Would Video Game designer be considered as tech?

For anyone that loves and lives to play video games, video game design can be a dream job.

Video game design refers to planning, designing, and creating video games. Video game designers will often work closely with other members of a team to create video games for computers and video game consoles. Designing video games is a very specialized and challenging career.

Contrary to what some may believe, the majority of video games are not created overnight, or even in a few weeks. The majority of video games on the market today will usually take at least a couple of years to make.

Although most video game designers are more artistic than anything, they will also usually need to know at least basic computer programming, since he will need to help program certain parts of a game. Once the initial copy of a game is created, a game designer might also help test it and work out any bugs or problems in it.

Some video game designers may be more focused on certain aspects of video games than others. When creating a complex video game, for instance, one team of video game designers may be responsible for coming up with the story behind the game and the narration. Another team may focus on creating characters and animation, while other designers work together to create the settings and layout for the game.

Since sound is an integral part of a video game as well, some game designers can specialize in this area. This can involve creating music, sound effects, or character voices in a video game.

How Much Money Does a Video Game Designer Make?

The video game industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, and most video game designers will usually make a decent amount of money. The median annual salary for a video game designer according the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is $58,510; $28.13/hr.

Video game designers truly do earn every penny of what they make, though. Although it sounds like a dream job to many, most people don’t realize the amount of work that must be done to plan, create, and polish a video game. The majority of video game designers are constantly under pressure with strict looming deadlines, and they will usually need to work very long hours.

What Type of Education Does a Video Game Designer Need?

Video Game Design is a very competitive field, and an education is usually needed to break into this field.

Students who are looking to have a career in video game design have the option to attend a few different types of schools. Traditional colleges and universities will often offer several classes pertaining to video game design, for instance, but art or technology institutes may offer more specialized programs in this field. Some student may even opt to enroll in increasingly popular online programs.

A video game designer will usually need to have at least an associate degree in order to secure an entry level position as a video game designer. A bachelor’s degree in a related field, however, is even better.

Aspiring video game designers should consider taking graphic design classes, including animation, along with computer science classes, including computer programming. Some art institutes may even offer video game design degree programs, which combine several artistic design classes with more technical computer courses. There are plenty of online options for those seeking more of a work from home experience.

First and foremost, technical designers (TDs) are proper, full-fledged game designers (or at the very least they should be, in my view). On top of that they happen to have technical skills, as the job title suggests. "Technical skills" is a bit vague, but most of the time, technical designers tend to have been either former programmers or very good level scripters. Technical artists can also make good technical designers. Case in point, at Epic Games, an artist made the iOS Jazz Jackrabbit tutorial, and it was a tech artist who made the Unreal Engine 4 editor presentation.

The skills
Being designers, TDs are aware of and appreciate design concerns such as player experience, usability, rhythm, replay ability, etc.

One of the most important skills of a TD is the ability not only to talk to people from another department (code, art, animation, audio), but actually understand what they're on about, speak the same language. This implies having knowledge of how the others work.

For instance, a TD working with animators would know the animation pipeline as well as they do. This has two advantages: they know not to ask unreasonable requests (or how to turn an unreasonable request into a reasonable one), and they tend to know when they're fed BS about what can and can't be done (which does happen sometimes) A TD working with a gameplay programmer is able to give clear briefs about the inner workings of a system: what are the different situations, what should be exposed to designers for tweaking, and in which format.

Empathy is another important skill for a TD. They must remember that they are not working for themselves but for the other designers, which are the reason why TDs exist. When requesting functionality to gameplay/tool programmers, they must think about their accessibility to non-technical people. Also, when defining pipeline for authoring game mechanic related content, they must keep in mind that the data should be as straightforward to create as possible for artists and animators.

TDs are usually good system designers, and they have the foresight to implement generic systems in a future-proof way, anticipating changes in design.

The tasks
It obviously depends on the team and the project, but in general, the tasks of a technical designer may include:

Establishing with programmers how gameplay related features are implemented, more importantly defining what should be data driven and what shouldn't.
Feeding back to lead designers on the actual complexity of a feature (from an implementation point of view).
Creating "bricks of gameplay" that level designers can drop in their levels with little to no tweaking.
Extending existing functionality using the "tools" (scripting functions) made available by programmers.

The first and the last point tend to be the source of a never ending (but hopefully healthy) argument between designers and programmers where the former would fight for features that you can easily iterate upon, that don't require script duplication or that can be extended without additional code support, and the latter would try to minimize the amount of work that doesn't have a short-term positive impact on the project (the infamous "let's not fix something that isn't broken (yet)" or its variant "let's not try to solve a problem that may not exist").

Letting technical designers extend functionality is another potential point of friction with programmers, as the former can very easily push the existing systems to their limits, and then request that little bit more functionality to achieve that thing people thought wasn't possible without putting a programmer full-time on the job. Or what I call "implement a feature using an existing system that wasn't exactly meant to be used that way, and tell them to make it work".

However, that technical creativity is a double-edged sword. While it's obviously nice to make new stuff without requiring a coder's help, over-delivering features may let leads and executives think that the code base and/or the tool set are sufficient to get the job done, disregarding the fact that you just used a massive hack that wouldn't work as well in other situations (they don't know about that, they only see the result).

In the end, the whole point of having technical designers is to relieve gameplay programmers of some of their workload, and make level designers worry-free when it comes to repeatable mechanics. That's why TDs must be able to determine when something can be manageable in script, and when it should really be handled in code.

For anyone that loves and lives to play video games, video game design can be a dream job.

Video game design refers to planning, designing, and creating video games. Video game designers will often work closely with other members of a team to create video games for computers and video game consoles. Designing video games is a very specialized and challenging career.

Contrary to what some may believe, the majority of video games are not created overnight, or even in a few weeks. The majority of video games on the market today will usually take at least a couple of years to make.

Although most video game designers are more artistic than anything, they will also usually need to know at least basic computer programming, since he will need to help program certain parts of a game. Once the initial copy of a game is created, a game designer might also help test it and work out any bugs or problems in it.

Some video game designers may be more focused on certain aspects of video games than others. When creating a complex video game, for instance, one team of video game designers may be responsible for coming up with the story behind the game and the narration. Another team may focus on creating characters and animation, while other designers work together to create the settings and layout for the game.

Since sound is an integral part of a video game as well, some game designers can specialize in this area. This can involve creating music, sound effects, or character voices in a video game.

How Much Money Does a Video Game Designer Make?

The video game industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, and most video game designers will usually make a decent amount of money. The median annual salary for a video game designer according the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is $58,510; $28.13/hr.

Video game designers truly do earn every penny of what they make, though. Although it sounds like a dream job to many, most people don’t realize the amount of work that must be done to plan, create, and polish a video game. The majority of video game designers are constantly under pressure with strict looming deadlines, and they will usually need to work very long hours.

What Type of Education Does a Video Game Designer Need?

Video Game Design is a very competitive field, and an education is usually needed to break into this field.

Students who are looking to have a career in video game design have the option to attend a few different types of schools. Traditional colleges and universities will often offer several classes pertaining to video game design, for instance, but art or technology institutes may offer more specialized programs in this field. Some student may even opt to enroll in increasingly popular online programs.

A video game designer will usually need to have at least an associate degree in order to secure an entry level position as a video game designer. A bachelor’s degree in a related field, however, is even better.

Aspiring video game designers should consider taking graphic design classes, including animation, along with computer science classes, including computer programming. Some art institutes may even offer video game design degree programs, which combine several artistic design classes with more technical computer courses. There are plenty of online options for those seeking more of a work from home experience.

What Can a Person Do With a Degree In Video Game Design?

Small video game production companies are often looking for video game designers. Since these smaller companies often have limited budgets, however, they will generally not pay as much as larger companies. On the other hand, these smaller companies are usually a little more laid back than larger companies. A new graduate just starting his game design career typically has a better chance of securing employment with small or start-up companies.

Large multi-million dollar video game production companies are often a little harder to get into, and they are also a little more structured. Since these larger companies have much larger budgets, however, game designers are usually paid larger salaries.

Game designers typically work for gaming companies such as Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, etc. They typically work in an office or studio-like setting amongst other designers and programmers. This environment can get very stressful, especially when one is dealing with a looming deadline, or dealing with a server crash. So Yes they are considered as Tech

A major in game design and development prepares students for immediate entry into the expanding interactive entertainment industry. If you love playing video games and think that you might like designing them yourself or being part of their creation, enrolling in a game design and development degree program could be just the right move.

Seeing the creation of a video game through from start to finish can be a thrilling and rewarding experience. Degree programs in game design and development can give you first-hand experience doing just that. You can learn every facet of creating a challenging, visually stunning, and, most importantly, fun game.

There are as many kinds of video games as there are people. This means that game designers can often choose to work on the kinds of games they enjoy playing. Employers actually prefer it that way, as individuals with a lot of experience in a particular area of gaming may often have insightful ideas on how to improve game play. So, whether your forte is sports games, flight simulations, car racing games, arcade-style shoot-em ups, strategy games, or role-playing games, there is a game type to fit your particular style.

A video game needs to have many different aspects working together in order to succeed. This means that there are many different ways to contribute to the creation of a video game. Video games need writers in order to create the story and dialogue, artists to render the characters and landscapes, programmers to translate everything into computer language and create fluid game play, and sound designers to create soundtracks, sound effects, and voices.

The gaming industry is at full swing; video games are enjoyed by people of all ages, allowing players to step into an alternate world and become superhuman soldiers, expert tennis players, and world saviors.

Video games are extremely complex, in storyline alone, and there are millions of lines of code that develop every aspect of the game. From maps to characters, these games fulfill a reaction for every possible action that a player may choose. These worlds are courtesy of video game designers, who are responsible for the content and environment of every video game.

What does a Video Game Designer do?
A video game begins with a concept. A proposal is drafted by a team of game designers, who address important details such as target audience, requirements, deadlines, and budgets. Video game designers make that concept of gameplay and layout come alive, often through experimentation with several themes and genres, as well as developments and improvements on existing games.

This can include:

Plots and storylines
Characters
Maps, scenarios, and difficulties
Methods for winning or losing the game
User interface creation
All of this is created through computer software in which the designer will input computer scripting, which is then processed by the software to generate commands, events, objects and characters that players interact with.

There are many types of game designers who focus on a particular aspect of gameplay. Most designers will spend at least some of their time as testers, where they can experiment with coding and watch others’ mistakes firsthand. Lead designers are the coordinators of the team and are responsible for communication inside and outside of the design team, as well as making important decisions. A game mechanics designer works on the balance of the game and its rule system. Lastly, an environmental designer is responsible for creating the different scenarios and environments of the game.

A game will undergo millions of changes throughout its making, and game designers are required to constantly recheck and recode thousands of lines of code. A designer can also be called upon to develop a game to focus on a particular aspect, such as market, design, technology, or art.

Games that are market-driven are designed to make a profit, and therefore their progress is limited to consumer demand. Most games are developed in this manner. Games that are design-driven allow the designer to take full reign of the game and its aspects. Many games are not developed in this manner because of monetary restraints. Games that are technology-driven are created in order to highlight a technological achievement or to market gaming consoles and engines, such as high-quality graphic displays. Rarely, a game will be art-driven, where a game is focused on visual effects and impressive designs created by artists.