Over at Jordan Mechner’s relaunched site, ((If some design details look familiar, it’s because Ryan Nelson helped with the revamp.)) game designer Adam ‘Atomic’ Saltsman looks at the differences between [big-budget and little games](http://jordanmechner.com/blog/2011/09/atomic/):
> Don’t forget that taking a true game design role on a big game is almost impossible. The vast majority of the team, while they all have creative input and the ability to affect the outcome of the game, are largely devoted to producing the game content, not making decisions about the game design.
> Even in a game studio with a thousand employees, only a handful of them will actually work on game design on a daily basis, and they’re probably going to hang on to that job for a while. This is just the reality of it; if game design is the part of making games that you love, making small games is going to be a much better bet, at least for now.
It’s detailed advice with lots of links and examples. Check it out if you’re interested in the playable side of motion pictures.
Back in 2005, I won a Student Academy Award for the thesis film I made at the Florida State University Film School. I had just moved to LA, just learned the real meaning of traffic, and had just added the word IKEA to my vocabulary. While I had the utmost confidence in actual technical filmmaking — I felt comfortable holding a boom pole, scheduling a film, and working with actors — I knew very little about the industry itself. 
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