What is a Game Designer?

Whenever I tell someone I'm a game designer, or that I'm studying game design I always seem to encounter a strange reply. I find that once I say the words “Game Designer” people will respond with a comment about programming as a career, or an amazing idea for an App or game they've come up with.

Of cause, there’s nothing wrong with these types of responses, the person I'm speaking to is interested in what I'm doing, but it does show us something else; that most people don’t really know what a game designer does.

The common opinion seems to oscillate between thinking of game designers as just programmers for games, or as an idea generating machine that comes up with a cool story and then grabs a bunch of programmers and artists to make that idea happen.

Unfortunately neither of these descriptions comes close to what game designers actually do; though if someone wants to employ me to shout ideas at them and then get paid please get in touch ASAP.

What does a game designer actually do then?

The most succinct description I've heard and found to be true in my experience is that a game designer crafts the experience of a game. That at its most basic, the role of the game designer is to create the internal systems, mechanics and spaces of a game so that they will do what they’re meant to do when a player experiences them.

A fairly simple explanation, but creating an experience is not as easy as you might think.

It doesn't mean just saying that you want to make a scary game. It means that if you want something to scare the player you need to know how to scare them and when. You need to create everything in the game towards that end. From the lights, to the enemies, to the player’s tools, to what every room the player enters looks like and sounds like.

To put it another way, lets apply the role of a game designer into the role of a film production:

A game designer is the director, but they also write the screen play, they’re also the casting agent, the set designer, the camera man and the editor.

And if you’re in a small game development team then you can also be the storyboard artists, the set builders, the audio engineers and producer and even the actors.

So really it’s a complicated job with long hours and a lot of difficult work, but at the end of the day it’s a hugely rewarding career.

An Introduction - Let's Talk About Feelings

Have you ever read a book series that was so well written, engrossing and amazing that when you finished it you felt like you couldn't move?

You just had to sit there for awhile while your mind felt both startlingly empty and intensely full, with what you'd just witnessed on the pages in front of you washing over you again and again and again.

At the same time you became aware of the world around you again, after what seemed like a really long time, and you were unable to understand how the world continued to spin onward and function around you the same way it always had. Because for you this intense and wonderful journey had just come to an end and your brain wasn't sure yet if you were still the same person who'd started that book, or if you were someone else now. 

An all new you who's been transformed through a book, and the experiences you witnessed within its world, so that now you'll live your life looking at the world in a slightly different way.

...

So have you experienced this? Of cause you have, I'd say almost everyone who's read Harry Potter to the end would have experienced this to some degree or another at least.

Perhaps the more important question though, is what does any of this has to do with Game Design? 

In my opinion; everything.

This feeling is maybe the most important part of all creative works; Books, Films, TV shows and Games. It matters because it's this feeling that gives a creative work a clear signifier of worth. You can point to this feeling and say: "that book/TV show/Movie/Game changed my entire world, thats why it was important".

Or put another way, I think its what makes something into art. 

This feeling we all experience is the reason I know video games matter and why Video Games can be art. Because the feeling you had when you finished the last Harry Potter can be, and is, caused by games too.

Not all games, not even most games can make you feel like this. 

But some games can. 

Games like Spec Ops: The Line, the Mass Effect series, The Last of Us, The Walking Dead and the Bioshock series all have that spark that makes you feel like everything has changed just a little bit once its over. All from merely pressing buttons and twiddling little sticks for hours.

This feeling is why I'm a Game Designer. Its why I'm going to throw years into something that takes you a few hours to play. Its what makes me want to make games. 
Because I want to tell stories that you don't just read or watch but that you actively experience and interact with in a way only games can allow.

Because I want to put that spark into a game and then to see that game change someone's entire world.