“Grand Theft Auto”, “Sleeping Dogs” … Have these names reminded you of your exhilarating gameplay experiences? Imagine you could become a game designer and invent a bunch of hottest games like those, how would it be like?
Are you a potential game designer?
“I think a game designer has been one of those mythical jobs that people are dying to fill for, but it’s not as easy as people think,” says Gemma Lai, a leading game designer of “Portal”. She points out that a game designer must have creative, imaginative, unique ideas. Strong storytelling ability is also required. Apart from having excellent communication and presentation skills, you also need to be able to work alone or work in a team. The last important thing is the skills of problem solving.
It is really vital that you have the problem solving skills. Sometimes you just have to make sure the game you create does not have any bugs. Or else, gamers would be confused and would not support the games anymore. “They are our motivation to create better games. We would try our best to give our customers the most unforgettable gameplay.” Lai stresses.
A piece of cake?
You may think game designers are easy jobs, just sitting all day and writing down the game you want to create, and then passing it to programmers and letting them do the rest. “It’s not like that.” Lai explains. “To design a game, you have to set the rules of the game. Make sure they’re all reasonable and not ridiculous. Then create the setting such as background, characters, weapons, vehicles and so on. The next thing to be set up is the story and how it develops. The last thing is how the players play the game. In other words, it is how we can let the players enjoy the game most. Sounds complicated, right? But there’s more! As a game designer, you have to cooperate with your working team. You have to make sure the team members, like programmers, artists, animators and producers work until the very end of the game development.
Does being a game designer still sound comfortable to you? Probably not. Lai also adds that once the game is developed, you need to train testers to play the game in order to make sure the game works in the way it is meant to be. They would try to find as many bugs as possible and fix them again and again. It is a time-consuming, tough procedure.
Every cloud has a silver lining
But there is always a bright side. A leading game designer earns up to $550000 per year. You can also play games whenever you want! (Just to find if there’re any bugs to fix.)
If you are really interested in game design, it is advisable to find bugs when you are playing different videos games. A game designer is a rare and unique job in Hong Kong; maybe you can be the future star of game design!