As part of their "Gaming University" series, PC gaming website Gamespy has recently posted a secind Q&A session with Ion Storm's game design guru and mentor Warren Spector.

In the Q&A session, Spector candidly tackles questions from designer and producer hopefuls trying to break into the ever-increasing industry:

The best advice I can give to aspiring designers is, first, learn to code, and second, get as broad an education as you can. Design may be the only job that really rewards a liberal arts education. I mean, on one game, you may need to know everything about the D-Day invasion, on another about medieval castles, on another about alien biology (and think how important linguistics might be to you when you have to create a language for the aliens your biology studies allowed you to create!) On just about every game you work on, you're going to need a solid understanding of psychology and economics. You're going to be generating design documents, and sometimes, box or ad copy, so hone your writing skills. You just never know what you're going to need to know, so know as much as you can about as many things as possible.

Right now, I'd say anyone who starts an independent game development studio is pretty much nuts. It's a tough, tough time for developers these days. Game development is expensive -- and getting more so all the time. Game development is risky. And no matter how great an idea you have and how well you execute it, you pretty much need a publisher anyway. And, publishers are going to want to control the copyrights and trademarks to the stuff they publish. I suppose it's possible to develop an idea using someone else's money and then bring it to publishers to see if anyone's interested in bringing it to market, but I wouldn't recommend it.

It's an interesting read. Click on the links below to read more.

Gaming University: Warren Spector Q&A

Gaming University Q&A Index

Gamespy's Gaming University Series

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