Game Designer. Who is it?

“Most players want the game to reward them for ingenuity, rather than punish them in a meaningless and random order. Players love challenge and have nothing against defeat - if only this is an honest defeat "* (c) Gamedesigner

Hello, in this article I will tell you about the profession of the game designer, who it is, what it does and what you need to become. I hope it will be interesting and in time I will issue more and more similar articles and explain them on my own experience.

Surely many have heard such a thing as “game design”, “game design” and “game designer”. All, most often, it is associated with the word "designer", that is, the one who makes "beautiful." However, many do not even know that the game designer is the key object of all game projects and the key figure in each team.

Who is a game designer?

Let's start with the very concept of “Game Designer (aka game designer)”. Like many beginners in this field, I thought that a game designer is the person who creates games and gets money for his “ideas”. In part, this is true, but more accurately it can be described as:

- The game designer is an expert who answers and develops the rules of the game and mechanics.

The game designer hears, feels and can “feel” the game in his mind before writing the first line of code.

For convenience, I will replace “game designer” with “game designer” . Never share these terms, they are one and the same person.

What does a game designer do?

As I said earlier, a game designer is not engaged only in giving ideas for a game project, this person is a kind of intermediary between directors / producers and the development department, why?

- The answer is simple: game designer is, in fact, the project director, since he “invented” it , and thought through the project itself in terms of mechanics, that is, it developed it.

Any game designer should know the following:

• Basics of IT (programming and technology)
• Trends (market, ratings)
• Economy
• Psychology

Fundamentals of IT (programming and technology) - game designer primarily works with developers (programmers) who transfer his thoughts to the code. A game designer should understand at least the basics of programming in order to communicate with programmers and communicate their ideas correctly to them. Another important point is technology. Although the design of the database and other systems imposed on architects and other professions, but you can also face it.

Trends - to invent a game is one thing, the other is to attract an audience into it. You can think up the coolest (for yourself) game and you will think that this will be a cool project, but in 70% of cases (as practice shows) this is not so. You must constantly analyze the market, see and understand what is now fashionable and predict what will be fashionable.

Example: this year the games of the “shooter” genre occupy high positions in the ratings, and you understand that you can make a “shooter” and it will also be popular. But, it will take a lot of time to develop, and the next year, MMORPG's growth in popularity is predicted, then it’s better to come up with something based on it.

This is the correct logic of any game designer. Until you make your “shooter” next year comes and nobody will need it. But just do not forget that there are exceptions when the game is really so good that people even returned to unpopular genres.

I do not advise to choose those genres where the audience is least of all and think that your game will change the position of the market. At 99% this is a huge mistake and the project closes before its release.

Economy - everything is simple here, to start doing a project, you must find investors or sponsors that your project will be interested in and they will invest money there. Even if you tell them what a cool project you have, without a financial plan (sometimes called a business plan), you won’t get any money for development. But do not be sad, the financial plan can be made even without economic education. You just have to take into account in the plan the following points: how many potential players the project will have, how much money is needed to promote the project, how much money will be spent on wages, how much money will be spent on equipment and so on. For the first point you have enough knowledge about the market of games, and about the rest it is worth thinking carefully. After all, if your friend has exactly the same project, but it will cost less than yours, then most likely they will give him the money.

Psychology (you can still say "sociology" ) - you must understand human logic, be able to communicate with people of any nature and be calm, even if you are denied something, or for example, without your knowledge, something in the project has changed. You should have developed diction, you should not be afraid to speak in front of people and you should be able to communicate your thoughts clearly and competently (this is a particularly important point).

How does a game designer create a game?

Now we turn to the most important point, on which depends directly on the life and future of your game.

As it was also said at the beginning of the article, game designer should be able to feel, hear and “feel” the game in his head before its release and before writing the first line of code. He must be able to hold his thoughts and express them correctly so that others understand your thoughts.

Everything comes from the head. Where does game designer have any thoughts about the game then? How did he come up with it? Where do these thoughts come from? The answer is simple: a game designer is primarily a gamer or just a player. I will say from myself how I thought out my first games: I played games like Minecraft, SAMP, CS: GO, Rust, Heroes of the storm, warcraft and others, and in my head I wound such thoughts “What if you combine these games, add a little bit of everything? It would be cool! ” , “ Km. I think something is missing in this game. What could I add to it? If you do not understand what I am leading, now I will explain. You can play other games, see flaws in them with your views, or play a bunch of different games and highlight key points and merge them into one, and then express your thoughts to others. Approximately more than half of ALL games on the world market were invented and developed in this way, and I would recommend this way of thinking to novice game designers.

But if this method does not suit you, then you can try another one, but working with other methods you will encounter such a thing as “game mechanics” . Although you will come across this in any case, only in the above described method half of this problem will be solved. And so, what is the "game mechanics" ?

Game mechanics (it’s a game mechanic) is a set of rules according to which your game will be played, be it an online game, be it a storyline. I will personally say that there is no game in the world where there are NO rules. If you say that there are games with an empty world and do what you want there, this is not so (I will explain: if a player does not fall, but stands on a hard surface, this is the rule of the game, if he can move, the rule). It is the mechanics of the game that gives free rein to your imagination, here you can come up with anything, even something that contradicts the existing laws of physics (a vivid example of such a game is Minecraft).

Game mechanics in the first place - mathematics, economics, physics. Why? Creating an online game where there are sales, exchanges and others is economics, it is important for the so-called “balance of the game” to be, mathematics is needed for various calculations, for example, to count how many lives you will have for each level, or how much damage you will do when critical damage of 1.5% of the maximum health of the enemy. As for physics, everything is much more complicated, and I will not particularly write about it, but I will say only one thing: it is necessary for modeling the laws of the physics of the real world in a game.

Design document. What it is?

And now we come to the part of the documents. Every game designer who prepares to present his ideas to people should have a so-called design document. The design of the document is the paper on which the entire technical part of the project is stated. Properly designed document design is already a big part of success, because people do not have to run all the time to you for answers that may be in the document. A design document can be for any department: development department, design department, marketing department, and so on.

I don’t want to talk particularly about the design of the document, since there are A LOT of many different moments, and this should be described as a separate article. If you are interested, you can find the necessary information using www.google.com.

I attach a link to the example of this GDD (Game desing document): Design document (example)

Conclusion

In conclusion, I want to say that anyone can become a game designer. If you want to become one, then you have to think a lot, play and analyze. At first it will be difficult, even very. I invented the very first game throughout the year, and a lot of paper went in the trash. This is always the case, do not be afraid.

Hope my article was helpful. Do not throw sticks and stones if you find errors in the text, please indicate to me - I will correct.

IMPORTANT: The entire text is unique and based on my personal experience and opinion.