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Original post by edwinbradford Of those of you who are working in companies commercially, are your game designers from creative or engineering backgrounds?

Mixed.

Surely the title 'designer' applies to anyone who 'designs' things?

In my limited experience, game designers can be anything from gameplay designers (e.g. same skillset as designing pen+paper games) to level designers (basic 3d art skills) to gameplay scripting (simple programming).

It's a catch-all term used for anyone who isn't a c++ programmer or hardcore artist, but who has some creative input.

Why do you find it shocking that programmers sometimes do 'creative' things?

Game designers aren't all programmers. Many are, and the two go hand in hand, but it's not always like that. Some game designers have creative/artistic backgrounds. I agree that it could be an issue if all designers were programmers and weren't very creative, but those things aren't really mutually exclusive. You can be a great designer, great programmer, and a creative thinker.

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Product designers, fashion designers, magazine designers, set designers, graphic designers

Those are all visual designers. In games, designers are usually the people who are responsible for the game experience, ie. coming up with what actions and challenges a player has to do, and why that would make it fun.

The people that are responsible for the looks of the game, are generally exclusively from an artistic background, but I don't think having an artistic background would by definition make you a better gameplay designer.

In the end, it just comes down to who is able to do the best job at it, but I don't really think that either an engineering background or a visual design background would give you much of an advantage over the others.

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Original post by edwinbradford Product designers, fashion designers, magazine designers, set designers, graphic designers, I can't think of one?

Bah.

Fashion designers know how to sew. Set designers can use a saw and a paint roller. Aircraft designers have enough engineering knowledge to mock up test models.

Though personally, I believe gameplay design needs to be a non-artistic endeavor. It's mostly mathematics, and needs a scientific approach to understand the feasibility of the idea, how to take a raw idea and translate it into mechanics, and doing the due diligence to make sure the mechanic can't be broken.

The positions often called 'game designer' in the industry don't do that though. Diagramming plot, designing characters, doing level creation, making dialogue... those are artistic endeavors. Rule creation? Not so much.

I have a qualification in yacht design and marine engineering and have designed yachts and small boats.
The training for the job involved no design training it was nearly all hands on actually building the boats before you were able to go away and say "right now I know how to build a yacht I can go away and design my own".

In the games industry I've also worked for two companies who simply didn't employ designers at all.

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Original post by edwinbradford Is it healthy for the creativity of our industry that game play design is being done by people trained to think logically and not creatively?

Logical thought isn't creative?

Too many artists believe this false dichotomy, and appropriate creativity exclusively for themselves, typically annoying or insulting technical professionals in the process. Worse, they use that as a cover for a lack of comprehensive consideration and mathematically rigid reasoning on their parts, meaning their wonderfully "creative" designs are often barely usable. There is plenty of creative, lateral thinking required in excelling technically, and plenty of technical facility required for top-flight creativity.

Put it to rest. You'll be better at what you do, regardless of what you do, for it.

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Original post by edwinbradford *sometimes*. Of course they do but you can't equate the level of creativity from a science of engineering background with one from the arts, I think most people would accept that as a given.

hahaha. where do I sign up for creativity school? My massive left brain is causing me neck problems.

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If I design a building tonight will that make me an Architect?

If you're consistently paid to do so? Yes.

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Original post by edwinbradford Quote: Surely the title 'designer' applies to anyone who 'designs' things? If I design a building tonight will that make me an Architect?

No, it just makes you an amateur building designer. [smile]

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Original post by edwinbradford Quote: Why do you find it shocking that programmers sometimes do 'creative' things? *sometimes*. Of course they do but you can't equate the level of creativity from a science of engineering background with one from the arts, I think most people would accept that as a given.

Most people are also drooling morons, and don't know anything about what programmers actually do.

Nor, I suspect, do you.

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Quote: Surely the title 'designer' applies to anyone who 'designs' things? If I design a building tonight will that make me an Architect?

Yes, if your building is structurally sound, incorporates heating, ventilation, air conditioning, plumbing and electrical requirements, meets building code and includes a budget analysis with costs of materials and a building schedule. A design for a building is a lot more than a drawing. Resolving the overlapping constraints placed on an architectural design project often requires a fair amount of creativity - oh, and sometimes the client also wants the building to be pretty or make a statement or intrigue the public. "The Gherkin" comes to mind.

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I cannot see good designers coming any more from Artist roles than from Programming. But the entertainment industry is a lot bigger than just artists and programmers.

So... what's your point, exactly?

The "entertainment industry" is a lot bigger than just games, and the non-games parts typically don't hire programmers as designers, either. But maybe, just maybe, the reason that video games hire people with some exposure to programming and computer technology as designers is because their final product is a computer software program?

In most industries, designers have a complement of artistic and technical skills. You simply fail to view some of those skills as technical because they don't necessarily require comparable investments of time and equipment in acquiring them. You hire people with a baseline of facility in the means of production of your final product, but also with a familiarity with the diverse social, economic, political, psychological and other factors that will influence the final product.

I also hail from the land of graphic design and should probably point out that graphic designers are often asked to be programmers (to some extent) when transferring a brand to the web.


However, game design (not just video games) seem to be a very interesting area for discussion based on my experiences with the subject at university. If this is something you are thinking about moving into, and speaking from a similar viewpoint, I would recommend reading "Rules of Play" by Salen and Zimmerman, if you havnt already, and the follow it up with the "Game Design Reader" which I found slightly esier to digest as a wannabee video games developer.


For consideration by all: I have been following the discussions regarding Mathematics in video games, ie. why the player has to do so much number crunching, and is it possible to hide the maths from the gamer completely, and am wondering if this subject might overlap a little?