TY in School Wishing to Become a Game Designer. What do I do?

Facebook is also very active with game devs. Join at least a couple if not loads of game dev groups or anything related and ask questions, make friends, share ideas.
Motivation and keeping your dream in mind each day helps me accomplish all the things I have set out for.
The routes to my goals are many, it is my enthusiasm and willingness to help others that gets me opportunities down the road and keeps me moving forward.
There are lots of places you could end up.
For me personally I am tired of working for a big company that doesn't have the ame goals and personal fullfillment. So I have steered more towards small groups and indie development.
It is in some ways the harder road in the long run. But it's my dreamm and thats where I'm going.
I guess keep asking these questions, research the jobs and find your role models to learn from their past.
This might help you get a clearer vision of your dream.
And if you have a detailed dream already, I would love to hear it!

I thought I wanted to be a game developer when I was just about to leave secondary school but I didn't want to commit to 4 years in a university only to find out I wouldn't like it. I went to Ballyfermot College of Further Education, they have a course there that was called LUDO which is called something else now. Anyway, it was cool because it was an introduction to game design, they had some cool modules like Web design & graphic design, 3D Modelling and Coding and others but I feel that they were the most important ones for a game designer.

It was a one year course which is cool because I didn't wanna spend loads of time doing it and I found out really quickly that I hated game design and that I actually like graphic design! If you're not 100% sure I recommend doing something like this. Turned out in the end that I didn't want to go to university to do graphic design either and I ended up going to DCU to get my Arts degree in business so its not a dead end doing a course in a Further Education ( Like i originally thought) there are always options!

Hope this helps!

As mentioned above it may depend heavily on where you want to end up.
Although there are some skills that will always pay off for you.
Like doing a couple of years in a course for programming or on any of the dominant skills in game development that can be used in other industries.

Programing is a good example there. You could start out aiming for games and realise software development will pay your bills easier while you game dev as a hobby..
Lots of ways to go

Heya, well... I run a (very small) games design company so its someone like me you would have to impress to get the job.

Firstly, its basically the top job and everyone is looking to be a Games Designer. Its like going into the legal business and saying "How can I get a job as a Judge?!". The answer is, you cant ... at least not at the start. First you get to be an intern and you make a lot of coffee

The problem is, games are VERY EXPENSIVE to make. They are like films, no one comes out of film school and is handed a big Hollywood blockbuster script. You have to very slowly prove (time and again) that you are the person for the job. That you can be trusted not to make a balls of the whole thing, because this is the really real world and the budget will have been spent. Thats someone's money down the tubes, so someones ass is going to get fried. Typically not the games designers, tho they will catch some flak too!

So, how do you wiggle your way into that job then or what other jobs are there in Games making.

Well, *some* big companies are hiring people with games design qualifications, but rarely imho for the actual role of "games designer". Typically its for one as support to one of these main roles and then you get promoted by showing an aptitude for "game design".


There are three major roles.
Tech, Art and Business.

Tech is things like programming, scripting etc.
Art is everything from Theme and Concept Art to Modeling and textures.
Business is project management, marketing, team/resource management, sales, financing.

Each of these is a skill in itself and you can and should consider one as your primary focus. No one does all three. Ok, maybe Notch does but almost no one else does


I've heard a line from Scroobius Pip in one of his songs that fits very well. He said "I see lightning. I see kids who love being writers.... more than they love writing".

I see a lot of people who love the idea of being a games designer more than they love designing games. If you truly love designing games, it will consume your thoughts and you will have like a dozen unfinished games designs in your wardrobe that you love to polish and enhance even though you know probably no one will ever play them.

The one thing the OP said which made my eyebrows raise was about difficulty curves. Thats a good sign, that means you are reading the right stuff (and Extra Credits are freakin' geniuses at GD). Right now, today, I'm flaking off work writing this when I should be working on the balancing of our next multiplayer game (in fact, I wrote a post about it here, today ... go have a look if you want a real world example to chew on )

Last week I was talking to art directors about their experience for the role of Art Director. Next week we're looking at AI for the bots. In the mean time I have a budget report to balance for the producers. We have story boards to build and behaviour to model. Its a great job dont get me wrong but you really need to have a lot of experience in a number of the sub-disciplines to be able to do it.

Pick one of them that you love and go learn about that.
Read voraciously. Practise designing games. Talk to everyone you can.

Thats my 2c.

The other side of it is... go make a game. Code something like Pong, or Space Invaders. Then make it better. Then better again.

Then you will want to scrap it because you've learned so much and your first game will embarrass you. Thats EXCELLENT. It should embarrass you.

So you sit down with a pad and a pencil (do not design at a computer. repeat: DO NOT DESIGN AT A COMPUTER) and design a more fun game with the experience you have.


There is a reason that the very first program any serious programmer in any serious language writes is "Hello World". Almost EVERYTHING ever written is just a more complicated version of Hello World.
Almost every game is a more complicated version of Space Invaders.