Modern gamers might not recognize Don Daglow by name, but you will certainly feel his influence on the games you play every day. He designed some of the earliest RPGs (1975's Dungeon), strategy games (1982's Utopia), and MMOs (1991's Neverwinter Nights, not to be confused with the BioWare game of the same name) in the industry's history.Drawing on a half-century of experience behind the scenes of gaming, he concluded a recent Game Developers Conference talk, attended by GamesRadar+, with two pieces of advice to devs today: get a rich family, and develop your own style. Admittedly, one of those tips is a bit more serious than the other."I have this as one of my last points, because it is something I wanted to make prominent," Daglow says. "Have a rich daddy." He quickly acknowledged that this part is a joke – at least mostly. "No, that only solves some of the problems."Instead, his real point is this: "You want to create styles – don't reflect them." He points to the advice given on "singing competition shows," where performers are encouraged to make sure that people recognize their voice and style within the first five seconds of a song. "Lady Gaga is a great example of somebody who does this," he explains. "Billie Eilish does this." He also points to writers like American novelist Richard Brautigan. "You read five words of Brautigan, you knew you were reading Brautigan."What does that mean for game designers? "It's often mood," Daglow explains, citing the works of Hideo Kojima. "If you play a Kojima game, you recognize pretty quickly it's Kojima. So what you want to do is think about – this is a thing you work on for years and evolve for years, and the answer now might be one thing, and five years from now it might be something different – but we're trying to be a flame that emits heat, not a mirror that's reflecting other people and absorbing heat. That's the whole point behind this idea of having a style, of doing something that makes your work feel unique, and that is the best way to be timeless anywhere in this business and in craft."
