Educate me on the different career-paths in the gaming industry and advice on school subject to take

[Nouw]

This thread is going to be two topics in one thread so I'll categorize them appropriately. After the first questions have been answered, I can ask my second one.

Spoiler: Videogame Career paths

I am aware that it's a massive industry and growing! And of course there are many jobs that come with it. I always read about different jobs but I never seem to be able to find out what some people do. I'm still confused about what a videogame designer actually does so Escapist, please help me. It's still a bit before I choose my career but the time to set the foundations for it is now. I want to set a goal and follow it for the years to come but I don't want to make an uninformed goal. So, my actual question would be, for this category:

1a)What does a videogame designer specifically do?
1b)What other jobs are there which involve the creative process? I don't mind if the broadest names are given for I can work from there.

Your time spent on my thread, answering questions and helping me is greatly appreciated.

 

[Killermud]

Ok so to your first question, a games designer is a broad term in itself, as a designer will have many different and maybe specific jobs. For example you may have a Designer working on all the maps, or a designer who decides what gameplay elements are in the game. They will usually get input from the rest of the studio but it is up to them what is in the final game.

Designing a game is only one side of a video game, as you will have Programmers, Artists, Producers, QA(Quality Assurance). But the main ones are Programmers and Artists, both of which have many many sub-categories.

Programmers
These are the guys/girls that make the game work, if you press a button on your controller the game knows what to do with that input via a programmer. Thats the most obvious role a programmer may have, but you will have tonnes of the people working on background elements such as :
- Graphics, Rendering, Lighting, Animation Engine
-- This branch is all to do with the Graphics of game, there are a lot of rendering techniques out there with more being used as our technology becomes more efficient.

- AI
-- This branch is all to do with how the computer handles situations when you play, for example when you play an RTS game, the enemy computer will decide what to do based off the environment it is in.

- UI (User Interface) or HUDs (Heads-Up-Display)
-- This branch is usually quite small. Here the programmers make sure you get all the information you need in the game, through menus and the HUD.

- Networking
-- The programmers here make sure you can talk to other players and play in the same game.

- Tools
-- As games are becoming bigger and bigger studios need ways to store, create and use mass amounts of data. So you will have a few programmers that make tools for the designers to make all the content for the game, such as a level editor. They will also make tools for 3rd party applications such as 3ds Max, so you can use models in the editor.
The list goes on and on. If this sorta thing interests you I suggest you look up some examples of C/C++ code. If you have good problem-solving skills programming may be for you.

Artists
Well its pretty obvious what they do, they make all the art for the game, but this comes under various areas of development. So heres a list of all of the different areas of Art used in games.
- 3D Modellers
-- Here you have a team of modellers that work on a lot of the content for the game, for example character models, or environment models which are for example a building.

- Texture Artists
-- This branch you have artists that make all the pretty colours on models or anything in the world really.

- Animation Riggers
-- This is more technical than artistic, as these guys will make the 3D models move in game, usually via motion capture.

- Music/SFX Composers
-- These guys make all the sounds in the game, be it music or sound effects, sometimes they might be hired.

- Concept Artists
-- These guys are used in the design process, usually a designer will come up with an idea for an environment and its up to the concept artists to make a visual representation of that.

So theres a quick overview of various jobs in the gaming industry any other questions just ask away

 

[PhoenixFlame]

Disclaimer that I'm not a designer, so I don't really have first hand knowledge, but...

1a)What does a videogame designer specifically do?

This varies slightly from company to company, but as a designer, you're generally involved in laying out the rules, the logic, the environment, and the mechanics of either a part or a whole of a particular game. The easiest analogy I can think of is a Dungeon Master in D&D, with a more technical slant. They're generally responsible for conceptualization, iteration, revision, and implementation of what portion of the game they're assigned to. They're typically versed or knowledgeable about the chosen game engine the company employs to create and develop the game and have methodologies for creating, tweaking, and revising their intended content. They are sometimes divided into teams based on type of game element - you might find environment and world designers put together, for example, or creatures and NPCs, or in MMOs, dungeons and encounters.

Again, I am not a designer, and don't have the first hand experience, but talking very generally, that's what I believe they do. There are very specific areas they can be divided into, but that varies with company.

1b)What other jobs are there which involve the creative process? I don't mind if the broadest names are given for I can work from there.

Well, some people I know in the industry got started in QA. QA testers are responsible for what the title says - their job is to practice quality assurance on iterative designs and elements of the game in question. Some people I know who go through QA go through this phase where they are terribly euphoric about essentially playing games all day - until they discover that QA has a ton of tedium. Running the same content day after day and week after week, testing minutiae such as walking through every square inch of worlds and environments, documenting reams upon reams of bugs and trying to break game content - all of these are job functions that turn what some people think is fun into, well - work.

Writers craft story, characterization, progression. There's some constraints placed upon them based upon what the engine can depict in terms of what plot they've come up with, but other than that they are very involved in ensuring there is flow, continuity, and the appropriate level of linearity (or not) in the various encounters, places, characters, and of course, the protagonist under the player's control.

In media, you have sound engineers, video creators, music composers, artists - all a part of the creative process of designing and executing a game project. They can be separate in each area, but many folks are multi-talented and, out of common sense or necessity, handle multiple areas.

Community is an interesting area. Though not directly a part of the creative process, community people are responsible for keeping their ear to the ground and collecting player feedback, impressions, and thoughts. They're the go-between for the development team and players, a sort of translator fluent in both the game design process and of the sorts of things you typically see players say or feel about games. They have a global view of both areas and advocate for and balance both as needed. A decently sized community with a community manager that has a rapport with their playerbase can become a critical part of the creative process because they serve as a pipeline of communication about outside impressions, thoughts and ideas from regular joe gamers. They distill all the "epic fails", "wtf [company name]", and "game-breaking bugs" language of players into specific feedback for developers, and conversely, filter all the "engine doesn't support that", "core design decision", "bug is crashing that encounter and have to do break-fix" language of developers into a common sense message players can digest.

Does that help?

 

[Nouw]

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Thank you very much for your answers. What sort of skills would help me becoming one? What subjects could be affiliated with them?