So I'm somewhat new, having only really started around the beginning of this year, and I've slowly been getting more and more experience in programming for games, mostly with c++ in unreal. The thing is what I enjoy doing a whole lot more is designing gameplay. My problem is kind of two fold though.

I guess you can call it a little bit of a complex, but I feel like I would get this odd feeling of asking someone else to implement a gameplay feature I had thought of and would rather just build it myself. It's weird though because I don't really feel this way about other game aspects, like art or music, because I know I wouldn't be good enough to do those. It's only programming that I think this way, but I guess that kind of brings up my other problem. How worthwhile has it been for me to have been taking all this time to learn game programming if I really intend to go after gameplay designing. I know it can't hurt, someone once told me that lead designers are often times programmers themselves so I guess I'm just curious then how much programming a gameplay designer would actually end up doing or if it's just one of those things where it's good to know the fields that are adjacent to your own. (Used to be a 3D character TD, so knowing animation and modeling was useful for me back then)

Hakinator said:
I'm just curious then how much programming a gameplay designer would actually end up doing or if it's just one of those things where it's good to know the fields that are adjacent to your own.

It depends on the individual. Some game designers know a little programming, some know a lot. Gotta know at least a little.

Not in the game business, but I would say it's not only the individual but also the job. From what I read here, in small companies one person often does more different things.

Maybe you can be a gameplay designer with programming skills, or a programmer with gameplay designer kills 🙂

No idea if such a job exists (others here might),

The bigger the company the more people specialize. Even so, professionally “game designer” is not an entry level title. Designers often go through an art or programming job track, although not always.

In my experience, the good designers have broad backgrounds and it includes some experience in all the disciplines. Some will be just enough to get by rather than highly skilled, but still comfortable with code, comfortable with art, with animation, with music and melody and sound design, with QA being able to identify issues long before encountering them, and more.