When someone says they are a game designer, what do they mean. Do they design lvls, write story lines, what? Im trying to figure out which part of game Development I want to be in. Thank you

Ask ten different people and you''ll get ten different answers. This topic has been covered exhaustively in other recent threads. Just search for them and you''ll find a wealth of educated and uneducated opinion alike.

Thank you

I''ll go ahead and chime in my own opinion. I''ve been working on my own as a "game designer" (not paid, so no, not "professionally") and have truly, in my mind, designed two games. For me this entailed coming up with a concept, writing the story, writing the dialogue, creating all of the enemies, monsters, characters, items, dialogue, designing the gameplay, working with contract artists on the artwork design, balancing all of the numbers, designing levels and laying out a general concept for the music as well.

All in all, I can say that the games are truly of my design. And, of course, I''ve worked with the programmers on the practicality and implementation of all of the data and gameplay ideas. However, from what I''ve seen thus far in the industry, this is not all required for a game designer. Sometimes an individual may be a level designer and ONLY design levels, sometimes they''ll be a character designer, or story writer or dialogue (different from story) writer, etc... There are a lot of jobs to be done in game design and more often than not it seems to not be just one person doing all of the work. Consider if you have a passion for one area; focus on that, but don''t totally neglect all of the other areas. That''s my advice.

Charles Galyon

Game designers design how the game is innately fun, and then execute that vision.

And they get all the chicks the artists dont steal first. Fortunately, a lot of artists are women, which narrows the competition somewhat.

Vegadam, consider searching for designer jobs at as many game companies as you can find, not necessarily to apply for them but to get a sense for the wide range of responsibilities and requirements. I''ve found that to be much more pertinent than the mass of red herrings you''ll come across when exploring this question.

This is not a derogatory reference to anyone in this thread, or any other for that matter, by the way.

for me game designers are people who work mainly thinking ideas and with pen and paper.

Game designers are people who want to make games but can''t program and can''t do art. j/k

Game designers are just like movie directors. They may not be good at acting or cutting the scenes but they are the most important person behind the scenes. Neither game desinger has to be good programmer or artist but he is the most important person in the project. But it is good for designer to know something about programming or making arts. Football coach who has never played football can never be as good as a coach who plays football.

a movie director is the equivilant of a game producer . he tells people what to do, where to do it, and gets all the shit when things go wrong

the term "game designers" is also used for the people who actually implement the gameplay mechanics too, using some sort of funky scripting language or special tool created by the programmers.

game designers dont write the story line, a writer does. they dont program the main engine, the programmer does. and with the art and music? i think you know what i''m gonna say . basically, they are responsible for bringing all of those elements together to make a fun, enjoyable and entertaining idea, and be perfectly content to have all of the credit go to the producer