JOlson+-+Career

VIDEO GAME DESIGNER There are several career paths involved in video game design. There's the true designers, who figure out how the game is going to run, what the story is, how the mechanics work, and so on. They come up with the ideas for the games and have to be constantly working with all the other people making the game to make sure that the best ideas are being properly implemented. The designers have to constantly be updating their designs and coming up with solutions to problems that may arise, in order to make sure that the final game is balanced, playable, and fun for the widest audience possible. True game designers can be further broken down into more specific kinds of designers, like mechanics designers, also called systems designers, who make rules for game play that keep the games balanced (like taking out items that make the game too easy), level designers, who are responsible for individual levels or areas in the game, and writers, whose jobs should be obvious from the name. No matter what type of designer a person is, though, they need to have a good knowledge of video games, lots of creativity, solid writing skills, and skills in collaboration and organization.

This picture shows a game designer working with two other people involved in the game making process. It's likely that the girl is one of the artists and the two guys are checking up on her to make sure that what she's doing is on track with where everyone else is and to see if they like the illustrations she's made for the game or explaining a change that needs to be implemented. This illustrates the collaboration that goes on in video game production and how the different departments always need to be constantly working together to make sure that the game works.

Along with the designer-designers, video game design also includes the game artists, who design all the aesthetic qualities of the game. The concept artists work most closely with the person who came up with the original design for the game, as the concept artist is the one who does all the initial sketches for the characters, objects environment, etc, as well as the storyboards. They are responsible for creating the initial look and feel of the game that everyone else works off of. The modellers and environment artists use these sketches to create the actual game models for the characters and terrains, while the texture artists add the textures and colors to those models. Modellers need a firm grasp of human and animal anatomy, environmental artists need to know about architecture and natural landscapes, and texture artists need to know about both, although the work done by texture artists is largely handled by the actual modellers and environmental artists themselves now. And then there's the animator, who brings everything to life with animation, and must also have a good understanding of anatomy, as well as physics, in order to animate the models in a way that doesn't make the characters look like they're all secretly professional contortionists. The models also go to the cinematic artist, who makes the cut scenes and promotional videos for the game. Outside of the artists who work with the models, there's the UI (User Interface) Artist, who makes things like menus, inventory, and action buttons, and the technical artist, who helps solve the problems of all the other artists rather than work on any one particular thing, and usually has years of experience. All video game artists need to have skills in creativity and collaboration, and need to be able to work in either 2d or 3d software, though being able to do both will greatly increase a person's job opportunities in this field.

This image shows a guy wearing a motion capture suit and the 3D character object that is being animated by the motion capture suit. This is a fairly common method of animating in video games, as it's a relatively quick process and results in an animation that looks fairly realistic in terms of motions and camera angles. Assuming that a person worked for a pretty big company that deals primarily with 3D environment games, this would be a pretty common sight in the animation department of a video game company.

Most of the time, positions in video game design require at least a bachelors degree in computer science, or design with an emphasis on games. Traditionally colleges and universities will often have courses in skills that are used in video game design, though they are less likely to be geared specifically towards video games (despite advertising video game courses to attract people interested in such a career), than a technology or art institute. Some art institutes even offer degrees in video game design and specialized courses for it which combine the art, design, and technology classes needed for such a career. These schools are more likely to offer internships with video game businesses, which is a huge advantage to any student that really wants to find a job in this field. A person can also get a degree from online schools, though this option may present difficulties in the learning process for some, and loses the advantage of a possible internship. A person without a sufficient degree could still qualify for a job if they have enough prior experience, but it's harder. Designers starting out are usually known as associate game designers, and make, on average, between $40,000 and $60,000 a year. The amount a person makes usually depends on the company they work for, the amount of experience they have, and especially the school they come from, since people coming from a college where there were courses specifically centered around game design will usually already have a portfolio of games they made at their school, which makes for a good first impression in regards to that person's skills. Regular designers make between $45,000 and $80,000 a year, while lead and senior designers make between $50,000 and $100,000 a year.

This picture illustrates the amount of work that video game designers do very well. I mean, look at this guy. 3 monitors?! He needs to work on 3 monitors at once?! Although, when you consider how much of a computers resources would be used up by trying to open up three 3d graphics programs it makes sense that he would want to use a different computer for each. But he's still doing a lot of work. Generally speaking, video game designers get screwed pay wise; they do a LOT more work and put in way more hours than any business person who gets paid the same amount. By the time a business person does the same amount of work as a video game designer, they've made a fortune. So... yeah, this image shows how much work video game designers do. It also shows some of the work they do. This guy is working on a model, it looks like, while also putting together an environment, or animating something in the environment. Or, he may be the texture mapper. It seems like that would be a likely guess, since the model he's working on seems to be void of texture save for the part he's supposedly just finished working on. Or that could still mean he's the modeller in charge of the architecture, since the tessellation on the model is pretty low compared to the finished product on the big Samsung monitor, and texture artists have largely been replace by the modelers themselves.

There are several ways to get started in this field. One way that may work, but with a low success rate is to start out as a game tester for some business (probably one of the easiest jobs you could ever possibly get, since game companies need to constantly get input from as many people who haven't been actually working on the game as possible and so find game testers extremely valuable, and the only requirements are working digits/sense organs, basic knowledge of how to play a video game, and the ability to have/voice an opinion). If your suggestions and feedback about games you test demonstrate to the business that you would make a good game designer, sometimes, thought very VERY rarely, some businesses may give you a very low level design job. But this pretty much never happens anymore. Another way is to get an internship. This is a good method of getting started, because it gives you some real life experience, which is really good thing to have when applying for future jobs, and it's easier to get an internship through a school in order to get this experience than to go from company to company looking for someone who will take a junior designer with no experience (although this is also an option). But no matter what way one goes about getting started in this field, being able to prove you can actually design games is absolutely necessary. You need to put together a portfolio of games that you have made yourself pr with friends, you need to have a lot, and the games in it need to be QUALITY. This is why people who go to schools that offer courses specifically for games have the best pay and best chances for a job, remember?

For my self promotional piece, I'm going to try to cover as many aspects of game design as I can. I think I'll have a box, with a lid tat has a game board printed on it. Inside the box, I'll have some little cardboard character models and cardboard dice, as well as a flip book. The character models and dice with go with the game on the lid of the box, and the flip book...I'll try to figure out some clever way to incorporate it into the game, but right now, the only purpose is to just show I have animation skills. I basically want to make the project into a game that I can mail, with characters, puzzles and everything, which would illustrate this career by basically being like something that you would make in this career, except not on the computer. How close the end product actually comes to this is another story entirely.

http://www.theartcareerproject.com/combine-work-and-play-information-about-video-game-design/93/#.U3DTMccfFsY http://www.degreetree.com/resources/how-to-become-a-video-game-designer http://www.creativeuncut.com/video-game-design-career-paths.html http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/01/15/how-do-i-get-a-job-designing-video-games/ http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/issues/issue_113/1385-How-to-Become-a-Game-Designer http://www.adigitaldreamer.com/articles/images/video-game-design-jobs.jpg http://lerablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/game-developers.jpg http://newsroom.ucr.edu/images/releases/2272_1hi.jpg