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Original post by rnw159 Well, I am a programmer and I like it that way. Its just that in smaller games maybe garage indie? why would you need a designer.

I've done some work for a company that had no dedicated designers (or producers), just programmers and artists, even though they had at least 20 employees. The most experienced people in the code and art teams worked together on the overall design and the low-level design was shared among appropriate team members. They've been going for 20 years so it hasn't harmed them too much. On the other hand, they've not done anything revolutionary either.

All configurations are possible, really.

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Original post by Katie So, week 1, 40-something people squeeze into the room. People have brought their mates along who couldn't get on the course themselves. The room is rammed. It's SO COOL, we're all going to be in the movie business. Wooohoo. Lecturer arrives, opens this HUGE folder full of notes and starts a two hour lecture on things like 9-point story arcs, 3 act formats &c. Week 2, 8 of us returned. Which is where we got down to the really nitty-gritty stuff. Apparently the course is like this every time. Everyone and their dog *wants to have written a movie*. Very few people, it turns out, actually want to have to write a movie first.

I LOVE that story!

Wow. Thats a good story. I can see what you're saying, and I still am glad that I'm a programmer.

I feel that a Designer should know some programming languages/scripts or something technical, it looks that way as well when I look at game designer positions. I would love to be a game designer, but I still practice some game programming so that I can better communicate to the programmers, or heck, be one myself.

A game designers job is not to boss around programmers, they are a team, and knowing what your teammates do will only make it stronger. :)