– Game industry veteran Brenda Romero reminds us that negative feedback is a hard but necessary thing to give your fellow developers if you want to make something great. Independent game designer and UC Santa Cruz professor Brenda Romero has been making games for decades, but she still considers herself a student striving for mastery of the art. At GDC 2014 she explained some of what she’d learned from teaching game design to a younger generation and exhorted her fellow developers to aspire to greatness in a stirring session titled “Jiro Dreams of Game Design.” Inspired by the film “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” and her ongoing study of Michelin-starred chefs at work, Romero spoke at length about how she believes contemporary game designers can achieve something as nebulous as “mastery” and why it’s important to try, especially when shipping games often means compromising on an ideal vision. We’ve gone ahead and embedded the free video of “Jiro Dreams of Game Design” above, but you can also watch it here on the GDC Vault.
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