Responsibilities of a Game Designer

• A career in computer games can be both fun and financially rewarding. two computer game pads,contolers image by Warren Millar from Fotolia.com

  For most children, especially young boys, the idea of having a job that involves playing computer games all day would seem like a dream come true. Although there is considerably more than just playing games all day, having a career in game development is something that attracts the young at heart and can be a lucrative occupation.

Responsibilities

• Game designers are responsible for creating the basic structure of computer games, from the story and setting, the rules, the characters, as well as the design of various objects in the game including vehicles, buildings and weapons. They must develop how the game should be played and train game testers to play it in certain ways to test that everything is working correctly.

Basic design process

• The foundations for the design are done on storyboards or short scripts, outlining the premise of the game. Then the design process begins, using modelling programs such as Maya and 3DS Max. Game designers may work with specialized game artists during character design and level creations, before the finished designs are passed on to programmers.

Game programmers

• Games programmers are responsible for writing the code that essentially makes a game work. Whether it's a car moving, a bullet being fired, characters running or music playing, there has to be code written for everything. A popular code used in games programming is C++.

  Designers must work closely with programmers to give the programmers their vision of what they want the game to be like and how they want things done. Programmers can then write the code to make this happen.

Personal Qualities

• To be successful in a game-design career, entrants should be keen game enthusiasts and willing to commit long hours to working on game development. A high level of technical competence is necessary and an artistic flair is vital in the design role. For programmers, strong mathematical ability and physics knowledge is important. Designers must be imaginative and creative people with good story-telling ability. A key trait is the ability to work well as a team toward deadlines; games are developed in stages, and it is crucial that each part of the design process is done correctly for deadlines to be met.