A game designer is someone who invents games and oversees their development. That is, he is connected not only with the design and creation of the concept, but also with all the other processes of the game’s life cycle.
Despite the fact that a game designer has to play a lot and be aware of all industry trends, his job can hardly be called fun. It is a hard work, and the demands to a game designer are very high: he should have a lot of skills in different spheres and be able to connect them to each other.
What does a game designer do?
Though the history of computer games started in 1940s, this sphere still lacks the uniformity and clear definitions of many things. For example, in some companies there may be a position of game director (game director), while in others his tasks will be distributed among other specialists.
The same is true for the game designer – his tasks may differ from studio to studio. In this article we will describe a game designer in small companies or indie teams who can also perform the duties of a product manager, a producer and other specialists.
A game designer has a lot of work to do: from coming up with an idea for a game to controlling the work of programmers, designers, scriptwriters, marketing specialists, artists, animators and other specialists.
His work on a project begins with creating a concept. To create a good concept, a game designer must not only play a lot (both old and new games), but also constantly analyze the market in order to keep abreast of the latest developments in game development.
For a game, he must think in detail:
- mechanics;
- graphics;
- plot;
- characters;
- balance;
- setting (sci-fi, space-opera, steampunk, cyberpunk);
- gameplay.
All of these elements make up the concept. When it is ready, you need to test it several times. The game designer must determine which audience will be interested in the game and whether it will be interesting at all. If no suitable audience is found, the concept will have to be redone.
A game designer has to think about things that often discourage those who go into gamemaking for romance or to fulfill a childhood dream. One such topic is monetization. Yes, games have to make a profit for developers, otherwise it’s just pointless to create them.
In order for a game to make a profit, you have to think about:
ways of promotion;
how to make money from the game;
protection issues;
sources of investment.
After collecting information and outlining ideas, a game designer prepares a concept document, which contains all the important information about the game. The concept document should be detailed, but simple and clear.
First the concept paper is shown to the team. If everyone is happy with it, then preparations for attracting investors begin. To do this, sketches are created, demos are developed, a trailer is assembled, and – most importantly – a pitch is written.
A pitch is a presentation that colorfully describes a future game. You need the pitch to interest investors and people on crowdfunding services like Kickstarter. The pitch is accompanied by all the materials that could impress investors. The pitch should be relatively short (about five pages), so that the reader could learn all the most important things and not get bored with the abundance of information.
When the investors are found, the game designer prepares a design document. It details everything that concerns the game and its development.
The team will read the design document: it describes in detail the tasks of each participant. For example, the elements to be rendered by the artists such as textures, sprites, animations, fonts, visual effects etc. Each team member must understand the tasks of all the other specialists.
The programmer must understand from the design document not only what code he will write, but also how he will add sprites or 3D models to the game. That is, the design document describes the work of the team as a whole. More specific information is passed to specialists in the form of technical specifications.
When all the documents are ready and work on the game begins, a game designer takes part in every stage of the work and in every direction:
helps the screenwriters think through the story so that it fits into the game’s mechanics;
helps artists create graphics to complement the storyline;
helps programmers add to the game everything other specialists came up with.
The most important job of a game designer is to bring the project to completion. And to do that he has to solve all the arising problems: to prepare new TOR, to determine what to change in the game to have enough budget and opportunities, and so on. He also makes sure that deadlines are met.