At GDC this year, I had a chance to chat with Warren Spector about a lead designer position at his Juction Point studios. I'd seen the position advertised, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to move to Austin. Warren Spector is awesome though, so I was willing to be convinced. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: "I hear your looking for a lead designer. I'm qualified, but I don't think I want to live in Austin."

WS: "Well, there are a lot of advantages to living it Austin."

Me: "I'm really looking to settle down at a studio which emphasises quality."

WS: "Well. At Junction Point we absolutely focus on creating quality."

Me: "Was that policy put into place before or after you shipped Epic Mickey?"

Ok, I didn't really say that last bit. I considered saying it, but thought better of it right away.

The thing is, this sort of worry is pandemic among skilled designers. We all know that we aren't strictly necessary - once a contract has been signed, a well-managed team of artists and engineers can execute on any project. Designers at best only serve to enhance the quality of the final game, and at worst contribute nothing at all.

So the conundrum, as a designer, is how to identify a place which actually values quality in their products. Unless quality is spelled out as a leading principle of the studio, you can rest assured that designers will be overworked and under-valued. A good marketing campaign and/or a well-established license can guarantee sales, totally independent of quality. Why are so many movie tie-in games terrible? Because people buy them anyway. If consumers only bought quality games every studio would value quality - but that's not at all the case.

The recent industry shift towards mobile games has only made the problem worse. Mobile games are, pretty broadly, just crap. And the few games which make lots of money are not at all the highest quality games - they seem to be selected at random. So developers and mobile producers are using a scattershot method - just put things out as quickly as possible and see what sticks. Quality never even enters the picture.

However, as Satoru Iwata laid bare in his opening keynote speech at GDC, companies like Nintendo still see value in quality. Nintendo's games don't drop from $40 to $25 after two weeks - they stay at $40. Super Smash Bros. Brawl is still worth $40. Super Mario Galaxy is still worth $40.

In some ways, despite what I've said above, quality is the only reliable recipe for success. You can achieve success without quality - but you only do so randomly & haphazardly. Quality products that people actually want is the way to keep yourself relevant. That's not just true in game development - it's true in all fields.

So in some ways of thinking designers are more important now than ever precisely because so many games are willing to sacrifice quality. But it remains a very difficult prospect for talented designers to land on their feet on teams who are willing to make quality a priority.