If you are a creative person, probably the idea of paying your bills with a job you actually love sounds like a dream. Game design is a diverse topic and can be summarized as the idea behind a game. If you pick the idea for a game apart however you will quickly discover that there are a lot of aspects involved in bringing the idea to life. From creating a central theme, story, plot to rules, difficulty, scoring and game-play.
Different Roles in Game Design Teams
Game design is a diverse field spanning a couple of different industries. Common roles in game design teams are:
- Lead Designer
- Writer
- Content Designer
- Graphic Designer
- UX Designer
- UI Designer
- Game Designer
- Lever Designer
- Software Developer
- QA/Testing
In this article we are writing about designer roles; Content, Graphics, UX (User Experience) and UI (User Interface).
How Much Money do Game Designers Make?
Salary varies between specific roles. The average game designer salary is around $60,000 PA. Starting salaries are around ,000 PA.
These statistics reflect salaries reported for 2019.
Some of the best paying jobs as a game designer can be found in large companies such as:
- Electronic Arts Inc.
- Ubisoft Entertainment
- Blizzard Entertainment
Where do Game Designers Work?
Video Games
The most common industry to work as a game designer is within the video gaming industry where most job listings for game design are listed. A design team within the video gaming industry usually have all roles mentioned earlier plus many other roles. If you are considering a career path in game design this is the best industry as you can gather all types of knowledge along your way to becoming a creative director or head of design.
Mobile Games
Another increasingly common industry to work in is mobile gaming – building games that are played on mobile and tablet devices. As the technology for mobile devices get increasingly more powerful, so does the canvas and scope for creating more complex and challenging mobile games.
Online Casinos
Designing online casino games for provides a good starting point for your career in a well-paid industry. The leading game providers in the industry are large companies with thousands of employees and their design teams always growing due to the high demand. As gambling online is becoming increasingly more popular in India there are many career opportunities in the industry working as a game designer without even the need to relocate.
What do Game Designers do?
A team of game designers usually contains a team of creative people and a few decisions markers. Some designers are writers creating a story line or a designers. Content designers specialize in placement and what type of medium should be used where to convey that specific type of content in the best way. A UI designer will come up with the nice looking components, such as buttons and menus. The graphical designer will create the actual graphics of the game. Level Designers make maps of various locations in a game. The UXs job is to make sense of everything from the end-user point of view and make sure everything works well and the user understands what to do and come back to play the game again and again.
Very few games are made by one super ninja who decides everything and does most of the work. Building a game is a collaborative effort with many different functions coming together and working as a team.
A common misconception about game design is that it’s all about creativity and design. Something that is often overlooked is the analytical side of game design. Developers for instance use a lot of algorithms and logic to create game mechanics for how the game works. In online casino games for example there are a lot of random number generators at play to trigger different events in the game-play.
Loving to play video games is not enough to be a game designer. It is true that many game designers love to play video games but one needs to know some specific skills in relation to building games in addition to just knowing how to play them. If you enjoy playing games then most likely you will love to work as a game designer. It’s a rare luxury to be able to say that you love your work!