Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

If you can’t find a direct route into game design, it’s probably best to start in another
area of game development and then try to work your way over to design if a position
becomes available.
Game Designer as a Career Choice
C H A P T E R 1 1
If you have long-distance persistence and determination, and viable skills to accompany
your pursuit, there are opportunities in game design. It is my hope that as the game
industry expands, even more opportunities will be created very soon. Once you’ve
worked on a couple of game titles, it becomes easier to show some of your work.
However, getting a great design job is never really easy. The competition is always
fierce. Let’s face it, for many game lovers, what could be better?
Think about the pure numbers involved, too. On any given development team
these days, you might have 25 developers. However, most of these development positions
are reserved for programmers and artists. This means that game productions
typically have many more programmers and artists working on a title than they do
designers. So if you are competing for the few design slots available, the competition
is going to be heavy, and it may drive your salary down. Simply put, others may be
willing to do the same job for much less money than you.
Working as a game designer can be a beautiful avocation for those who are up to
the challenge. What challenge? It’s always a challenge to build content at the crossroads
of innovation in art and technology. This endeavor is rarely simple or easy.
The salary range for game designers, like many other development positions, varies
greatly. Entry-level designers might make $25–30K, while much more experienced
designers can earn around $60K. If you are very well versed in 3-D tools, packages,
and scripting, you are obviously adding value and flexibility to your role. “Superstar”
designers can obviously earn much more than this range would suggest, but very few
developers fit that classification.
P RODUCTION
Game developers and publishers have producers on staff. In other forms of nongamerelated
software development, these folks are called project managers, or software
product managers. The game industry uses the more entertainment-oriented term of
“producer.” Producers work to manage all aspects of a game production by tasking,
tracking, coordinating, budgeting, and facilitating. They are planners and project
coordinators. They also usually have a large background and exposure to games (for
obvious reasons).
Traditionally, producers come up out of the QA department. They begin as assistant
producers, move on to associate producers, and then on to full producers. An assistant
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Game Development Career Choices