CAREER PROFILE
Game Designer and Developer
Game designers plan, design, create and produce video games for traditional commercial PCs, laptops, tablets, mobile phones, and gaming consoles with or without the financial assistance of a game publisher. Companies such as Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Gameloft, Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft Studios, among others, fund the full game production process, which includes internal and/or external game development team.
It’s a multidisciplinary job that often requires you to understand a little of everything. It’s not just about playing games and having ideas. You need to not only understand how to apply your ideas into many different, and often conflicting, areas of game design; you must also understand HOW to design, WHAT to design WHEN to design each feature, and WHY you are designing what you are designing.
Here, we’ll look at what the work entails, as well as the skills and qualifications required. We will also look at the salary structure as well as the best colleges and courses to pursue a career as a Game Designer and Developer.
Responsibilities for Game Designer
The below job description highlights key duties, tasks, and responsibilities usually performed by Game designers and developers in many organizations:
They may be expected to deliver the following:
- Design and develop the original concept
- Construct level structure
- Write storyline, character bios, dialogue, plot points, game objective
- Storyboard the action of the game
- Conceive every element of the game including rules, setting, objects, vehicles, weapons, flora, fauna, etc,
- Direct action sequences
- Define user interface, menus and controls
- Generate the Game Design Document (GDD)
- Develop early prototypes
- Decide on the devices and platforms on which the game is played
- Define the user experience
- Work with programmers to design the back end of the game
- Research target audience to understand what they want in the game
- Create storyboards and write scripts
- Lead the development process
- Produce sound effects, dialogue, musical score, sound mix and sound edit
- Manage quality assurance testing, and follow up on feedback
- Oversee the marketing and distribution roll-out
- Ongoing development and versions of the game