Game On: 12 Fascinating Fun Facts Every Video Game Designer Fan Should Know

1. From Mail-Order to Gaming Giant: The Ubisoft Origins

Picture this: a family of five secretly gathers in a dark room, carefully trading cutting-edge gadgets like a French-accented Ocean's Eleven crew. The name of their game? Ubisoft! Indeed, this world-renowned video game company started off selling computer hardware and software in 1986 as a humble mail-order business: Founded by none other than the crafty Guillemot family in France, today Ubisoft proudly employs more than 20,000 people worldwide and boasts development studios in multiple countries, crafting legendary franchises like Assassin's Creed and Tom Clancy's.
Source => en.wikipedia.org

2. Professional Hide-and-Seek: Game Testers

Ever wondered who gets to play hide-and-seek professionally with Gremlins in video game land? Hint: it's not Bill Murray in Ghostbusters: Professional game testers are the unsung heroes who uncover bugs and glitches while also scrutinizing the entertainment value, saving developers precious time and effort, streamlining the marketing process, and preserving the integrity of the gaming industry.
Source => qable.io

Did you know a digital artist named Beeple sold a piece of digital art for an incredible $68.3 million, making it the third most valuable artwork in existence? Discover how non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are revolutionizing the art world! 🎨💻💰

=> Fun Facts about Digital-Art

3. Iron Chef of Gaming: Game Jams

It's the gaming world's version of Iron Chef: frantic design marathons where participants concoct pixelated delight from a surprise theme, all under the pressing weight of a deadline. Enter the game jam: a gathering of video game designers given a mere one to a few days to create a game from scratch, testing their skills, knowledge, and user experience prowess to deliver an enjoyable but equally challenging digital escape.
Source => exordiumgames.com

4. Shigeru Miyamoto: The Gaming Horticulturist

When life gives you lemons, Shigeru Miyamoto creates iconic video games: The mastermind behind Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda, Miyamoto transformed his passion for gardening into the whimsical world of Pikmin, and his encounters with canine companions inspired the fan-favorite Nintendogs series. From crafting engaging ecosystems to designing revolutionary controllers, it's no wonder this gaming guru remains a household name in both Hyrule and ours.
Source => gamedeveloper.com

5. Pac-Man Fever Healer: NYU's Gaming Degree

Struggling with Pac-Man fever and Tetris dreams, game design students at NYU have the perfect prescription for their 8-bit addictions: The BFA program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts offers an interdisciplinary degree in game design, covering everything from programming and visual design to the business of gaming, with a senior capstone project and a healthy dose of liberal arts education to keep things well-rounded.
Source => gamecenter.nyu.edu

6. Co-worker Rants: Hidden Developer Diatribes

When office politics spews into digital mayhem: some video game designers have embedded secret messages, including rants about their co-workers, within the code of their games, such as in Erika to Satoru No Yume Boken and the Tetris version for Nintendo 64, where only the most dedicated players can discover these disgruntled dev diatribes!
Source => gamerant.com

7. AI Overlords in Gaming

Fear not, ye olde non-playing characters, for our digital overlords have arrived to bless thee with (artificial) intelligence: AI is revolutionizing the video game industry, enhancing visual effects and generating content faster, prompting the rapid rise of startups like latitude, Osmo, and Gosu Data Lab—all contributing to an anticipated 314 billion USD market value by 2026.
Source => pixelplex.io

8. Hollywood Meets Gaming: Hideo Kojima's Latest

Who says Hollywood magic and video game worlds don't mix? Hideo Kojima and his band of creative masterminds channeled their inner "Stranger Things" to unveil their latest project in a cryptic game of virtual whisper-down-the-lane: Kojima Productions is collaborating with Elle Fanning, hinting at either a Death Stranding sequel or a new horror game, and more details are to be unwrapped at The Game Awards on December 9th.
Source => engadget.com

9. Inspiring Worlds: Hollow Knight and Valheim Origins

From humble ant hills to Valhalla itself, the creative buzz behind gaming masterpieces knows no bounds: the designers of "Hollow Knight: Silksong" drew inspiration from their fascination with insects, while the creator of "Valheim" nostalgically channeled their childhood frolics in the forest.
Source => reddit.com

10. Mathemagician's Galactic Creation: No Man's Sky

Who needs a galaxy far, far away when you can have quintillions right here in your fingertips? Meet the mathemagician behind the most astronomical game in the universe: Sean Murray, designer of "No Man's Sky," conjured an algorithm for procedural generation that spawned over 18 quintillion planets with unique features like alien races, flora, and varying shades of land and water, all by playing with parameters such as planet radius, water percentage, foliage density, temperature, resource distribution, toxicity, and radioactivity.
Source => thumbsticks.com

11. Frenzied Pixel Paradise: Global Game Jam

Ever imagined a sleep-deprived, caffeinated conglomeration of gaming fanatics furiously coding away in a frenzied, pixelated paradise? Buckle up, because it's not just an elusive dream anymore: The Global Game Jam unleashes this exact phenomenon every year, inviting hordes of talented gamers to create their own pixel masterpieces in a mere 48 hours, backed by industry giants like Sony, Microsoft, and Unity – and boasting over 9,000 innovative games since its creation!
Source => globalgamejam.org

12. Young Miyamoto: The Birth of Zelda

Before Hyrule and heart containers became teenage dreams, young Shigeru Miyamoto roamed the lands with a skip in his step and wanderlust in his heart: these childhood escapades exploring the great outdoors would eventually inspire him to create the open-world game, The Legend of Zelda.
Source => gamedeveloper.com