Skills Needed To Be A Game Designer – Is it your goal to become a video game designer, but you don’t know how to get there? Start by understanding the requirements of game designers and the qualifications requested by game companies.
Each game company has specific requirements that you must meet before being hired as a game designer. Fortunately, you don’t have to ask what the company is. Instead, search online for job postings by any game studio you want to work for and read the game designer job requirements they list. That’s easy.
Skills Needed To Be A Game Designer
Want a job at Infinity Ward? According to their game designer job posting, you need to be creative, with the ability to communicate your ideas to your team. Want a job at Rockstar Games? According to their job posting, you’ll need the ability to multi-task and prioritize work based on feedback and criticism. Learning how to do that can be challenging, but learning the requirements is easy – just read job postings.
Game Designer Resume Samples
To give you a head start, I did the research for you. I studied 29 game designer job postings from several companies, and summarized them in the study below. I’ve paired each one with advice on how to start working on the skills you need to work on. If you want a job as a video game designer, you’ve come to the right place.
It’s common for game companies to require a bachelor’s degree, but I can tell you from experience that it’s almost always a negotiable qualification for game designers. Most hiring managers will waive the requirement if you already have enough work experience. Some job postings will also state “Bachelor’s Degree.”
In my research, I found that 41% of companies listed a bachelor’s/graduate degree education requirement, but they also indicated that the same experience is good. (Only one mentioned “a degree means something.”) Another 59% did not list an education requirement.
A bachelor’s degree can be good for a job in game design, read my article on game designer education requirements.
Game Design Resume Sample & Tips
It seems unfair for a company to require a certain number of years of experience, or a certain number of games shipped. After all, how can you do your first job if they already have experience?
Fortunately, almost a third (29%) of companies do not have the “years of experience” qualification. While others require one to five years of experience, this is another requirement that is usually a little more flexible. If you’re fresh out of school, my advice is: Go ahead and apply for a job that requires a year or two of experience. Because they can accept you.
About 70% of the job postings in this study required game designers to have one or more years of experience, but these requirements were often flexible.
What about the “shipped game” requirement? The good news: 38% of companies have no game requirements delivered. At least one submitted game is required on your resume before another company will consider hiring you. But again, it’s often flexible. If you have a strong design portfolio with projects you’ve completed at school or in your spare time, you should still apply.
Game Design Resume: Sample & Writing Guide [20+ Tips]
The day-to-day work of a game designer varies from company to company. But some core skills are important to almost all designers, so they appear in many job postings.
Let’s take a look at ten of the most common “must have” game designer requirements and discuss what you can do to build those credentials so you can apply for a job.
By far, the most important skill for a game designer is the ability to communicate ideas clearly and effectively. As the Edge of Learning job posting states, it is “the ability to communicate well verbally and in writing with technical and non-technical team members.”
Strong verbal communication skills are essential because, as a game designer, you will coordinate your work with artists, programmers, other designers, and executives. almost everyday. And if you’re not good at explaining your thoughts and ideas, or collaborating with others, you won’t be able to do your job effectively.
What Skills Do You Need As A Game Designer?
As a game designer, you will also do a lot of writing. You can write quests and game stories. You can write an early game “field” document. You will definitely write (or at least contribute to) your project’s game design document. And at many studios, you have to write functional specifications and other documents to explain game features to your team. Not to mention all the emails you write every day.
If you need to improve your written and verbal communication skills, there are ways to practice. If you’re in school, try taking classes like creative writing, technical writing, debate and speech. If you’re not in school, consider joining a local group like Toastmasters or signing up to speak at a local sports industry meeting.
Game developers use the concept of genre to categorize similar games and group them together. Examples of game genres are first-person shooters, puzzle games, and side scrollers. But there are dozens more.
Because there are so many different genres, it’s hard to become good at designing more than one or two. That’s why most game designers – and most game companies – pick a genre and stick with it until they’re experts. Sometimes it takes years.
Senior And Lead Video Game Designer: Key Skills, Mistakes, And Kpis
In this study, 59% of companies require their designers to specialize in a certain genre. But there’s a catch: different companies need different genres. It all depends on what kind of game the company needs you to design. For example, Nerd Studios requires its designers to have “experience designing for an open-world sandbox style of game”, while PopCap requires “an affinity for a puzzle and platforming game audience”.
There is no time to be an expert in all genres, so you should focus on learning just one or two. Start by thinking about what kind of sport you enjoy most in your life. For example if you spend most of your time playing Halo or Call of Duty, consider specializing in first person shooters. Because if you already like playing one type of game, you’ve already become an expert in that genre.
Game companies prefer to hire designers who can start working without a learning curve. That’s why more than half of the companies in the study listed specific game engine experience on their video game designer requirements list.
The most commonly mentioned game engine is Unity 3D, followed by Unreal Engine. Some studios are more flexible in their requirements, only that they want designers to have experience using one or more 3D game engines. For example, Battlecry Studios wants a designer who has “experience with a robust set of game tools.”
Go Deeper As A Game Producer: Skills And Tools You Needed
If you want to design games for a living, you definitely need to learn how to use game engines. But game engines are large and complex software packages, so the sooner you start learning, the better. Fortunately, most game engines are free to download and use as a student or hobbyist. For more ideas on getting started, read this article about free game engines.
How passionate are you about playing and designing video games? If you say “few”, half of the companies in this study don’t want you on their team. Game studios don’t want designers who are just game geeks. they want
Do you study the features and rules of each game, and try to understand what makes it an interesting and fun experience? Have you ever wondered about the psychology behind video games? Do you read articles and discussion groups to help you gain, as one job posting puts it, “knowledge of the gaming industry, trends, competition, platforms and markets?”
If not, I suggest you start. Because it is required to get a job at more than half of the companies in this study, including PlayStation Network, Respawn Entertainment, EA, Amazon Games and others.
How To Become A Game Tester
Game design can be described as the “glue” that holds together the work of every job in a game team. This means game designers need to understand each of the other disciplines—artists, programmers, audio engineers, and more—at least enough to have a meaningful conversation about their work.
For example, let’s say you’re designing a game’s combat system. You have to talk to the programmer about the combat code, talk to the animator about timing movement and attacks, talk to the audio engineer about the timing and implementation of sound effects, and talk to the quality assurance tester about finding and fixing bugs. .
As Jumpstart Games states in its job posting, game designers must be “comfortable directing input with other disciplines such as art, animation, programming, audio and story design.”
The best way to understand all the other subjects you’re helping is to dive in and do some of their own work. If you’re in school, take some classes in art, programming, and creative writing. Or if you have time on the weekend, try your hand at popular game modification (“modding”). A makeover is an easy way to be “a man”.
Game Designer Cover Letter Examples
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