Friday, April 27, 2012

Choosing The Best Video Game Design Career

By Sean T Saunders


Gaming industry have been around for forty years now and they have changed considerably during that time. As games became more advanced, the abilities that people in the gaming industry required changed too. If you have an interest in designing video games that are entertaining and challenging you'll need computer programming knowledge, artistic and writing skills aside from gaming experience. You will need to be able to conceptualize the game and write the rules that will allow it to function. When video game designer jobs first started, the entire process was often undertaken by just one person, the lead programmer.

The lead programmer framed the software programming codes as well as doing all the game designer jobs for the game. As new model of computers with faster and improved features were invented, computer games became more complicated and job functions started to separate. The lead programmer concentrated on writing code while the game designer jobs included designing the gameplay, storyline, characters and setting for the video game. Few modern video games involve only one person designing the entire game and in some big budget computer games there could be several dozen designers working on different parts of the game under the chief designer.

When the video game that is being developed is complicated and has a huge budget, there could be a couple of lead designers and a big team of junior creative designers. There are various different job functions that now fall under the category of computer game design. The different positions available for junior game designers are level designer or environmental designer and systems designer or game mechanics designer and also report writing and game documentation. Most video game designers started in the industry as game testers, so they have got experience in the kinds of design mistakes that usually happen while developing beta video games.

Besides coming up with the original idea and vision for the new game, the lead designer is also responsible for coordinating all the work of the junior designers who shall be working on a variety of tasks. The lead designer makes the main decisions and makes sure that the various team members are communicating well. The lead designer presents the results of the designs team?s efforts to outside agencies or departments. This position necessitates somebody who is both imaginatively and technically competent. The lead designer is often responsible for coordinating the documentation of all aspects of the game production process.

The junior designers that have the job of designing and balancing the technicalities of how the game is played are called game mechanics designers or systems designers. The game design career position that is becoming very important as gaming industry get larger and much more complicated is creating the levels, missions and environments for the video game. The person who does that task is termed the level designer or environmental designer. The development of user interface design for the computer game is often one of the tasks given to a junior designer and a member of the design team with good writing skills creates the game?s documentation.




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