The path of a Game Designer

After coming to a decision to walk the path of a Game Designer, (rather than programmer) and having worked as a Game Designer during my internship, I’ve decided to write about my views of what it means to strive to become a Game Designer.

Firstly, who is a Game Designer? Although the job title has the word “Designer” in it, not all Game Designers have to be artists. In fact, some can hardly draw. People like Peter Molyneux, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Hideo Kojima, Will Wright and Chris Avellone are some of the well-known Game Designers (Henceforth known as ‘GD’) out there. For those who don’t know, a GD is one of the roles that is always present in any game development team. Teams usually have one member who fulfills that role and depending on the size of the team, sometimes more than one GD is present. Sometimes teams might have a “multi-role” GD, meaning that someone will be a GD/Programmer, or Producer, or some other role but someone will always fulfill that role.

Hironobu Sakaguchi



So, what does a Game Desginer do? In my opinion, there are some tasks which are a GD’s responsibility. The Game Design Document (GDD) comes to mind as the GD’s primary task but there is no yardstick with which to measure the work for a GD. An overview of a GD’s duties is to hold the ‘vision’ of the game being developed and make sure that eveyone else on the team is working with that same vision in mind, hence the creation of a GDD.

The main purpose of a GD is to envision what the game will play like and tweak it’s game rules and mechanics to suit the audience that it’s aimed at, since games usually cater to a targeted audience. It is this aspect which gives the GD the name of ‘Designer’. The GD ‘designs’ the essence of the game, which is essentially its gameplay.

How do I go about becoming a GD then? One must know games to create games. It helps if you play lots of games of different genres and not just AAA titles but other not so acclaimed ones as well. Once you’ve stopped playing, that’s when you start to analyse it. While playing a game, you try not to think too much about it and just play. The experience you get whilst playing is also important as part of being a gamer as well as a GD. 

Will Wright

Another aspect of being a GD is to be creative. However, that does not mean coming up with brand new stuff all the time. Rather, it’s more of integrating existing ideas into a framework, whether that framework is a technical  one or an existing IP. Anyone can make stuff up, but it’s up to the GD to figure out if a particular idea is useful and if it can fit the general theme of the game the team is working on.

Ideas can come from anyone working on the team and some of them can get pretty weird. Once again, the GD is tasked to fit in new ideas whilst liasing with the rest of the team to decide if an idea is do-able and fits into the game. Keeping the vision of what the game is going to play like falls onto the GD’s shoulders. If a particular idea detracts too much from the rest of the game, it should be removed. If an idea adds to gameplay, it should be refined so that it matches up with the rest of the game in terms of gameplay style and pace.

At the end of the day, there is no right or wrong way to design a game. After all, some who have strayed from mainstream genres have garnered suprise success. The most important thing is to try. A bit of trial and error, lots of testing and a commitment to making a good game is the right path to successful game design and making great games.

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