some about usa game designer skill questions! first,i am beginner of GD. second,i want to ask some about usa game designer skill questions! 1、what you need knowledge & skill of GD,in usa?example,program,art,history,more?if you don't know program knowledge,can you join the game empolder? 2、who can give me a GD document of usa game(pc),my email,jerryymy@163.com,i want to study how to write a good GD document. 3、about emolument.normal GD can gain how much emolument in usa.and GD Manager?or project manager? Thank You GD Beginner

Take a look here there are a range of design documents and design articles to study and as far as i'm aware they all deal with UK/European design conventions (and unfortunately nothing else).

What you need to design games largely depends on what your objectives are. If you're looking for a studio to hire you as a designer, you'll probalby need some other development skills -- programming, modeling/animating, or something like that. . . But truth of the matter is, shops don't need designs, they need grunts to do their work for them.

The only thing you need from a design point of view is a lucid (though not necessarily intimate) understanding of the technology you're working with, and very good communication skills to convey your idea to the people who'll be building upon your design. Comprehensive specification documents are of paramount importance.

If you also want to make money from your ideas, a good understanding of your market is in order. Knowing what niches, are available to you is significant if you want to see any kind of revenue from the work. Also, designing games that will yield the best results for the least investment is a skill that takes some experience -- technical understanding doesn't hurt at all.

If you're really out to get your design on the shelves, you're going to need some capital. Funding developers to build your design is not cheap.

Now if you're not trying to go big with a full studio and advertisements on Gamespot or whatever, you have a lot more options. But that also means you're going to need to do a lot more work. Pretty much, you can count on doing the entire game by yourself -- especially the code. You can save time by getting your hands on community-built model and sound packages so developing some of the media can be taken care of -- but that assumes you're not too picky.

A lucid understanding of the difference between design and other parts of development will help you a lot. Too many people confuse things like story and setting for the design of a game. For many, that's about as deeply as they ponder the matter. But games are much more than excuses to kill things. The dynamics of how the player interacts are very important and make the difference between vaporware DooM clones and something like Crimsonland.

But really, the thing you need the most to succeed as a game Designer is an incredible willpower. Because some aspects of game development are just no fun to deal with. It takes a lot of work to make a game happen.