Schools That Offer Game Designer Career

Every time you use a strategy to achieve your goals, you play a game. Have you ever thought about the kind of games you play? Ask yourself these five questions to become aware of the games you play.

What games are you playing? Paying attention to this is the first step to uncovering what these games mean for you.
What makes your games worth playing? Only you can decide which game is better for you at this particular moment in your life.
Who makes the rules of your game? What are the self-imposed rules you've created about your career, life, or business? How do they make you feel?
How do you keep score? Ask yourself how you measure success, achievements, and goals.
Whose games are you playing? Are you living by the expectations of society or creating your own ones?

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You might identify as a student, a professional, an entrepreneur, a manager, an inventor, or something else.

Deep down, though, you are a gamer.

I don't mean the kind of gamer who blasts swarms of disagreeable aliens or the toxic boss who gaslights you. I mean the kind of gamer who makes strategic decisions and takes action to achieve goals.

A gamer is someone who maneuvers, anticipates, adjusts, and responds to the world. Someone who thinks, plans, and acts with intention and forethought. In other words: a human being. You have a goal. You use actions to achieve that goal. Your actions are driven by strategy. Every time you use a strategy to achieve your goals, you play a game.

For example, your goal may be to get promoted. "Learn from the experts" is one game you could play to reach it. The strategy, in this case, would be to learn from the success of other people: Seek feedback from your manager, find new mentors to coach you, and ask lots of questions. Those actions would reflect your belief that learning (your game) will help you get promoted (your goal).

"Go for low-hanging fruit" is another game you could play to get promoted. You could take easy steps first, learn as you go, and see how you like the results.

"Make a splash" is yet another option. You could join, lead, or volunteer for a high-visibility project and work hard to make it great. "Make a splash" is riskier than, say, "learn from the experts" (it's always possible a project won't succeed) but if it works, you establish yourself as someone who gets results.

You could also choose an entirely different game based on what you believe will get you that promotion — and of course, these games are not mutually exclusive. You don't have to choose one over the other. But doing everything at once can lead to burnout.

That's why it's so important to become aware of the games you are playing, not only in your career, but also in your everyday life. When you become mindful of your decisions, you can reach your goals faster and more intentionally, without entirely exhausting yourself.

To start, ask yourself these questions.

1) What games are you playing?

Let's look at some common games people play to succeed in their careers.

As you read this list, try to identify which ones you've played before and which you haven't. Pay attention to your emotional reactions.

Climb the ladder. (Follow the traditional promotion path, step by step.)
Follow the leader. (Do what the boss says.)
Follow your heart. (Pursue your dreams.)
Commit 100%. (Work as hard as you can.)
Make a living. (Think of your job as a paycheck to support your passion, lifestyle, or family.)
Shine the brightest. (Find something no one else has done and do it.)
Don't rock the boat. (Go along with the group and be a good team player.)
Outlast your rivals. (Keep going until everyone else gives up.)
Play not to lose. (Avoid risk to ensure that your career survives.)
Play to win. (No guts, no glory. Who cares about second place?)
Do whatever it takes. (Be creative … and beware of compromising your ethics.)

Which of these career games are you playing currently? Does it feel right for you? Is it a game you play well or is it a game you play because it is comfortable? Is it consistent with your values and skills? Does it cause stress or ethical discomfort?

You raise your odds of success by doing what you do well.

2) What makes your games worth playing?

A person asked three bricklayers what they were doing. One said, "I'm doing my job." Another said, "I'm feeding my family." The third said, "I'm building a monument that will endure for centuries."

Same activity, different games.

Think about a game you play. What motivates you to play your game? What motivates each of the bricklayers?

Ideally, any game you play motivates you. If it doesn't and you feel bored, stressed, empty, or yearning, consider whether you should switch games. You can do this in a couple of ways.

One: Change your goal. The bricklayer can become a teacher or politician.

Two: Change your motivation. The bricklayer who is just doing their job can see it, instead, as building a monument.

Only you can decide which switch (if any) is better, because only you can know what (if anything) doesn't feel right in your current life. You may switch your game multiple times.

I've personally switched my professional goal from political philosopher to business researcher and consultant. I've switched my motivation from "make money" to "make my mark," and from "I'll do this someday," to "There's not much time left."

3) Who makes the rules of your game?

There are some immutable rules like arithmetic and the laws of physics. No matter how hard you try, you cannot break them. Then there are the self-imposed rules that come from your habits, beliefs, assumptions, ignorance, experience, or childhood. You can notice, question, revise, and even reject those rules throughout your life. I don't mean to minimize the hold that those rules might have on you — they may shape your core values and beliefs — but they are also not immutable.

These self-imposed rules can affect your life and career decisions.

Consider the bricklayers. All of them lay bricks, whether they are doing their jobs, feeding their families, or building a monument. But their self-imposed rules might affect their options, assuming that bricklaying is not the only job open to them. One might think, "I come from a long line of bricklayers and therefore I should be a bricklayer my whole life." Challenging that self-imposed rule might lead the bricklayer to say, "I'll quit my bricklaying job when I sell my first novel."

Consider your job. You might want to choose between the "don't take risks" game and the "be ambitious" game. If you intend to start or grow a family, you might create a self-imposed rule of "I need job security and therefore risks are not an option." Still, that doesn't necessarily mean you need to default to "don't take risks."

Ask yourself what job security looks like in your organization. Some rarely fire loyal, reliable employees. Other organizations have an up-or-out policy. They keep only the ambitious employees, so "don't take risks" may actually be riskier than "be ambitious."

What rules have you imposed on yourself? Do they help or hinder your career?

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4) How do you keep score?

People always want to "get ahead." The question I ask is: Get ahead of whom?

In business, market share refers to the percentage of sales your business gets in a specific market. Market share is a zero-sum game because there is always precisely 100% market share to go around. You can only gain market share if someone else loses share.

Profit and happiness, though, are not zero-sum games. Everyone can succeed, everyone can fail, and everything in between.

Winning the "get ahead" game is possible only if someone else falls behind. I'm not saying that's right or wrong. I mean only to say that win (outperform someone) is not the only way to succeed (get what you want).

How do you measure the success of your business, career, and life? You have endless options. Money. Fame. Responsibility. Joy. Contribution. Service. Discovery. Followers. Security. A peaceful life. A peaceful world. Something else.

Your bottom line is up to you.

5) Whose games are you playing?

Your immediate world teaches you which games you should play.

You receive countless messages about games. Thisnot thatis what will bring you prestige, wealth, security, and happiness. Thisnot that is what your future success looks like. Those messages appear wherever you look, listen, and absorb. You receive them from movies, songs, teachers, mentors, relatives, and stories about people who are famous and the things that made them famous. You receive messages about who is revered (and why), and who is reviled (and why). It's culture.

All of us live within cultures and all of us absorb lessons from our cultures starting when we're young. Still, no youngster announces, "When I grow up, I want to fulfill society's expectations of me!" You choose the business, career, and life games you want to play. Think about your life as a toddler, a child, an adolescent, and an adult. You have changed games a few times already. You will change games again.

I want to share a story with you about a game I learned. First, I'll share a seemingly irrelevant detail: I love movies and my home theater. I wanted to buy a particular pair of speakers, but I held off because they were ridiculously expensive.

The story is about a 20-minute crisis I experienced 23 years ago. Those 20 minutes were the most frightening experience of my life and among the most wonderful.

I got on an airplane to fly from the east coast of the United States to my home on the west coast. About five minutes after takeoff, there was a loud BANG! It was a sound everyone on board instantly knew no airplane is supposed to make.

When you look out the window during a night flight, what do you expect to see? You expect to see black. I saw evil flickering red. An engine had blown up and it was burning.

When I realized what had happened to the plane, a thought flashed through my head, a thought that made every previous thought seem like the faintest mental whisper. This thought was a mental roar. It was the clearest, loudest, simplest thought I'd ever had. I WANT TO LIVE.

Obviously, we survived. The flight crew knew what to do — the value of training with simulation — and we made an emergency landing 20 minutes later. I got off the plane, knees shaking, and got on another an hour later.

The next day, I bought those speakers.