What is Game design?

Contrary to what many people think, a game designer will not act as an artist or a programmer.

As important as the art and programming of a game may be, game design is what will make the art and programming work. Basically, the game designer will design the game by presenting all the elements that will enter the game and how they will behave. And even if it presents beautiful art and well-made programming, if they are not coherent and with a well-defined concept, the game will have a greater chance of failing. That's why the game designer comes in to design and think about all the points that a game needs to have.

The designer's job is to solve problems and also make it suitable for a goal. Unlike art, design uses art as a tool to achieve an objective, an objective that will have utility. As in a game, the game designer will use creativity to solve problems. It will use art as audio-visual expression and use mechanics for gameplay experiences.

Basically, the game designer will design and make the game work not only mechanically, but everything is thought out by the game designer, the way the player will play, the mechanics used in the game, the niche that the game will capture players, and also determine the audio-visual art style of the game, in addition to working together with the script and aiming at the playful as the main point.

The game designer will create a GDD with several important points of the project so that not only he can situate himself in the project but also the entire team can use this document.

Game design is a very difficult function within game development, and that is why most game designers are related to direction because they need to know how all areas of development work, how programming will be done, how arts will be created, and how they will be assigned in the game so that there is understanding and can potentially make the game closer to success as a director wishes.

The professional difficulty:

As I said before, even if he doesn't need to be an artist or a programmer, he needs to know a minimum of these things, and the more he knows, the better. Basically, the more he knows how things work and the difficulties that exist, the better the professional performance of the game designer will be. The area is very new, and it is very difficult to get internships. Only large studios open vacancies for this area more regularly, and you need to have a very interesting portfolio to draw attention. So if you don't like programming like me, it's good to seek help like ready-made codes, use Chat-gpt, or courses to develop prototypes and smaller games to put in your portfolio.

Cover art author: https://www.artstation.com/juannovelletto