Tips on Becoming a Game Designer

People often ask me “How can I get a job within the game industry? No one is offering the experience I need and I feel I have no chance of reaching my dream job with all the negative steps on my path. How can I become a game designer?”

Before I go any further, I just want to say you don’t need a degree or anything like that (I didn’t go to university) but this doesn’t mean it will be easier, hell no! I’ve been doing my learning via an online course which has helped me loads, but yet again, you don’t need to do that either.

So back to the original question, “How do I become a game designer?” Well before you start you need to ask yourself this– do I have the passion, the hunger for knowledge and the ambition to learn new things; if yes then continue reading.

Where to begin, lets start with the basics… There are some exceptional game designer books out there which go into incredible detail about what game designers do, these are A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster and The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell. These books will give you a foundation of what designers do and give you templates to work with so you can make a start on your own documentation.

Attend Game Jams, these are events where people come together from around the world to make games in under 48 hours (the rules differ in areas but you get the idea), this is where you get to work with people who are like-minded and work in different fields, such as art and programming, so you get to see the development stages of a game. Don’t think you will be making the next Gears Of War, but you will love it non the less as it will be your first game.

Next step will be working with game engines, I recommend learning UDK (tutorial link here) as it is an incredibly powerful tool, it introduces you to visual scripting languages (Kismet) and it’s completely free to download. I just want to say that I’m a little biased on this matter as I know there are also other free level design tools available such as Unity 3D and Source but that’s totally up to you. From my experience you learn more from the UDK SDK and it has a lot of powerful tools available to you as a designer.

Never ever place any department on a pedestal; what I mean by this is never believe you cannot do anything as this will knock your confidence and may even sway you away from your dream job. Every person you work with will have placed their heart and soul into their given role and taken years of practice for them to reach where they are today. For years I placed departments on pedestals such as 3D modellers and programmers thinking I could never do that until I said “I must believe in myself and work even harder!” Now I know JavaScript and I’m now building my own 3D models thanks to my self-motivation and of course Digital Tutors. I didn’t know anything about 3DS Max but I built this Pod Racer in under two weeks (please ignore the fact that I haven’t rendered it and the poly count).

Last but not least try to form a team by looking on forums or Reddit and just make games as this is the best way. I never said it was going to be easy, it may take a few years but believe in yourself and work hard and prove that you can be the very best like not one ever was (sorry was slowly starting to sing the Pokemon theme tune.)



As usual if you have any questions please feel free to ask me anything and I will be more than happy to help.