How the heck would I know if I'd make a good game designer?

(I like me some words, so if you feel like skimming, basic stuff is in bold-italics lol):

Story Time: I've played video games since I was five and my dad forced me to play Ready 2 Rumble with him--it all seemed such a fuss until Afro Thunder burst in and stole my heart. Fast forward to middle school and I started picking out games on my own--mostly RPGs with some fighting and strategy and Mario and blessed Harvest Moon mixed in. Some puzzles. Adventure point-and-clicks? To die for. So I stumble through yada yada life yada yada high school yada yada want to be a writer yada yada college yada yada piddle around with game design yada yada. Got a creative degree that wasn’t games-related. Wrote a few CYOA for an app, published some writing, and kept journals and journals of game design ideas. Studied coding and art on the side. Now I'm considering Grad School at SMU Guildhall. School says my credentials are good, so that’s not my problem.

Here’s my problem:

Dudes, I'm not very skilled at video games.

I played my first MMO ever yesterday with a 2-week-old character and totally sucked at the group play. Like, I got performance anxiety. Bad. Thank God I was a low-level or I would have felt like even more of an arse. Buttons weren't doing what I thought they should; fences were not being jumped over; healing (Lord, I was the healer) was few and far in-between. Um, guys, I couldn't even get the revive button to work. I don't even get test anxiety, but I was having flash backs to high school track and field and they were a bit not good. (*´=∀=) I was the first one to die and everyone ended up waiting on me at the beginning of the level because I thought I was literally just playing with my real-life friend and not two additional strangers--both of whom must have had the patience of saints and the vocabulary of sailors to get through that awful flashpoint. (ﾉ∀ﾟ*) [Will I regret going into this much detail? Probably. Stick around for lolz].

On one level, being a newb is completely hilarious and inevitable. On another--I just felt deflated. I thought--is is too little, too late? Despite playing games all my life I've never been competitive or cared about the nitty-gritty details of memorizing maps, coming in with gear, chatting with other people on the internet (**shudder**). I'm literally more comfortable giving speeches and talking on the phone with sales people than I am with chatting with fellow players online. Even chat forums are a stretch for me. (Heh).

So, can you be a good game designer while being a mediocre to middling player? How important is it to cater to competitive and multiplayer-based players? Does anybody else get multiplayer anxiety? I’m not a casual player per se--I just enjoy narrative experiences and quick matches (like in fighting games) more than party-based stuff. (As a disclaimer, I could actually see how FUN the MMO parties could be--if I knew what I was doing. But the idea of holding people back while looking like an imbecile who can’t use a mouse is mortifying--even if it is anonymous mortification xD).

Thanks in advance for those who read through (or read all, bless you) of this post. Also, if you’ve been to school for game design and wouldn’t mind sharing what you knew beforehand or wish you’d known beforehand, that’d be great.  All I know is I'm going to do the flashpoint again, to just get over the jitters, and hope I get to mastering it a bit. I like the gaming community--but, weirdly enough, it scares the daylights out of me. 

30 minutes ago, Tom Sloper said:

So you're saying your big roadblock is that you're not an ace MMO gamer? You don't have to be. You said you enjoyed puzzles, adventure games, RPGs. The video game gods are not telling you to give up and go away. They're telling you MMOs aren't your thing. They're not mine, either. Big deal. As for whether or not to do grad school, that's an entirely different matter. What is your reason, or what would be the reason, for going to grad school?

Thanks for the quick reply! Haha, part of my brain knows I'm multiplying my lack of MMO skill way too much. 

Reasons for grad school: I've been studying Udemy on my own for about a year, everything form pixel art to coding in Unity. I love them; however, I crave structure. But the real appeal of grad school, specifically SMU, is twofold: 1) networking, and 2) the fact that you come out of the program with the equivalent of 2 years experience in the industry. Ironically, it feels like fast-tracking for me. I know I'll be going through the fire so to speak, and no matter how ambitious I am, if I try and do the same amount of work on my own over the next two years I won't nearly get as much experience or have said experiences with other potential colleagues. Right now, I don't live anywhere near gaming meccas like Cali, WA, TX, FL. I've joined IGDA but there's not too much in my area. I know there's no such thing as a geographical solution and grad school isn't a magic elixer, but I've always been good at doing the work that's set down in front of me. When I start making my own schedule I second-guess myself or try 10 different programs before sticking to one all the way through. 

I think the bottom line is I like designing games even more than I like playing them. I guess that's not a bad thing, and probably the real issue at hand here, from the silliness of the MMO example to my hem-hawing over grad school, is simply the fear to fail. Reading through these forums today, I've already seen how people stress the point of perseverance and networking. I find that comforting--it gets me back on focus and a place to start.  

23 minutes ago, Tom Sloper said:

Okay, but that doesn't mean you can get by as a designer without playing them. You need the library of mechanics in your head. As for your grad school reasons, you can do #1 without grad school but yes, it's undeniable that you can make solid contacts in grad school. But I have my doubts about the equivalency between grad school and industry experience. After SMU you'll be in Texas, which is apparently not where you live now. There are developers in Texas, and maybe you'll have made connections thru SMU. Overall, seems like a reasonable plan.

Agree with you there! That's why I want to go back and keep trying at games I'm not that good at. Sometimes it's easier to justify spending time on design rather than playing, but recently I've heard quite a few veterans like Zelda's Hidemaro Fujibayashi say that they feel guilty for spending more time working on games than playing them! No one is immune, haha.

I've seen how guys like Matthew Enthoven went the route of blogging, networking at events, and honing in on what he wanted specifically before landing a job with a studio. Let's just say I've done 1 out of the 3 of those things.  So, there's obviously stuff I could be doing. But yes, playing video games should still be one of them.

As for the equivalency, it's a claim that SMU makes on their website. I think it's because you work on 3 professional-level games while your'e there in an environment that's not school-based but industry-based. 

Thanks for your time again Sloper! 

if somebody can find the time to do his games, and he likes doing it, others also liking his games, then he should make games, especially if he can get some profit from it. if this true for you, then its fine, if no, then you either work on the missing part or either find new hobbies and businesses, but you should not have convulsions from **not being skilled**.