Hello, Game Dev's!
I am planning to start learning game design, but I have no idea where to start. Can you please help me out with some advice?
I am interested in gameplay design and story most of all, since I'm not an artist and I don't know any programming.
I will try to analyze some well known games and try to put down on a document a draft of a GDD, a sort of reverse engineering of the design.
And, of course, model a game yourself. Also learn some tool for prototyping something would be a good idea I suppose.
Read about your craft:
Study other games:
Play them and try to analyse them in detail. Try variations on the standard rules to see how they affect things. Watch other people play them.
Don't just stick to video games. Try card games, and board games. Watch related children playing the made up games they play in the absence of toys or other entertainment -- games like "the floor is lava", "tag/tiggy/chasey", etc.
Practice, practice, practice:
Make up your own games, and follow an iterative process to improve them. If you can't program (or even if you can) you can create card games and board games. Give yourselves a random collection of items and try to create a game using those items. Take existing games and try to create your own variations of the rules.
Talk to other designers:
Get active in our game design forum and other similar forums (such as the TIGForums design forum). Ask questions, share your ideas, and participate in the discussions others are starting; give your feedback on the ideas that others have shared.
Hope that helps! 
- Jason Astle-Adams
And, of course, model a game yourself. Also learn some tool for prototyping something would be a good idea I suppose.
To add to that, if you can, IMO, learn the BASICS of both programming and either 2D or 3D Graphics... you don't need to be the best programmer in the world, or a good artist, just enough that you are able to create your own basic prototypes.
This will make your life MUCH easier, as you can, if you want to go Indie, create your own prototypes to test the gameplay and evaluate if an idea will work out BEFORE you even think about paying a programmer or artist to create code that runs faster, is less buggy and more expandable than whatever you came up with, and an artist to create art that not only a mother could love...
And if you want to get into the industry, you will need a big portfolio to show off what you can do. If you have a running prototype, that will sell you much better than just having paper designs.
If you manage to get the job, or to build up a team, you will have a much easier time talking to your programmers and artists, because you know what a loop is or what that colourspaces are they are talking about.
Of course, this is not mandatory knowledge for a designer... so you need to decide if you want to invest the time to learn more about it.
EDIT:
Something to add, forgot about that:
If you are looking to break into the industry, you need to concentrate on a different occupation first. Game Designer is not an entry level position... think of it as the director of a movie... how many directors are needed to shoot a movie? Ho many artists? How many support staff?... so good luck getting a job as a game designer fresh off the college.
But even if you do not want to branch out into programming or art to get a foot in the door, so to say, you have a good chance to be hired if you develop the needed skills (and get the degrees needed) as a tester in QA or even better, as a level designer. Level Designer is an entry level position in many studios, and is actually closely linked to game design.
Concentrating on getting proficient in level design might be a good way to get your first job in game development.
There are some concepts that are really hard to grasp from just tutorials too.
Game Coding Complete 4th Edition - This book was incredibly helpful for me in getting started. What actually makes this book stand out from a lot of others, is that the book was written with a lot of today's games code design. It also teaches you how to create a level editor. That's if you are working in 3D by the way. Now... this book won't get you to making a full retail game. But it will get you to make a game in 3D. Written by a programmer who had worked on Ultima IIIV, Thief Deadly Shadows, Sims medieval, Rat Race, and several others.
Game Development Essentials - I don't own this book in my library. But I checked it out a number of times. It's got some good stuff. It's not about programming, but it's about the general design. Which is critical if you want to make something quality.
School is a good option. But avoid going into college for "Game Anything Degree." You will be shooting yourself in the foot when you graduate, as it's about as useful as an Art Degree.
Youtube also has a few good videos. I'm going to avoid posting channels on this one however. Many people have different ways of learning, and what works for them. A quick search will normally get you what you need.
And all around this forum. You might not get answers immediately, but luckily someone might have asked your particular question earlier.
Then lastly, as advice. Find a Game Design Bible. This will become your code of honor. To prevent you from selling things like "Slaughtering Grounds".
Thank you for your replies. I guess I have to start reading the game design books and articles and continue what I love, playing games, but this time to analyze them as well
Do you recommend I start learning how to use Unreal Engine for example? I really like the games made with it.
Thank you for your replies. I guess I have to start reading the game design books and articles and continue what I love, playing games, but this time to analyze them as well
Do you recommend I start learning how to use Unreal Engine for example? I really like the games made with it.
Well, as a Game Developer you really need to understand some basic concepts... one of them is:
The quality of the games made with an engine has almost NOTHING to do with the quality of the engine itself!
Graphics Quality, Runtime Performance, Physics.... can be horrible or very good, even if built with the same engine.
This is where the artists and programmers work their magic. Even with a rather crappy engine, a good programmer can make the game run fine performance wise, and a good artist can make the game look pretty good even with crap shaders and all.
So the quality of game buil with Unreal shouldn't be the reason to use it...
With that out of the way, yes, Unreal Engine 4 would be one of my 2 recommendations for an affordable 3D Engine at the moment, with Unity being the other one. Both have certain Pros and Cons, and Unity will only really achieve technical parity to UE 4 with Unity 5 (which is in Beta currently), but the main Pros and Cons:
- Unity has a free version, UE4 is sub based, so you need to spend at least 20$ to get it.
- Unity free version lacks some high end features which you might not need in the beginning, UE4 can be had feature complete with full source (which you certainly cannot use without some serious programming skills, and most probably never will need anyway) for 20$
- Unity Pro costs 1500$ per seat, but this is only needed if you need all bells and whistles or make a certain amount of money with your games.
- On the flip side, UE 4 will take a 5% cut above 50k$ you make with your game. Unity has no royalities involved.
So TL;DR: Unity starts at 0$, but with features cut. UE4 start at 20$ (add 20$ for each time you need an update, as this is a monthly sub), but is feature complete for that.
Both engines have large communities behind them, and at least Unity has a thriving asset store where you can get all kind of assets and plugins for money (or sometimes free) to help you with your game. Both have a very active development and lots of tutorials, and for Unity you will also find quite some books for newbies published.
Be warned though: learning game dev, even with the help of an engine, is no easy task. Baby Steps!
Best is to concentrate on lower levels first, before you download the engine and dive in head first. Get a good book on engine archtitecture, learn about 3D / 2D Graphics (depending what interests you most), and see if you can get a programming primer somewhere.
you CAN make your first steps inside the engine with all that, of course. But you now get the added complication that you need to learn the Engine Editor GUI, the quirks and specialities of the engine, so your progress in learning programming or the basics of graphics might be slowed down...
On the other hand, you learn how to use the engine, so again, there are Pros and Cons.
Really, none of the options I listed is very expensive, so you could just go ahead, download, and give it a try. Find a good tutorial, and "jump out of the nest" so to say :)
Just don't expect anything spectacular for the first few tries...
Thank you for the detailed reply, Gian-Reto. I knew about Unity, and I've heard a lot of people recommend it, but honestly, I don't know many popular games made with it, and that's why I'm not sure about using it.
But can I start learning game design with Unity since its free, and then move to Unreal later if I don't like it? Or are the two too different and I should just choose one now and stick with it?
Thank you for the detailed reply, Gian-Reto. I knew about Unity, and I've heard a lot of people recommend it, but honestly, I don't know many popular games made with it, and that's why I'm not sure about using it.
But can I start learning game design with Unity since its free, and then move to Unreal later if I don't like it? Or are the two too different and I should just choose one now and stick with it?
I haven't had to chance to really try UE4 yet as I am still happy working in Unity, but from what I have seen, most broad concepts are similar. Some things might work differently in details, some things are unique (like the fully integrated visual scripting language in UE4... you can get something similar in Unity, but you need to buy it from the asset store).
IMO the big hurdle at the beginning is understanding the basics, which are pretty much the same in all modern game engines. If you understand how a shadow map works, you will get into the shadow system of most engines quickly... there might be differences in how to bake one, or where / in which format it is stored. But this is something that you will learn in no time.
Just an example... but yeah, I would say starting with Unity, if you don't want to spend the 20$, and moving over to UE4 shouldn't be a problem.
When talking about games made with Unity... heard of Hearthstone? WoW Card game spinoff? Made with Unity... Unity still has the stigma of being an Indie engine, while Unreal started as an expensive AAA engine, and only entered the Indie space a few years ago with UDK. But more and more bigger studios are starting to use Unity for some of their projects...
I guess the problem is more... you have two engines similar in capability, your budget is big enough that 500k$ for a full engine license doesn't matter much, and one of them has been used for more games and thus has better street creds... which one will you take? So Unity, as far as I can tell, is still prone to being used for smaller Games even by the big studios as the cost of the engine is lower for a small team if you factor royalities in.... and if you want to evade royalities, you need to put multiple 100k$ on the table for the full license of other engines most often.
Thank you again for the helpful reply, Gian-Reto .
I started reading A Fun Theory of Game Design first of all, then I plan to read A Book of Lenses, just to begin building the basic knowledge of the field. I will start learning Unity or UE later on.
Edit: Actually I started reading The Book of Lenses, since there is a new edition, and it looks pretty cool :)
