend upon the school you go to. The CS people at VT, if double-majoring, went to math (to be fair, our CS major all but gives you a math minor already). If it was a more liberal-arts school, it may have gone more towards writing.
Regardless of political belief, Reagan was a prolific writer of letters that were articulate and thoughtful. I seem to remember someone collected them into a book.
I would add to this that writers ideally be able to use "8th grade English", so it is easy for any English speaker to read.
It's a global workforce. Yet too often, I see a colleague send a brain dump of 3 or 4 paragraphs to someone in another country. Imagine yourself having to use a translation dictionary for half of that?
It really helps if you use just common English words, in brief sentences. And yes, this might take extra editing time. Yet, this helps anyone reading it, not just those with English as a second language.
It's a global workforce. Yet too often, I see a colleague send a brain dump of 3 or 4 paragraphs to someone in another country. Imagine yourself having to use a translation dictionary for half of that?
It really helps if you use just common English words, in brief sentences. And yes, this might take extra editing time. Yet, this helps anyone reading it, not just those with English as a second language.
You're approaching it from the wrong perspective. English is the lingua franca. If your colleague were really nice, he would translate his message into Hindi, but that isn't an effective use of time. Neither is writing in Simple English.
Let the recipient use a dictionary. After a while he won't have to anymore.
Let the recipient use a dictionary. After a while he won't have to anymore.
That isn't really fair to the recipient. Why should he or she spend extra time figuring out what you said, and you spend no time at all making it easier to read?
If the company is paying me 10x what it's paying them then it's probably more cost effective for me to brain dump (if it's clear) than it is to clean up for the reader. This is not about outsourcing the same thing happens with emails from senior management.
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Rare is a company that made GoldenEye for N64.
Fantastic game. Played it enough back in college to realize that the spawn points in multiplayer weren't random. That realization changed the dynamics of the game somewhat....
More on-topic, I think the title is wrong. People who can write well tend to be better at social organization. Mao was - among other things - a librarian and poet.
More on-topic, I think the title is wrong. People who can write well tend to be better at social organization. Mao was - among other things - a librarian and poet.
the data doesn't necessarily back up that leaders aren't good writers. maybe recent american politicians, but what about Jefferson, Lincoln and Franklin (not a President, but on the $5 note), not to mention the writers of the federalist papers and constitution. maybe we're talking about a different kind of "write well".
Benjamin Franklin's autobiography is a hoot. (Lincoln is on the $5, Franklin is on the $100.)
Jefferson gets all the good press, but Franklin was more accomplished at more things. (Ben did fundamental work in electricity.)
Jefferson gets all the good press, but Franklin was more accomplished at more things. (Ben did fundamental work in electricity.)
I don't write much in terms of stories, poems, blog articles, essays, etc. But I do write a lot in forum posts, emails and everyday work notes (into the tens of thousands of posts over the years).
Yet I've never got much feedback about my writing style. With ten thousand posts of careful practise, I would presumably be pretty good by now. What a wasted opportunity.
Yet I've never got much feedback about my writing style. With ten thousand posts of careful practise, I would presumably be pretty good by now. What a wasted opportunity.
I find that forum posts (like on Hacker News) help a lot with writing essays, if for no other reason than it helps you develop your arguments. Ditto blog articles, though every blog is different and most of the "good" blogs are terrible.
Stories are different, though learning to construct an argument helps you plan out stories. Learning the aesthetics of a language isn't something forumming helps with. And poetry is an entirely different entity from either: it's almost all aesthetic.
The problem with feedback is that each thing you do is trying to do something different. If you state yourself clearly online, there's not much more you have to do. And yet look at somebody like why the lucky stiff, who's elevated his writing style to a level above anything I've encountered online. He doesn't have to do that, but he does it anyway.
Stories are different, though learning to construct an argument helps you plan out stories. Learning the aesthetics of a language isn't something forumming helps with. And poetry is an entirely different entity from either: it's almost all aesthetic.
The problem with feedback is that each thing you do is trying to do something different. If you state yourself clearly online, there's not much more you have to do. And yet look at somebody like why the lucky stiff, who's elevated his writing style to a level above anything I've encountered online. He doesn't have to do that, but he does it anyway.
s/actually//
's/s\/actually\/\//s\/actually\/also\//'
The only valid use of 'actually' that I can think of is to correct someone in a smug way ('actually: synonymous with 'you idiot''). Any other use seems to be filler. Am I missing some good uses for it?
"1 + 1 is 11" "acccctually, it's 2"
"1 + 1 is 11" "acccctually, it's 2"
I had a coworker who used to use "in reality" in place of "actually", which is even worse. Usually he used it immediately prior to statements that needed quite a bit of justification. It used to drive me nuts. Eventually I realized that when he said, "in reality," he meant, "in my opinion," and from then on we got along much better.
ACTUALLY, I was simply dropping the "my" from "in my reality", since in so many situations you seemed to be inhabiting your own unique reality. :)
No Mussolini or Caesar on the list? Is it English only?
Isn't Mao's Little Red Book one of the most printed books in human history?
Isn't Mao's Little Red Book one of the most printed books in human history?
That should be - "Rare is the leader who can actually write good"
That's because being a good writer is about more than words. Good writers know how to communicate. They make things easy to understand. They can put themselves in someone else's shoes. They know what to omit. They think clearly. And those are the qualities you need."
http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch08_Wordsmiths.php