Video Game Design Articles
Featured Video Game Design Articles
How to Become a Video Game Designer
One of the most exciting jobs out in the market today is video game designing. Many have the impression that it would take too much time and skills to accomplish this. Well reality check people...it does not! If you are into video games and love spending your leisure time (even your work time!), playing games then you have already passed the qualifying stages to becoming a video game designer...
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What is a Video Game Tester?
The Game Tester is the person in the game industry that plays one or more games over and over and over again for months. One misconception from industry outsiders is that a tester shows up to work and plays Skyrim for an hour, then moves onto Starcraft II for a few hours, and then plays Angry Birds Space for the rest of the afternoon. They’ll often ask, “All you do is play a stack of games all day, right?” Not right. A tester might play the same Nintendo 3DS game for 6 months straight. Throw in crunch time, and those 6 months now includes a six or seven day work week, 12+ hours a day, on the same game! So you’re probably wondering what they do with all that time sitting in the QA department.
A game tester’s primary objective is to play a game and find where that game fails to perform or be presented as intended by the game developers. All areas of a video game – design, art, animation, audio, or programming – are susceptible to bugs. These shortcomings are a result of developer oversights, or even carelessness and fatigue. Once found, the tester must then report the issue to the developer so it can be corrected. Then, when the developer has confirmed the bug is fixed, the tester must attempt to reproduce the bug on an updated version of the game to confirm it no longer occurs. This cycle continues until the game is ready to be shipped. At the end of a project, some games can have over 10,000 bugs found by the QA department.
What is a Video Game Designer?
Who’s the Game Designer?
When you play a video game, it’s very easy to pinpoint what a 3D modeler or animator contributes to the game experience. Same goes for the sound engineer and music composer. Of course, the game wouldn’t even run were it not for the thousands of lines of code written by the programmers. But what about the not-so-obvious components? For example, in a first-person shooter, who determines how many rounds a gun will hold? Or how powerful each round will be? Or the rate of fire? Or reload time? In an adventure game, who causes the red door to open when the red key is used? In an RPG, who sets up the skill trees and economy? Last of all, and most important, who is responsible for making the game fun to play? Relax, your intelligence is not being insulted, but what you’re going to see is the Game Design role is arguably the most diverse in the industry.
A Game Designer’s main function is to conceive the elements of gameplay, and to turn those elements into an interactive experience for the player to enjoy. This requires a robust skill-set both technically and artistically, because the Designer uses level editing software to build levels in a game, as well as high-level programming (scripting) to make things happen in the game world. What you must understand is that a Game Designer does not show up to work and simply write stories, character bios, and game ideas. Brainstorming and coming up with cool concepts are what a Designer does 10% of the time. The remaining 90% is comprised of the execution of the ideas; and, in order to make this happen, the Designer utilizes numerous artistic and technical tools.
Video Game Design Articles
How to design your own video game
A question we get asked a lot is "How do you pitch your own video game idea? Is it possible to do so?" The quick answer is...no. It's not possible. Not from the outside. You need to work your way into the industry first before your ideas will be taken seriously. Not to mention all the potential legal ramifications that a video game studio could face if they even hear your pitch and are already developing something similar they could be faced with lawsuits, that's why most game companies don't even read pitches. So if you have a great idea for a video game your best option is to design your own video game. Have a low budget demo of your game developed first...
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The Increasing Role of Character Animation in Video Games
"Almost every video game today uses character animation. It's become a standard element in modern entertainment software," says Mark Stuart, who is a video games designer for Bionic Games and is currently working on Spyborgs...
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