Is becoming a video game designer right for me?
The first step to choosing a career is to make sure you are actually willing to commit to pursuing the career. You don’t want to waste your time doing something you don’t want to do. If you’re new here, you should read about:
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How to become a Video Game Designer
Post-secondary education is often required to hold a position as a game designer. Typically a designer can seek education at local technical schools in the subjects of computer graphics, animation and software design.
Having a passion and a love for video games is essential. Game companies are looking for designers who have invested time into gaming, who love playing games, who are familiar with different gaming consoles, and who understand what makes a good game good. Active players will be able to bring innovation for improvements, as well as make fixes to currently ineffective and unattractive design elements.
A designer is an inventor of sorts. An alternate world is their creation, and its success depends on the power of the designer’s imagination. A designer must also be able to think on their feet and have advanced problem-solving skills. Video game design is not an exact science; it is prone to bugs and problems that must be quickly spotted and fixed. This area calls for quick adaptations and constant innovations as technology improves and video games are able to be more accurate and realistic. The designer creates this world through lines of code, and therefore must be knowledgeable in the field of computer programming and software creation.
Working well in a team, especially when working for large gaming companies, is important in order to meet deadlines and launch the game on time. A designer must also have excellent communication skills in order to persuade fellow teammates of an alternate method that is more efficient, or introduce new methods that may prove to be useful to the game design. Designers must also be able to work together in order to create concepts and parts of the game that are all fluid with one another, as if there had been only one person who created the game based off of his/her vision.