How to Get a Job In The Gaming Industry: The game industry is like a black box, impossible to break into. Seeing many offers for game designers, people get upset with the number of skills they must have.
But who hasn’t dreamed of creating games? It’s impossible to express emotions you feel when you create a game like Dota 2 which involves so many people that there are international tournaments like Champions League and many others at mobile in-play betting Kenya, documentaries and even Netflix series. But you also feel on the cloud nine while creating not as popular but still thrilling niche games. Ready to create new games? Keep reading to become a game designer.
Who Is a Game Designer
The main function of the game designer is to design the game experience. He creates not only the structure of the game, but also decides what emotions the player will experience at each stage of the game. In this sense the work of a game designer is very similar to that of a movie director. In addition, the game designer manages the production process of the game, and in this sense he acts as a full-fledged product manager.
A game designer constructs the basic dynamics of the game, which is responsible for the overall feeling of the game for the user. The basic dynamics, in turn, is based on the basic game mechanics – the way objects interact with the player and the game space. For example, the main game mechanics of chess is the movement of chess pieces across the field.
A game designer is a rather broad concept. In micro-teams that develop games, he can work together with a programmer. In larger companies, game designers have different specializations, which are essentially different related professions. Game design in large projects can take place in various segments from the design of the worlds themselves to game texts (dialogues, game descriptions and alerts), interfaces and character creation.
Narrative designers write texts for diaries and computer terminals, as well as working through mythology and thinking about the presentation of the story: for example, through the environment through the arrangement of objects, characters, and staged scenes.
What Game Designers Must Do
These are your key responsibilities when you become a game designer:
- Development of the game concept.
- A concept is an initial document where all the initial suggestions and ideas on the game’s theme are gathered. This is the basis that the game designer will then develop.
- Designing basic game mechanics.
- Designing game balance.
- Creating images of game characters.
- Planning the gameplay throughout the game.
- Writing a design document for the game.
- Adjustment of the game concept in the process of development.
- Coordination of specialists involved in the work.
- Ways to possibly monetize the game.
When all the ideas are collected in the concept, the design document prescribes specific plans for bringing them to life. Now it’s the game maker’s job to make sure the game is realized. That all ideas are taken into account and all characters are properly created.
Creating and Developing Game Systems
A game designer should be able to think analytically, identify and analyze current trends on the computer games market. Understand the interests and behaviors of the target game audience. Before forming a game concept, a game designer does a lot of analytical work.
Analytical skills will also come in handy when comparing different models of game balance. Generating ideas is the direct responsibility of a game designer, so this skill is especially important. It is a complex skill, which is associated with a wide professional outlook and creativity.
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The ability to work with documents is also necessary for a game designer because three-quarters of his time is spent on drawing up concept and design documents. There he explains the mechanics of the future game in detail: describes everything to the smallest detail, from the control to the presentation of the story. In addition, a game designer should be able to draw up clear terms of reference, in which he indicates the main references and gives instructions for software engineers and artists.
Communication Skills
The ability to communicate and communicate your ideas to others is the most important skill of a game designer. Working on the game, he has to coordinate the actions of other members of the game team, primarily artists and programmers. A game designer creates the terms of reference for them and monitors its implementation.
So, the ability to work in a team is very important for a game designer.
A game designer should be able to structure his thoughts and present his ideas. These abilities are especially valuable when communicating with potential investors who determine the financing of a game project.
Not All Game Designers Were Testers
You shouldn’t start your way in gamemode as a tester, as many people advise. The work of a tester differs drastically from that of a game designer, and both of them require completely different professional and personal qualities.
A tester doesn’t do anything in his job that would allow him to gain even a little knowledge of game design. They are two different professions.
Some testers become game designers, but this is the exception rather than the rule. There are also programmers who became artists because they know how to draw and at some point realize that they like doing art more.
Not All Courses Will Provide Employment
You shouldn’t shell out thousands of dollars for online courses. The quality of these courses is unknown, because you, as an inexperienced novice game designer, won’t be able to evaluate them from a professional point of view. These courses only make sense if you don’t want to join an existing company, but want to do something of your own, then they will allow you to get a basic knowledge of the profession.
But in reality, which of these courses contain high-quality and objective material with full-fledged feedback from the current expert, and which are a set of subjective cases and general chat with “assistants” (rather than teachers, whom you only see on video) – is unknown to the end.
