Looking at these requirements for jobs...

[Pyrian]

...aren't Game Designer jobs relatively high-ranking jobs?

Not at entry level, they're not. Project leads frequently come from design, it's true, and the design lead may have a ton of influence (may, lol), but at entry level the game designers tend to be neither influential nor well paid (especially compared to the programmers). You might think you get to tell the artists what art you need and the programmers what code you need for your level or quest or whatever, but at entry level the drek definitely flows the other way - you get a set of art and scripting capabilities and have to make do as best you can.

Something tells me that that 7+ years experience is dealing with someone who has worked with the art or programming of a game and is looking to start moving up into being an actual designer.

I think this happens less often than you might guess. An experienced programmer would almost certainly be taking a substantial pay cut in this scenario. I suspect many artists would as well.

 

[hawkeye52]

There are more people than jobs.
If you won't take the job, someone else will.
That's reality.

You can always become a politician.
A lot of people with zero qualifications get elected for public office.

I have, given my miserable success at finding work, actually giving this, the going into politics part, serious consideration. I mean why not put one of the assholes who's responsible for me having such a hard time of it out of a job, right?

On the job hunting note I'd love to meet someone who has successfully landed a job blind (i.e. they didn't know anyone at the company and no one at the company knew them) from sites like Monster or CareerBuilder so I could ask them how many goats they sacrificed to do so.

To be precise 7. On a serious note though I send in my CV through my university who are running paid year long internships. They basically picked my CV out at random from 10 other CV's and asked me for interview and I simply did a lot better at interview then the others did. Mainly because I can talk the hind leg off a donkey when I want to.

 

[Schadrach]

The thing to know about 'requirements' is they are actually just guidelines for who the employer is hoping to get and often not stuck to if they can't find that ideal candidate. For example in my current job they were asking for at-least two years experience in a similar job, I actually had just two months experience of part-time voluntary work and still got the job as I was the best candidate they could find at short notice. You just have to keep sending applications and somewhat bend the truth when you have to and eventually you'll get your foot in the door.

Another thing is (in the US, and especially in tech jobs) that the requirements are sometimes impossible because they specifically want to get someone on a work visa but permission to do so requires having advertised the job locally and not being able to find someone who meets the requirements. Since the requirements are never put through a sanity check as part of this process, listing subtly impossible requirements (say, requiring 5 years experience with something 2 years old) allows them to throw out US applicants because they either don't meet the requirements or lied about their credentials, while just not doing the same diligence on the work visa hire.