A video game designer is someone who makes video games for computers and devices like Xbox, PS2, PSP, and Gamecube.

A video game designer has the responsibility of writing the story and describing and naming the characters.  They have a big job. They work in a studio. Video game designers earn $85,000 and up per year. Some good things about the job are that video game designers get a chance to put their ideas and characters out so the world can see them. They might become famous one day!  Another good thing is that they can make friends with the people they work with.  There is a bad thing, too.  It’s that video game designers work long hours. They can work from twenty-four to forty-eight hours at a time!  
 
If video game designers want extra training they might go to a school like Digipen.  They must earn a Bachelor’s Degree in computer science. They also should go to a special school for two to four years.  They should take classes that let them learn all about computers.

Video game designers work with a team of people.  A freelance designer gets less money than a designer working for Nintendo, Sega, and other companies.  Freelancers don’t work for specific companies. They work for themselves.  The producer earns over $50,000.  They oversee development and they are the project manager.  The programmer earns above $45,000. They also must think logically and must have good computer and problem solving skills.  The graphic artist earns $30,000-$50,000 a year.  They draw the characters and backgrounds.  They must keep up with the most recent graphics.  The musician creates the music in a game along with the sound effects.  Their salary varies.  The play tester earns $30,000 to $50,000 a year. Their stage is critical. They rate the game.  They also suggest things to the designer to make the game better.  They also see if the game is too hard, too easy, or boring.  A Beta tester checks if they can break the rules and then they try to deprogram the bugs (if there are any).  Beta testers earn a salary of $30,000-$50,000.  Publishers produce and market games.  They earn $75,000 and up.

The history of video game design began in 1962, when Steve Russell created “Spacewars”, the first video game.   Nolan Bushnell played Spacewars in college and thought it was a good game.  So in 1972 he copied “Spacewars “and created the first arcade game called “Computer Space”.  It wasn’t a success because it was too hard.  Though he wasn’t about to give up. He soon created the first video game company, Atari. The company’s game  “Pong” was their first game and was a huge success because it was easy but challenging.  Two years before Nolan made “Computer Space”, Bruce Artuich made the first flight simulator.  A flight simulator is a game in which a joystick is used to fly an imaginary plane. 

In the future there will likely be more movie tie-ins and sequels.  That’s a problem because designers won’t get to use their creative ideas as much.

The personal skills needed for video game designers are good writing ability, creativity, and the ability to communicate so others can understand him/her.

In order to get a job you must have a high school diploma, though they usually only hire people with a Bachelor of Science degree. Then you have to master a computer program that has the ability to make a video game. After that you have to make a 2 dimensional side scroller. A side scroller is a game like Super Mario Bros.  If the company likes the game they will hire you if it also meets the requirements.

 A video game designer’s tools are a color printer, scanner, a modem, and a computer with lots of memory and an Internet connection.

Who I Interviewed And What I Learned I interviewed Michael Moore on Thursday, December 15, 2005. My interview was through email. He started designing PC games in 1989.   He’s been a project manager that long, too.  He currently teaches game design and production to students at DigiPen. He’s also writing a college textbook on game production.  Before getting into PC games, he worked in board games for 10 years working on wargames, role-playing games and some mass-market games.  He was an editor. Then he became a product developer. Then a designer. When he heard that designers were needed in electronic games, he decided to try and get a job for designing video games. He got hired by Infocom in Boston. Eventually he moved to California and started designing his own games.  He got a lot of his experience from designing board games that you can’t get now.   If you wanted to become a video game designer today he said you would need to study a computer language called C++ and get a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science at a good college. He enjoys the brainstorming process and thinking of the basic ideas. He also likes writing down his ideas and showing them to others and getting feedback. His favorite part of designing is making the game. He said it would take many pages to tell about the history of video game designing, but he gave me a shortened version.  He said that the lead programmer or the lead artist was the designer years ago. The game and the design teams were smaller and one person could take on the roll of several jobs! In the early 1990s the role of the designer came to its own. The games were getting larger and you needed to have someone write down the plot and help create the game play assets. Today video and computer games are huge, have many different stories along with many different modes.  Someone has to keep track of what the group is doing and make sure they do it right.  That’s one of the designer’s jobs. He told me about four important designers.  Shigeru Miyamoto invented “Zelda”, the “Mario Bros.”, and “Donkey Kong” and works for Nintendo. Sid Meiers made “Railroad Tycoon”, “Pirates”, “Civilization”, and many other games. Will Wright designed the “Sims” and “Sims City”.  Peter Molyneux designed “Black & White”. He said that the amount of competition is growing in designing games and consoles. One problem today in the video game business is that more games are being based on movies and TV shows. It’s a problem because designers don’t get to design freely. They have set characters and a set background. Games are being made as sequels a lot, too.  That’s also a problem because teams don’t get a chance to be really creative. He predicts that in the future there will be more movie tie-ins, more individual designers, fewer gamers, and that it will be more challenging to come up with an original idea. He says role-playing games (RPG) are the hardest to design.  He said that “Circuit’s Edge” was the hardest game that he designed because anything he added had to be in the same tone with the science fiction writer who wrote it.  He said that he thinks he could do better on “Big Brother”, a game based on George Orwell’s novel “1984”.  It was never published.  He thought that he could’ve done better on the puzzles.

Bibliography  “Computer and Video game Designers.” Career Discovery.  2000. Crosby, Oliva “ Gignews “Artist. November 22, 2005 Moore, Michael. Email interview. Tuesday, December 15, 2005 Morkes, Andrew (Editor). Careers in Focus.  Chicago, IL: Ferguson Publishing Co., 2002.  P 20-29 O’Donnell, Annie. Computer Animator. New York, NY: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. Oleksy, Walter. Video Game Designer. New York, NY: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. 2000. Shires, Jeremy. Careers in computer animation. New York, NY: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. 2001.

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