Information about Game Designer
A game designer is a person who designs games. The term can refer to a person who designs video games, or one who designs traditional games such as board games.
This person usually has a lot of writing experience and may even have a degree in writing or a related field (such as English). This person's primary job function is writing, so the more experience they have with that activity, the better. Some art and programming skills are also helpful for this job, but are not strictly necessary. In addition game designers often study relevant liberal arts such as psychology, sociology, drama, fine art or philosophy. Due to the increasing complexity of the game design process, many young game designers may also come from a computer science or other computer engineering background.
With game budgets now running into millions of dollars, the industry can often be volatile and a failed project could force a company into bankruptcy. So the design of the game is critical and the industry has been repeatedly criticized for choosing to develop sequels and licensed titles where sales are more certain, rather than investing in new game ideas. In larger companies entry level game designers will typically be given simpler tasks such as level design and object placement, while the role of lead designer will be reserved for a designer with more experience and a history of successful titles.
Some of the games designed during this era, such as Zork, Baseball, Air Warrior and Adventure later made the transition with their game designers into the early video game industry.
Early in the history of video games, game designers were often the lead programmer or the only programmer for a game, and this remained true as the video game industry dawned in the 1970s. This person also sometimes comprised the entire art team. This is the case of such noted designers as Sid Meier, Chris Sawyer and Will Wright. A notable exception to this policy was Coleco, which from its very start separated the function of design and programming.
As games became more complex and computers and consoles became more powerful (allowing more features), the job of the game designer became a separate job function, with the lead programmer splitting his time between the two functions, moving from one role to the other. Later, game complexity escalated to the point where it required someone who concentrated solely on game design. Many early veterans chose the game design path eschewing programming and delegating those tasks to others.
Today, it is rare to find a video or computer game where the principal programmer is also the principal designer, except in the case of casual games, such as Tetris or Bejeweled. With very complex games, such as MMORPGs, or a big budget action or sports title, designers may number in the dozens. In these cases, there are generally one or two principal designers and many junior designers who specify subsets or subsystems of the game. In larger companies like Electronic Arts, each aspect of the game (control, level design or vehicles) may have a separate producer, lead designer and several general designers.
Gameplay includes all player experiences during the interaction with game systems, especially formal games. Proper use is coupled with reference to "what the player does".
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Video and computer game designer
A video or computer game designer develops the layout, concept and gameplay, the game design of a video or computer game. This may include playfield design, specification writing, and entry of numeric properties that balance and tune the gameplay. A game designer works for a developer (which may additionally be the game's video game publisher).This person usually has a lot of writing experience and may even have a degree in writing or a related field (such as English). This person's primary job function is writing, so the more experience they have with that activity, the better. Some art and programming skills are also helpful for this job, but are not strictly necessary. In addition game designers often study relevant liberal arts such as psychology, sociology, drama, fine art or philosophy. Due to the increasing complexity of the game design process, many young game designers may also come from a computer science or other computer engineering background.
With game budgets now running into millions of dollars, the industry can often be volatile and a failed project could force a company into bankruptcy. So the design of the game is critical and the industry has been repeatedly criticized for choosing to develop sequels and licensed titles where sales are more certain, rather than investing in new game ideas. In larger companies entry level game designers will typically be given simpler tasks such as level design and object placement, while the role of lead designer will be reserved for a designer with more experience and a history of successful titles.
History
The first video games were designed in the 1960s and 1970s by programmers for whom creating games was a hobby, since there was no way to sell them or earn money from creating games (the games required large mainframe computers to play). Some were designed by electrical engineers as exhibits for visitors to computer labs (OXO, Tennis for Two), others by college students who wrote games for their friends to play (Spacewar!, Star Trek, Dungeon).Some of the games designed during this era, such as Zork, Baseball, Air Warrior and Adventure later made the transition with their game designers into the early video game industry.
Early in the history of video games, game designers were often the lead programmer or the only programmer for a game, and this remained true as the video game industry dawned in the 1970s. This person also sometimes comprised the entire art team. This is the case of such noted designers as Sid Meier, Chris Sawyer and Will Wright. A notable exception to this policy was Coleco, which from its very start separated the function of design and programming.
As games became more complex and computers and consoles became more powerful (allowing more features), the job of the game designer became a separate job function, with the lead programmer splitting his time between the two functions, moving from one role to the other. Later, game complexity escalated to the point where it required someone who concentrated solely on game design. Many early veterans chose the game design path eschewing programming and delegating those tasks to others.
Today, it is rare to find a video or computer game where the principal programmer is also the principal designer, except in the case of casual games, such as Tetris or Bejeweled. With very complex games, such as MMORPGs, or a big budget action or sports title, designers may number in the dozens. In these cases, there are generally one or two principal designers and many junior designers who specify subsets or subsystems of the game. In larger companies like Electronic Arts, each aspect of the game (control, level design or vehicles) may have a separate producer, lead designer and several general designers.
Notable video and computer game designers
- Danielle Bunten Berry, of the seminal M.U.L.E. and The Seven Cities of Gold
- Marc Blank, co-designer of Zork, co-founder of text adventure publisher Infocom
- Bill Budge, developer of Pinball Construction Set, designer who anchored launch of Electronic Arts
- Alexey Pajitnov, developer of Tetris
- Chris Crawford, creator of Balance of Power and the founder of the Game Developer's Conference
- Jon Freeman, designer of the Archon series and many original Epyx titles
- Richard Garriott (Lord British), developer of the Ultima series of games
- Ron Gilbert, creator of Maniac Mansion and the Monkey Island series''
- Tomonobu Itagaki, creator of the Dead or Alive series, and the Ninja Gaiden series remake
- Hideo Kojima, creator of the Metal Gear Solid series
- Jordan Mechner, designer of Prince of Persia, Karateka, and The Last Express
- Sid Meier, creator of Civilization, Railroad Tycoon and other game series
- Shinji Mikami creator of the Resident Evil series
- Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox and Super Mario series
- Peter Molyneux, creator of the Populous, Black and White, Fable series, and Theme Park series
- Brian Reynolds, developer of Civilization II, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and Rise of Nations
- John Romero, creator of Wolfenstein 3D, the Doom and Quake series
- Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of the Final Fantasy series, Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey
- Tim Schafer, creator of Grim Fandango and Psychonauts
- Bruce Shelley, co-creator of Age of Empires series and Civilization
- Warren Spector, developer of System Shock, Deus Ex and Thief series
- Roberta Williams, designer of King's Quest and several other computer game series
- Will Wright, designer of SimCity, The Sims and Spore
Notable designers of non-video games
- Allan B. Calhamer - Designer of Diplomacy
- Frank Chadwick - Co-founder of GDW and designer of over 50 war and role-playing games, including Twilight 2000 and the Assault series
- Jim Dunnigan - Founder of SPI Games and designer of over 100 wargames, including the PanzerBlitz/Panzer Leader system
- James Ernest - president and lead game designer for Cheapass Games
- Richard Garfield - collectible card game () and board game designer.
- Gary Gygax and David Arneson - creators of Dungeons & Dragons
- Steve Jackson - Designer of Ogre, The Fantasy Trip, Car Wars, GURPS, Hacker, Illuminati and others.
- Reiner Knizia - prolific designer of German-style board games who designed 6 of the top 20 games on the Internet Top 100 Games List.
- Alan R. Moon - prolific designer of German-style board games including Elfenland and Ticket to Ride.
- Charles S. Roberts - Designer of first commercial board wargame (Tactics II) and founder of Avalon Hill.
- Redmond A. Simonsen - art director at SPI and designer of Starforce trilogy and BattleFleet Mars
See also
External links
- "So You Wanna Be a Game Designer" at GameSpot
- FuturePlayGame, a conference for academics and game designers to discuss the future of game design
Newsgroups
game is a structured or semi-structured , usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes also used as an educational tool. (The term "game" is also used to describe simulation of various activities e.g., for the purposes of training, analysis or prediction, etc.
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video game is a game that involves interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device.
The word video in video game traditionally refers to a raster display device.
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The word video in video game traditionally refers to a raster display device.
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A board game is a game played with counters or pieces that are placed on, removed from, or moved across a "board" (a premarked surface, usually specific to that game). Simple board games often make ideal "family entertainment" since they are often appropriate for all ages.
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- For the television show, see GamePlay HD.
Gameplay includes all player experiences during the interaction with game systems, especially formal games. Proper use is coupled with reference to "what the player does".
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This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.
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Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the for details.
This article has been tagged since September 2007.
This article has been tagged since September 2007.
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A video game developer is a software developer (a business or an individual) that creates video games. A developer may specialize in a certain video game system, such as the Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, the Nintendo Wii, or may develop for a variety of systems, including
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A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that they have either developed internally or have had developed by a video game developer.
As with book publishers or publishers of DVD movies, video game publishers are responsible for their product's
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As with book publishers or publishers of DVD movies, video game publishers are responsible for their product's
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writer is anyone who creates a written work, although the word more usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, or those who have written in many different forms.
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English}}}
Writing system: Latin (English variant)
Official status
Official language of: 53 countries
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: en
ISO 639-2: eng
ISO 639-3: eng
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Writing system: Latin (English variant)
Official status
Official language of: 53 countries
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: en
ISO 639-2: eng
ISO 639-3: eng
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The definition of an artist is wide-ranging and covers a broad spectrum of activities to do with creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. Debate, both historical and present day, suggests that defining the concept of an artist will continue to be difficult.
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programmer or software developer is someone who programs computers, that is, one who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software.
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Psychology (from Greek: Literally "talk about the soul" (from logos)) is both an academic and applied discipline involving the scientific study of mental processes and behavior.
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Sociology (from Latin: socitus, "companion"; and the suffix -ology, "the study of", from Greek λόγος, lógos, "knowledge") is the systematic and scientific study of society and societal behavior.
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Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance.[1] It is derived from a Greek word meaning "action" (Classical Greek δράμα), derived from "to do" (Classical Greek
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Fine art refers to arts that are concerned with a limited number of visual and performing art forms, including painting, sculpture, dance, theatre, architecture and printmaking.
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Philosophy is the discipline concerned with questions of how one should live (ethics); what sorts of things exist and what are their essential natures (metaphysics); what counts as genuine knowledge (epistemology); and what are the correct principles of reasoning (logic).
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Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems.
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Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century
1930s 1940s 1950s - 1960s - 1970s 1980s 1990s
1960 1961 1962 1963 1964
1965 1966 1967 1968 1969
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Their 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969, inclusive.
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1930s 1940s 1950s - 1960s - 1970s 1980s 1990s
1960 1961 1962 1963 1964
1965 1966 1967 1968 1969
- -
-
Their 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969, inclusive.
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Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century
1940s 1950s 1960s - 1970s - 1980s 1990s 2000s
1970 1971 1972 1973 1974
1975 1976 1977 1978 1979
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- The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, also called
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1940s 1950s 1960s - 1970s - 1980s 1990s 2000s
1970 1971 1972 1973 1974
1975 1976 1977 1978 1979
- -
- The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, also called
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A hobby is a spare-time recreational pursuit.
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Origin of term
A hobby-horse was a wooden or wickerwork toy made to be ridden just like the real hobby. From this came the expression "to ride one's hobby-horse", meaning "to follow a favourite pastime", and in turn,..... Click the link for more information.
Mainframes (often colloquially referred to as Big Iron) are computers used mainly by large organizations for critical applications, typically bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, ERP, and financial transaction processing.
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Oxo or OXO can refer to:
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- In chemistry:
- oxo, the formal IUPAC nomenclature for a ketone functional group. However, other prefixes are also used by various books and journals.
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Tennis for Two was a game developed in 1958 on an oscilloscope which simulated a game of tennis or ping pong. Created by American physicist William Higinbotham, it was based on analog, rather than digital computing.
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Spacewar! is one of the earliest known digital computer games.
Steve "Slug" Russell, Martin "Shag" Graetz and Wayne Wiitanen of the fictitious "Hingham Institute" conceived of the game in 1961, with the intent of implementing it on a DEC PDP-1 at the
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Steve "Slug" Russell, Martin "Shag" Graetz and Wayne Wiitanen of the fictitious "Hingham Institute" conceived of the game in 1961, with the intent of implementing it on a DEC PDP-1 at the
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Star Trek text game is a classic text-only computer game that originated from the BASIC programming language hacker culture of the 1970s. The original game is thought to have been created by Mike Mayfield in 1971, originally on a Sigma 7 minicomputer and then ported to the
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Dungeon was one of the earliest computer role-playing games, and ran on Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-10 mainframe computers.
Dungeon was written in 1975 or 1976 by Don Daglow, then a student at Claremont Graduate University.
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Dungeon was written in 1975 or 1976 by Don Daglow, then a student at Claremont Graduate University.
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Zork was one of the first interactive fiction computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure. The first version of Zork was written in 1977–1979 on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling, and
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Baseball was the first-ever baseball computer game, and was created on a PDP-10 mainframe computer at Pomona College in 1971 by student Don Daglow. The game (actually spelled BASBAL due to the 6-character file name length restrictions) continued to be enhanced periodically
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Air Warrior was the world's first multiplayer on-line air-combat simulator (at least for civilians). A player is able to fly a simulated World War II aircraft, fighting with and against other players, each flying his own simulated aircraft.
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Colossal Cave Adventure (also known as ADVENT, Colossal Cave, or Adventure) (Crowther, 1976; Crowther & Woods, 1977) was the first computer adventure game.
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