Talk to people who do the job, but know what to ask

The best question you can ask is this: what do you brag about to your colleagues. People brag one way to outsiders and another way among their own, and the texture you are after is hidden in the second one. “Which moment of the job do you love most” or “what would you miss if you quit” work too, but they do not go this deep.

What you are looking for is the side of the job nobody sees, the part that makes the work appealing. A pilot flies, a sailor goes to sea, everyone knows that and every game in the genre already has it. What will set you apart is the small thing that man still loves after doing it for years.

Do not leave the answer you get sitting in the background as decoration. If a pilot tells you the best part is the two seconds when the wheels leave the ground, that is not a detail, that is the moment you have to design. Put your camera, your sound and your control feel right there.

You also have to filter most of the feedback that comes back. He will tell you there are 40 switches missing in the cockpit, he will tell you the checklist order is wrong, and he is usually right, but the player does not notice any of it, so take a note and move on. The dangerous one is when he asks for depth, because that is what kills your scope. A professional will ALWAYS want to describe one resolution deeper, partly because the routine you found boring and skipped is the real texture of his job, and partly because his own cognitive load is zero, so he hands it to you as if it were free. If the thing you add does not make the player take a decision, it is not a system, it is just chores.

Do not talk to one person either, talk to three or four so you see the pattern instead of one man’s private opinion. And find the person who trains the new arrivals, not the most senior one. That man has already put the hard part into words.

In short, do not ask what you are getting wrong, ask what it feels like.

On Metal Thunder I went through documentaries. I am making an AC-130 game, and reaching an AC-130 crew from Turkey is not realistic, so that was the best source I had.

A documentary is a much better source than you think, because it is an interview too, someone else just asked the questions. While those men describe their job on camera, the texture pours out on its own. The only thing it does not give you is your own question, you cannot ask a follow-up.

But most of you do not have my problem. If you are making a supermarket, cafe, repair shop or gas station game, that man is sitting at the end of your street. On top of that there is no documentary about his job and nobody explaining it on YouTube, the only source is the man himself. The more ordinary the job, the fewer secondary sources there are, and the more talking to someone becomes mandatory.

So if it is a job you can reach, you have no excuse for not going and talking to someone.