Designer

Games designers are people who make decisions about how a game will look, feel and play. They craft what players do and achieve and how they are rewarded inside the game, scaffolding challenges, story and feedback to move players through the game. Ultimately, they define the ‘fun’ of the game.

They define all the interactions users have with the game, including gameplay, levels and user interfaces using games engines like Unity and Unreal Engine. Designers work closely with artists and programmers, but also can work with writers or in smaller studios, write the game’s story themselves.

Games designers can start in a different area of a studio, like testing, art, tech support, QA or programming, before moving to become junior designers, or start as junior designers in their own right. Junior games designers often work as level designers, working on a piece of a game’s design, defining the flow of how users journey through a single level of a game, or as user interface designers, designing the controls players use to play the game. Starting salaries can range from between £20,000 to £24,000.

Senior designers will take more responsibility for the core gameplay of a game, establishing the rules of the game, how players progress and how to structure the challenges, rewards and feedback mechanisms of the game as a whole. In larger games, they will also oversee the metagame or the scaffolded challenges players overcome through the game. The most senior manage teams of designers. Salaries for medium to senior staff can range from between £32,000 to £45,000.

Games designers usually have a pretty good understanding of storytelling, why people play and how to reward them. Before starting careers, they often spend time analysing how many game work, and build up experience developing gameplay mechanics in their own games, someone else’s games (mods) or in game jams, the products of which they build into a portfolio. Games designers have to be able to visualise and then communicate their designs to programmers and artists, so they often have great communications skills.

Games companies usually have these 3 pieces of advice:

1. Show your passion by doing everything you can to make games. See What next? below for some places to get started.
2. Practice your teamworking skills by working in groups – that’s how games are actually made;
3. Keep going and don’t be put off if knocked back.