What Are the Best First Steps For Becoming a Game Designer?

todd10k writes "I've recently decided to go back to college. I have a lot of experience with games, having played them for most of my adult life, and have always toyed with the idea of making them one day. I've finally decided to give it my best. What I'd like to know is: what are the best languages to study? What are the minimum diploma or degree requirements that most games companies will accept? Finally, is C++ the way to go? ASP? LUA?"

Comments

Quick advice

[kamapuaa]

Get out while you still can. I can't imagine a worse career path.

Re:Quick advice

[sys.stdout.write]

Get out while you still can. I can't imagine a worse career path.

Seconded. You'll end up designing this awesome game, and then EA will be like "I don't think this plays well with our 13-year-old boy demographic" and force you to make changes which completely ruin it.

Re:Quick advice

[LrdDimwit]

To put the point more directly, don't try to get a job as a game designer, then start designing games. Once upon a time, in the late eighties, this is how things were done. Now, trying to become a game designer is like trying to become a movie star. Huge numbers of applicants mean the few entry level designer positions that ARE available, are snapped up immediately by people with better qualifications than you.

You want to be a game designer? Then design games. If you have programming skills, grab XNA or Flash, or even (like I'm using) Java and start coding something. You don't? Then get an existing games with already-developed toolsets like Neverwinter Nights or any of the several FPS'es with level editors, and get cracking. Even this is beyond you? Go buy a pen and paper RPG system, and start desigining adventures.

If you can't hack it, then this is a sign you have not got what it takes.

Re:Quick advice

[scubamage]

No offense, but if we keep chalking up video games to being the realm of "pre-pubescent boys" we're going to keep seeing our rights eroded away in the name of "protecting the children." Comments like that are the reason why entire nations are banning video games deemed "dangerous."

To the OP, if you want to program video games, then start programming them. Get together a portfolio, and save your cash. Digipen institute would be your dream school, because its entirely dedicated to the development of video games. Full sail institute in florida has a number of simulation programs. Most trade schools offer interactive simulation and design specializations now as well. However if you have no portfolio to show potential employers, you're never going to get anywhere. Also, bookmark gamasutra, there are always jobs posted on there from video game companies looking for employees.

Re:Quick advice

[IronChef]

I am a game designer. And whenever anyone tells me they want to be a game designer, I tell them what a cop once told me back when I was in high school and wanted to be a cop. "Be a fireman instead." You like games? Maybe stick with playing them, instead of seeing how the sausage is made.

Game designer is a job that has the potential to become extremely crummy. It also has the potential to be extremely rewarding. You'll hit both extremes. In a good job, the highs outweigh the lows. Good design jobs are hard to come by. Most games aren't finished and shipped.

How do you become a designer? The question is hard to answer neatly, because there are many different "design" positions in the industry. My company has design specialties that don't exist at other companies. A highly marketable designer is flexible.

Many, even most designers have NO developer experience. You don't need to know C++ to create a good first-person shooter level with the Unreal editor. If you are designing a game system, like how some kind of a card game works, or the way your shields regenerate, you don't necessarily need to know programming for that either.

But for any designer, having familiarity with programming is VERY useful though. When you work with an engineer to bring a system to life you have an understanding of what is realistic to ask for.

Though you don't need to be a programmer, most design jobs do require some kind of scripting, or at least content creation using hacky, ugly, unfriendly tools. You don't need to be an engineer, but you do usually need to be technical.

That all said, if you are a whiz designer who is also a developer, that is an excellent skill set to have. Even so, you might not do much programming in a design position. It depends on where you are and how they do things.

A company local to me does mostly FPS games. I know someone there, and he says that basically all the designers are level designers. That means grinding away in a 3d editor plus scripting language, making playable spaces. They do not seem to have designer/developer hybrids. Seems like you are one or the other there, mostly. Other places might not have such a division.

Then, take a company that does MMOs. They have designers who just do the game's story. You sit around and dream up factions and NPCs and make flow charts of missions, and collaborate with level designers to make the whole package work. Maybe you write the NPCs' lines, too, and collaborate with concept artists. No programming there.

In some companies, the engineers don't have much to do with the design. The design staff says, "it works like this" and the engineers make it happen--if it's reasonable. If the engineer is design-minded, it can be a fun collaboration. Or, management can keep devs and designers apart with barbed wire. I have seen it work both ways.

Then, sometimes there is that guy who is a designer and is fully capable of implementing his designs in executable code... if the company structure allows for it.

So in the end, programming games does not necessarily mean designing games, and designing games definitely doesn't mean you have to be a programmer. It depends very much on the team you are in.

Back to the original question... what should you do?

Make games. Use the editors and mod tools that are out there, and create some playable stuff. Or start doing paper games and making friends play them. If you are not doing something online, try to get a paper game in print, even if it's a small run and self-funded. Like an artist, you need a portfolio. If you can create material that is fun while you develop your technical skills, you are on the right path.

What technical skills are useful? At my office I see C++, ActionScript/Flash, and SQL stored procedures. Scripting languages I see a lot of include Lua and Unreal's Kismet, but there are many options.

Your "build" can emphasize either design or programming, but honestly being a whiz at both is the best. Helps if you can write, too, but it's rarely sought after.

Then, you just need to find a way to get to the top of the resume pile... but that's a different story.

GPWiki, Languages and Caution

[eldavojohn]

Disclaimer: I am a developer though I don't work nor have I ever worked for a game company. In my free time, I enjoy reading The Game Programming Wiki.

What I'd like to know is: what are the best languages to study?

Hmmmm, I'm not sure this is going to be a fruitful discussion. It's not too clear to me what kind of game development interests you most. The truth is that games have been written in many languages and developers often scoff at any guideline to restrict them from writing a game in -- say Java -- when there are more efficient languages. Assuming you want to get into console games and/or PC games, I would suggest starting out with simple authoring tools and just tinker with them. Download GameKit and get it building on your development machine. Then set weekly goals for yourself to modify the Space Invaders game by changing graphics, sound, maybe even mechanics. Once you've done that and are bored, move on to another kit/sdk.

You see, I doubt the importance is that you know how C++ or Lua works ... they are both great languages for different tasks. It's more important that if you want to be a graphics engine guy you understand how major APIs are laid out to implement tiles and shaders and renderers ... Go here to start thinking aobut what aspect of the game interests you most.

What are the minimum diploma or degree requirements that most games companies will accept?

This is a topic I could drone on for hours about. Enjoy life, man. They'll take you with a 2 year tech degree or less if you're built for coding. But don't do that. Enjoy the college expereince, go to a four year liberal arts college. Explore math, physics, chemistry, biology, literature, music, etc. I took enough music theory to major in music but I didn't. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Finally, is C++ the way to go? ASP? LUA?

You should really concentrate on one of three types of games: web, console, PC. While the last two are related, the idea of catering to hardware probably has an effect on games. Is a PC developer going to care about Sony's Emotion engine while a console guy might live and breathe it. Honestly, fool around with Allegro, SDL and OpenGL if you're looking to do serious game coding.

You've got a long difficult road ahead if you're going down this path. You're going to have your heart broken by Blizzard and end up over worked and underpaid at EA. Game programming seems to find you, you can only prepare yourself for it. Read John Carmack's story in Masters of Doom or just wait for the upcoming movie about it.

I've also heard -- and I can't verify this -- that it helps to have a notebook full of sketches, stories, game mechanics, ideas you've had in relation to games. You keep this and bring it to an interview. You pass the technical aspects and then you let them know that you really want this and that you are also creative and not just technical.

Don't forget to have fun and good luck!

A. A Trust Fund B. A Working Spouse...

[Anonymous Coward]

C. A taste for ramen.

D. A willingness to update your resume every six months.

E. The number of your State Attorney General's Labor Enforcement Division, to file a complaint when they suddenly decide to stop paying you and ask you to work for free until they close the next round of funding, which is always just a week or two away.

We're off to a bad start already..

[synthesizerpatel]

If your approach to a new career is to find out the bare minimum you need to start... odds are you're not going to excel.

There's not a lot of stories from successful game developers that start with 'When I got in at 8am' and end with 'Then I left at 5pm.'

If you think you've got 'it', do what the guy who did Braid did -- make it. Don't wait for someone to give you a stamp of approval. Sing it loud.

Otherwise, stick with your day job.

wrong question?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry if the paragraph breaks end up jumbled here; Slashdot is being weird for me.

Disclaimer: I am a professional game developer

Why are you asking how to be a game designer, and then turning around and asking about programming languages? Decide which job you want.

Truly, the best way to immediately become a designer is to start your own company. Outside of that, nobody will want to hire an unknown to design things, unless you somehow have an extremely impressive portfolio. No matter how many games you've played and how great that experience is, it is an entirely different beast than designing a game.

The best experience for designing, if you still want to continue down that path, is to read about it constantly, and actually do it, also constantly, and get lots of people to tell you how you're a bad designer, until they stop saying that. Get a subscription to Game Developer Magazine, read books on game design, and by all means design your own games. Start simple and write a complete design document for an existing game such as Pac-Man. Maybe even figure out how to make it better and incorporate that into your design. Join the nearest IGDA chapter and go to meetings. Form relationships with people in the industry and ask them to critique your design documents from a professional viewpoint.

Now, you asked about programming languages, which is totally not what a designer should be asking. But if you want to go that route and be a game programmer, then consider what platforms you want to target, and learn the languages appropriate for that. For the iPhone, learn Objective-C++. For consoles, C++ is generally the way to go. For websites, probably ActionScript in Flash, or you could try lua in WildPockets. And if you have aspirations of being a level scripter (much easier than arbitrary game programming), then you should learn to make a mod in a variety of engines using their native languages: lua, python, UnrealScript, QuakeC, etc.

For any route you want to take, the most important thing for you to learn is everything. By that, I mean study all kinds of topics that you might think are completely unrelated to game design: history, fashion, languages, art, avionics. After you've gotten yourself into the habit of learning with great breadth and depth, and hopefully applying your new varied knowledge to your ideas, the best way for you to get a job in the industry is to meet and hang out with people who are already in it. To that end, join your local IGDA chapter, as I mentioned two paragraphs ago.

My new carrier plan

[sigxcpu]

1. learn all about games, start by playing every available game.

2. Whatever (I'm still not done with stage one)