What Do i need and how to i do game design?

[Matt Macdowel]

ok i plan on going to collage for game desgin but the question is what do i need and how do i do this and yes i did my research but i keep coming up with different answers.

[The Green Fox]

ITT Technical Institute or somethng.

[Chrono Reaper]

ITT Technical Institute or somethng.

That's Incorrect...ITT only involves A+ Certafication and Networking skills for computers.

Colleges that teach video game developent where I live in LA California are: Westwood College, DeVry Institute, and Mt Sierra.

NOTE: Most colleges in the video game department don't teach all the aspects of video game development. Westwood and Devry only cover the designing apsect, Mt. Sierra College teaches both the programming and designing aspect for your future gaming career. There are also several universities that cover the gaming department and some are now training people for their masters degree.

Just make sure that when you go to college for it make sure they cover both aspects on the designing and programming as well. That way your are more adaptive to your career so you can find out which one has your heart set on.

The gaming industry  career is very competitive and gets pretty full over certain things like design, concept art and modeling. most gaming companies want that very few people do are programming,  Rigging, Map Development. Interestingly enough what companies want more than ever is what DZ Composer is good at, which is digital music composer.

When you graduate, try aiming on working on a small company and work yourself up o larger companies. Nintendo is not always gonna be your goal, which I'm gonna say now if that's what your aiming. If your not afraid of flying aim for a small simple yet stable company like Q-Games LTD. or Insomniac Games. and build your resume up with experience and then if your interested in expanding try moving to larger companies.  Only very talented and innovative "out of the box thinking" people are able to start big their first time. If you start on a big company you'd might end up with a poor position that wont pay well compared if you aimed for open spots on small companies. The goal is to invest you time, building history with  other companies first and evolve from your experience, in the end that will help you become a highly skilled game developer, as well as a stronger trust with the companies who hired you from your past history to boot.

[Matt Macdowel]

i plan on working with High voltage studios then save enough money up and find my own game company greenfox game studios  :D

[DZComposer]

If you plan on starting your own studio, you may want to take some business classes. Particularly some Business Law, Managerial Accounting, Management, and Marketing classes. It can be very difficult (not to mention expensive) to learn that stuff "the hard way."

It doesn't matter what industry you're in, you will have to deal with "front office" things.

Also, make sure you think through what you want to do. I've heard plenty of stories about people wanting to start businesses. They loved the field they were in, but ended up hating running a business. Being your own boss sounds liberating on paper, but with that liberty comes responsibilities. YOU need to make sure the rent is paid. YOU need to make sure your employees are paid. YOU need to make sure your company keeps it's end of contracts. YOU have to make sure your investors get their returns (and you WILL have investors. Unless your super rich you can't start a business on your own without financial help.). The last one is especially important. If your investors pull out before your business can live on its own, it will go under. Some people enjoy that stuff, but many don't.

I'm not trying to tell you not to start a studio, I just want you to know that the business world is ruthless. If you want to enter it, be sure you can handle it. Running a business is HARD!

I have a dream of starting a datacenter collocation company. But, I as I go through business school, I am not sure if I want to be the big cheese. If I were to do it, I would probably try to find a partner.

[Matt Macdowel]

i am taking some bussines classes in my fuutre high school career and yes i know what my empoloyes do need but i don't know for game desgin i don't know witch programs to use it for it or what i complety need for it.

[Mr. Krystal]

I'm almost done with my game programming degree from DigiPen Institute of Technology, the first, and still the best, "video game college" in the English-speaking world (probably the whole world). Right now, DigiPen is one of the only schools offering an actual degree in game design. That's something totally new for this industry. Previously, if you wanted to be a game designer, you either needed to know a bunch of higher-ups, come in as a designer from another industry (like board games), or move within the company from a programmer or artist position. It still remains to be seen if the game design degrees will actually be worth anything, since companies aren't looking for them.

DigiPen is good. It teaches all aspects of game programming, design, and other highly technical skills. It is VERY hard. You'd better like math, or at least know how to force yourself to do stuff you hate.

Chrono Reaper, I don't know where you are getting your info, but in my recent attempts to get a job, one type of job that was never in demand was audio engineer. Those jobs are ridiculously hard to find.

[CrypticQuery]

I'm almost done with my game programming degree from DigiPen Institute of Technology, the first, and still the best, "video game college" in the English-speaking world (probably the whole world). Right now, DigiPen is one of the only schools offering an actual degree in game design. That's something totally new for this industry. Previously, if you wanted to be a game designer, you either needed to know a bunch of higher-ups, come in as a designer from another industry (like board games), or move within the company from a programmer or artist position. It still remains to be seen if the game design degrees will actually be worth anything, since companies aren't looking for them.

DigiPen is good. It teaches all aspects of game programming, design, and other highly technical skills. It is VERY hard. You'd better like math, or at least know how to force yourself to do stuff you hate.

Chrono Reaper, I don't know where you are getting your info, but in my recent attempts to get a job, one type of job that was never in demand was audio engineer. Those jobs are ridiculously hard to find.

*Whistles* GO MR. K!!  :D

[Sabre]

I'm almost done with my game programming degree from DigiPen Institute of Technology, the first, and still the best, "video game college" in the English-speaking world (probably the whole world). Right now, DigiPen is one of the only schools offering an actual degree in game design.

They all say that.

It's not about what you know, but who you know. I'm an overqualified sponge these days because I assumed book smarts got you into university. It does not.

[Chrono Reaper]

Chrono Reaper, I don't know where you are getting your info, but in my recent attempts to get a job, one type of job that was never in demand was audio engineer. Those jobs are ridiculously hard to find.

Have you been job hunting outta state?

A professor who teaches at my college named, Sean Osborn, who is also a video game programmer and Debugger for Activision on The Spider Man video games and Some of the PS One Tony Hawk video game and Video game animator Teod Tomlinson who worked on the old Bat Man video game "Return of the Joker", for the NES mentioned that Music composing and Model Rigging are the few chosen positions in the industries (at least over here).

[Mr. Krystal]

They all say that.

It's not about what you know, but who you know. I'm an overqualified sponge these days because I assumed book smarts got you into university. It does not.

It's best to have both. If you know people, but have no skills, you have no job. If you don't know people, but have tons of skills, a small bit of advertising can get you a job. If you know people AND you have skills, easy to get a job. As it is, I have a small, but effective network, and I have pretty good skills, but not genius-level or anything.

[ThePointingMan]

Lucky me! I wanna be a programmer, and my cousin is a producer for cap-com! My current program, another TEXT BASED RPG How exciting... Well, I'm excited about it, but most people say, another one in a not good voice. Each Rpg gets more and more intense with things I did not know before though, currently I'm stuck at some error I have never seen before.

So this Digipen university, how expensive is it, where is it ect, I've been planning on going to the art institute of Vancouver, for a course called Visual and game programming, The course outline looked really good. I think it was $50000  It's like a course that is a bunch of courses.

Anyways, I'd say the most important thing, is to make sure you enjoy game design, before you full out go in it.

[Matt Macdowel]

well in game desgin whats all the buttons im gonna use and crap and does games need art? and why.

[Chrono Reaper]

Art is needed to create things before going through the development of any game. It  keeps a project organized by showing the employees what they are trying to explain on a visual scale how something is going to go down and get worked on. The minimum requirements for a game developer besides 3-4 years of programming, is a three to four year degree with a Bachelor's  or higher in Media Art and Design. You will need to understand the fundamentals of animation such as squash and stretch, fast and slow motion, walk cycle, perspective etc. Few concept artists do a lot of work by producing the story boards of the video game before the cinematics are made. Like Pixar's "The Incredibles", they came up with several thumbs on each scene and then if they like it they go into a practice motion animation using flash or other animation programs to view how the characters would react or move if put in motion in those scenes. After the final review they would go through with development of that scene in CG animation.

[Mr. Krystal]

well in game desgin whats all the buttons im gonna use and crap and does games need art? and why.

Some games don't use art, but most do. No clue what buttons you will use. That's dependent on what system you make games for.

[Matt Macdowel]

im gonna make games for nintendo and i already have one in develpment and i also need a Nintendo kit but can anyone explain how that things works?

[Chrono Reaper]

im gonna make games for nintendo and i already have one in develpment and i also need a Nintendo kit but can anyone explain how that things works?

If your planning on working with Nintendo, I wanna let you know most of the people I looked up who worked on the games had some history in other companies, Nintendo is larger than a standard third party company. Heck even Reggie was once a marketing strategist  for the Big New Yorker Pizza, before working for Nintendo.

[ThePointingMan]

So when you say in development, how so?

[Matt Macdowel]

So when you say in development, how so?

i have the story line written down i have the charters written down i have the guns and crap written down so basicly i just need a team thats all

[Sabre]

It's best to have both. If you know people, but have no skills, you have no job. If you don't know people, but have tons of skills, a small bit of advertising can get you a job. If you know people AND you have skills, easy to get a job. As it is, I have a small, but effective network, and I have pretty good skills, but not genius-level or anything.

Nope, definatly contacts.

[ThePointingMan]

To tell you the truth... I kinda agree with Saber. Some things all you need is contacts.