By: Anthony Danke

The Facts

• About 145 million Americans over the age of six play computer games or video games. 

• Forty is the average age of a game buyer.

• Fifty-three percent of game players expect to be playing games more or the same amount in the next ten years.

Description

• They write the blueprints for games• They will work with a team of workers• Basically the Author or director of the game• Don’t create the final project, just draft and help

create the designs for the game• They design a document that contains

descriptions of all aspects of a video game - mission, plot, rules, flow charts, sound, artwork, and special features.

Required H.S. Courses

• Calculus, Computer Programming, Multimedia Design, and Trigonometry/Advanced Algebra

• Participation in a Tech. Prep. will be valuable high school experience

• In Tech Prep programs, high school students enroll in technical college courses. Students participating in these programs may enroll in a technical college with advanced standing when they graduate from high school.

Salary

• With less than 3 Yrs. Experience = $46000

• With between 3 and 6 Yrs. = $55000

• Over 6 Yrs. = $70000

Entry-level

• Video game designer is not an entry-level job.

• You have to know how video game design and development works, and experience as a programmer, artist, or producer helps.

Skills Required

• Most video game designers have bachelor’s degrees in English, art, computer science, or related areas.

• Skills in collaboration and negotiation help you make sure the final product is created true to your original vision.

• Need excellent writing and speaking skills

Job Outlook

• Even though the industry is growing, the job market is still small.  Competition for these jobs is usually pretty steep because the rewards are great.

• Video game designer teams producing these games have ballooned in size to meet the demand of a next generation experience.

Employers

• Gearbox Software, Capcom, id Software, LucasArts, Naughty Dog, and many more

• Game designers will work for a certain video game developer or travel around working with different developers

• They make a rough draft for a game and if the higher ups like it the designers work with a team to create the game

After H.S. Education

• Should take a class in video game design, some of the schools that offer this are…

• ITT Technical Institute :Digital Entertainment and Game Design

• DeVry University :Game and Simulation Programming

• Westwood College of Technology: Game Art and Design

Responsibilities

• You have to make sure everything works • You have to instruct your team so they create your vision

of the game• Design responsibilities refer primarily to content creation

- this involves laying out area designs, the ability to do area layouts in the editor, designing the pacing of quests, events and dramatic action, scripting character interactions, events, and cut scenes, all with the intention of giving characters and encounters in the game life( To simplify this, it means you decide what everything looks like, what the characters look like, what happens and when it happens )

Locations

• LucasArts Headquarters: San Francisco, CA, USA

• Gearbox Software Headquarters:Plano, Texas, USA

• Capcom Main Headquarters: Osaka, JapanOther Headquarters: San Mateo, California, USAAsia HQ: Hong KongEurope HQ:United Kingdom

Pictures

Game Designers• Cliff Bleszinski: member of Epic games lead designer of Gears

of War • Allen Goode: co-designer of Company of Heroes • Marc Laidlaw: designer/writer at Valve on the Half-Life games • Shinji Mikami: of Capcom - the Resident Evil series • John Romero: Doom and Quake lead designer and level

designer • Tim Willits: Designer on id software titles The Ultimate Doom,

Quake, Quake II, Quake III Arena, Quake III: Team Arena, and

Doom 3 • Will Wright: game designer of SimCity series and The Sims

series • Soren Johnson: co-designer of Civilization III and lead designer

for Civilization IV • Richard Rouse III: designer/writer of The Suffering games