jobs - What does a Game Designer do? what skills do they need?

I know someone who is thinking about getting into game design, and I wondered, what does the job game designer entail? what tools do you have to learn how to use? what unique skills do you need? what exactly is it you'd do from day to day. I may be wording this a bit wrong because I'm not sure if the college program is become a game designer or learn game design. but I think the same questions apply either way.

Answer

What does the job game designer entail?

I always explain design to people like this:

What's the difference between Black Jack and Poker?

They both involved players and the same deck of cards, but are entirely different games because the rules that define how the games are played are different. In essence that is what a designer does, writes a series of rules as to how a game plays.

These days as games get more complicated, the job often includes narrative elements in the areas of story/setting/characters. Although many parts of that are given to people dedicated to writing and not design.

Design is a pretty broad term in the industry and it covers everything from high level system design (rules) to narrative design (story/character) to level design (the placing of assets and scripting)

What tools do you have to learn how to use?

Getting a job directly as a designer is hard. Many of us came from either Programming or Art backgrounds or in my case both. On smaller teams, it'll be expected that you can do something other than design full time as well. The tools change depending on the type of design you are doing.

System designer/Creative Director - Most time spent in Excel, Word, and Powerpoint.

Narrative designer - Word, maybe Final Draft. These guys are mostly writers.

Level Designers - Excel, custom level design software or common 3rd party tools (UnrealEd, and so on) Typically should be comfortable navigating the popular 3D-art packages (Max/Maya)

What unique skills do you need?

Communication, both writing and verbal is probably your most often used skill once you get to the higher levels of design. Coming up with a design is a pretty small part of the job. You spend most of the time communicating how to build that design to the rest of the team.

Critical thinking, ability to break down a problem into a series of small discrete steps. It's not enough to play a bunch of games. You need to be able to clearly understand how the parts of those games work together. When/why they combine and work, and why they can fail when combined.

Level designers benefit from an art background. An understanding of composition and architecture both help.

A basic psychology understanding is also helpful for designers. The more you understand about how and why people respond to stimulus the better your can predict their response to future designs.