hi,
I want to be a game designer but not a programmer. When i look job openings, if it is a game design opening, that needs programming. If it is a game programming job, it needs programming. So i want to be game designer(someone who designs gameplay, experience), not a programmer. How can I pursue a job with this interest. And should i learn visual scripting language? Is the only way programming?
I tried a lot to learning c# and it doesn’t come funny to me. And I really like to think about gameplay. I want to work as someone who decides character balancing, economy etc…
edit: additionally i started this year studying computer sciences but i see it probably wont be an entertaining 4 years.
That’s called idea guy and the position is usually taken by shareholders, top executives, and all sorts of “managers” that don’t know or understand what their people are doing.
Thinking and imagining good ideas is one of many tasks the designer has to do. The most important one is to design good and cheap ideas that can be done by someone that actually makes games. So you have to know how to talk with the programmer and for this, you need to understand programming.
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Ideas are not worth anything it’s implementing them that’s worth something.
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That’s not true. Yes, there definitely are “idea guys” and they’re not useful unless they also bring other skills or resources to the table. But genuine design skill is a valid and valuable thing to bring to the table.
Before I bring designers onto a team I want to see and play stuff they’ve designed. I want to know that they can be given a problem in terms of a desired player experience, and then use what’s available to them in a particular project to solve for that desired experience. Most professional game designers won’t be designing a whole game, by the way. They’ll be designing a level or a system or something within the context of a larger game.
In any case, you’re going to have to find some way to demonstrate that you’ve got genuine skill in the design department. Also, you might need to build that skill, because it’s not just about having good ideas.
A few things to think about:
- Are there any games you can mod to show off your skill? Eg: make custom levels, custom campaigns, custom units, or something like that.
- In your local game dev community, are there teams or projects you can work with? This shows not only the output, but also teamwork, which is critical to a professional designer.
- Can you work with something like RPG Maker, or off-the-shelf game frameworks from the Asset Store or similar?
For each of the above, start with an intended experience (ie: write yourself a brief) and, when you’re done, do a short writeup of how you iterated towards achieving that brief and stick it on your website or similar. Or make video blogs and explain it.
For what it’s worth, a designer who can do some programming is far more flexible than one who can’t, so working on that might make it easier to find a job. But there are design roles which don’t require programming, too.
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Agreed - because everybody’s got the greatest ideas ever 
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There are people who work as game designers. Have you read books on game design? For example, here is one that is pretty good:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1138098779/
That book also has some short interviews of well known game designers, and those interviews mention how some of the game designers got started in the industry.
There are people on large projects who focus on game design specifically. A lot of companies look for highly skilled people who have already done a specific job at similar companies on other large projects. It may be tricky to get your first job in game design.
Thank you for very explaining answer. I think i will try modding for games like gta5/minecraft/other stuff.
In my country, there isn’t even enough game programming jobs. Game design jobs almost doesn’t exist. And that design jobs are very competitive. Can you advice me something for competing each other? (If your advices same as above, just don’t consider to reply.) thank you so much for solution oriented answer.
Yes, it’s a super competitive field. I certainly wouldn’t rely on getting that specific job. Consider that getting a job often isn’t just about skill, but also connections.
With that in mind I’d start working on connections ASAP. Do you have a local game dev community? Get involved and start getting to know people. And if people at studios you’d like to work at are available to talk to then see if you can do that, see what they’re looking for specifically when filling new roles.
One thing I didn’t think of before is that you could try board game or table top game design. The tools are different but the principles are very similar. Depending on what particular areas of game design interest you, you could also try stuff like writing (and running) campaigns for role playing games.
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You need to program to be able to actually create the gameplay you are designing and prove the concept. If you think a designer just makes ideas and hands that off to someone to make then you are in for a shock. You are expected to know to a pretty intermediate level most of the disciplines if you are a game designer.
Explaining an idea or showing a pretty picture is not desinging, you need to have technical skills. You might not be expected to be an efficient programmer or have knowledge of computer science, but you need to be able to script and program, as well as dabble in art even if its just touching up existing assets or kitbashing.
BTW, very rarely does anyone go right into game design, you usually start as a programmer, artist, producer etc with some experience and at least one development cycle. If not then you will need to learn a ton of stuff first. But no one is going to hire a designer with no experience AND no technical skills.
So I recommend if you really want this, you need to suck it up and learn programming as soon as possible. If you are expecting to get a job within this field within next 5 years, I suggest you start immediately because it takes a very long time to get to a point where you are good enough to be hired.
Note: Everything above is only based on UK market, and assuming you are trying to get a job in an established game company that is not a massive AAA and also not a tiny indie. I have no idea about tiny indies, and for AAA massive companies like EA studios etc, there are such big teams that you could actually work purely on design without having to do anything else - but you would likely also have past experience and probably know some programming by that point anyway
I pinged two of my favorite designers for their thoughts, and weill post them here.
Based on experience, you need to be a complete kickass guru at spreadsheets for one. At LF our Sr Combat designer basically built the game in Excel and was able to simulate virtually any type of game play and balance the crap out of them game. Most designers come to laterally, from project management, story, analytics, BI, UX/UI and producers. It is a unique skill set, and more of a challenge to prove than most. (and artist can just show their profile). The ones I know came from other fields and put themselves out there get a design project/feature and did a great job at it. Starts them on the track. If you are coming on to an existing project, you are likely going to minor tasks (economy/resource balancing, etc) to show what you can do. (unless you have a track record that drops you in high).
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I have never denied it, but I suppose reading the second part of my post was too hard.
Also, the best game designers are always coming from modding communities, especially modders of multiplayer games. Because besides thinking out ideas, developing and releasing them, modders also have to be active in communities, market their mods, and the most important part, they can see in real-time, how people are playing their mods. Based on that, the modder can easily find all the flaws and iterate on them.
That’s called experience. Something that no book and no school will give you. Theory can help someone to perfect their knowledge, but It will never make you a good designer. I talked with a few designers working at Ubisoft, they had a real degree and 1-2 years of experience, and they were worse in finding all possible connections and potential problems of their design than some kid that has made few mods in Minecraft.
Because of the nature of the job, you also need to have a similar social skill to the manager, but that’s usually not a problem. The main issue is finding someone with analytic mind.
So feedback from one of my friends (sr game designer, aaa console, mobile and everything in between).
Basically he said you need to demonstrate you know how to design a game. not just on paper. Board games, things like roblox, etc, unity and/or modding. being an engineer isn’t important, but programming is, as it is the same logic. If you want to be a game designer, you need to make games. Figuring out how to do that is kinda your first task. Which makes sense.
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No, I read your whole post and still felt it worth pointing out that saying a designer who can’t program is “called idea guy” is wrong. Even if we agree that they usually grow into design from some other discipline, that discipline does not have to be programming. Of course it’s going to depend heavily on what opportunities are available to you, though.
This thread isn’t about labels, though, it’s about getting a job. So, getting back to practical matters… Considering that it’s a highly competitive field, there aren’t enough jobs to go around, and everyone seems to think that some level of programming skill is helpful and/or important, if you ignore that then you’re simply not giving yourself the best chance of success. I’d pick an engine and start chipping away at coding tutorials.
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Heh… another comment he just made, I am going to just quote it rather than sum up. (game design is not my world) “Importantly, once they make something, sit down and watch someone play it. Learn that shame, feel it - that shame is what makes you a good designer”
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I think the idea guy needs to atleast be a engineer so he understands a bit what is going on in the engine and and the domain also it can be good for working on game design. For example I’m working on ballistics right now, and having basic knowledge of math and physics do help
Care to provide more details on this? I can’t think of a single instance with modern hardware where you would need an understanding of what’s happening under the hood of a game engine to make your game.
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Roblox, I totally forgot about that but it really is a viable option. I should suggest that to people more who want to learn game dev!
I suppose shaders sort of requires you to understand hardware < > engine interactions, like you need to know about the registers etc. And ECS requires you to understand what the engine is doing with storing and accessing memory. But yeah I agree other than those barely related points, I cant really think why you need to know the engine under the hood parts unless your joining a massive company with source code access.
Knowing what the engine is doing with the C# side (not c++, as far as I am concerned its in black box magic land at that point for a good reason) is useful though, I am sure most of us take a gander at unitys C# internals to work out what certain API calls do at points.
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Under the hood as in vector math, shader programming etc.
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Having worked in several studios and directly with our game designers in those studios I can vouch for the accuracy of this statement. Excel and Visio were the two biggest skillsets a game designer should have in their pocket. Other ancillary knowledge of level design, programming, art is beneficial but not at all necessary. The game designer will play the game or take feedback, but they don’t generally work on or with production assets. I have worked with a game designer who was experienced enough to open up Maya and mock up node locations for certain level design considerations. The game designer will continuously meet with the team’s programmers and artists. All of a game’s technical or artistic constraints will be communicated to the game designer well in advance. During production there will also be a constant “back and forth” when new hurdles come up or patterns emerge in gameplay that need to be tweaked. So it’s not necessary that a game designer know all of these other aspects of the trade, that’s why you have meetings before production and during.
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There are very good answers here, i am very appreciate.
But there is some people that is very Smarty-Pants. When i read their writes, it seems very shty. It doesn’t help about anything and they say only idea guy.
I explained what i want. I study computer science i will eventually learn programming. But i don’t want to be programmer (not sure about this one).
I know there are people that balancing characters/weapons in online games. These people aren’t programmers. I wanted to decide what paths should game contains(gameplay).
There were very good answers, and others are coming. But just don’t be smarty-pants. I don’t want your advices if you are talking just sht and don’t know anything.