I guess most people here needs to do some design work time-to-time. It would be easier to find full-time game designers in large game companies than indie developers.
Yeah, W. I am just interested in seeing who does both and who has someone to design and someone to code and how they go about stuff.
I always find it really cool how here most devs seem to do both, but when I think about programmers I know personally not many of them seem to not have much imagination. Maybe because we're all old. These youngens who can do it all... gee what's the world coming too
Both of our full timers do both, we have to. On Scribble Worm I'm also artist, musician, and sound guy. You have to wear a ton of hats on any small project. At a big company I might do nothing but write shaders or optimize memory layout. Maybe if we ever sell a billion of something I'll be able to hire someone to do only one thing at a time.
What is a "designer"? This is such a broad term..?! You can add the term designer to all of thoose positions Concept,texture,model,enviroment,character,story,dialoge,gui,sound,level,game,tech,tool, etc...
There are two of us and I break things when I try to be technical, so i stick to the creative parts and my partner hasn't got an imaginative bone in his body so he sticks to just programming. I guess we're a rare team but well matched. We only do it for a hobby though. We work pretty slowly in our spare time. It'd be lovely if we had more time.
I just program and have outsourced 100% of art and graphic design. I know what looks good and I know my weaknesses so I wouldn't attempt to even touch designing a game. Now on the other hand, I am creative and do come up with the concepts and ideas for games, but I just dont have (or want) the skill to design the graphics. Some folks (i think Tiny Wings guy) are capable of doing both or all three (if you throw in audio), but i think most people are good at one or the other and for the most part should stick to their strong points if they plan on doing this as a business.
It all depends what you mean by 'design'. If you mean graphic design then I think I did too much of that and will be making more use of proper graphic designers in the future. I think Ground Effect's presentation let down the coding and gameplay. If you mean actual game designers who have "the vision" or, in bigger companies on big games, their minions, few iOS games are developed that way. Games are usually designed by the programmer or maybe the artist. Personally, I think creativity is the only thing that makes game coding any different from working on a financial database or something. It's why I'm doing my own ideas on iPhone, I can't stand having my work reduced to trying to create what is in the head of some turd who is somehow being paid to 'make a game' without sweating over actual code or a 3D package. I've only worked with a couple of designers in 25 years that didn't make me want to strangle them
Yeah It seems like most of the guys on our team end up doing multiple tasks but still have the primary skill that they focus on and excel at. Its a healthy mix of right brain and left brain talent. To excel at both programming and art/design is pretty rare, if you can do that you would probably be working by yourself or just one other person. The less people creating the game the better profit, usually. I primarily focus on the art and design aspects of the game. I mostly specialize in 2d and pixel art. We are about to release our 3rd game "Jetpack Handyman" on may 6th. our current game "Super Pixel Ball" has been doing pretty good. -Dan WedgeKase Games
I did 95% of the design of Legendary Wars. I didn't code at all but used a plist interface in the engine. cheers
I actually just posted something today about finding a designer and the importance of great graphics in a game. Especially for those who cannot or don't posses the skill (like myself) to code AND design. 'Design is (pretty-much) Everything' (http://blog.fine-dandy.com/post/4960586933/design-is-pretty-much-everything)
My background is mainly in programming, however, I am also very active in project management and overall "design". By "design" here, I mean that for all my games and apps, I decide how they will work, how things will be laid out, what the theme and style will be, etc. I do NOT draw the actual graphics for them, but I do give direction to the artists and ask for revisions based on my vision.
Game and level designer checking in. I only give vague general ideas to the artist on duty. She might hate me for it but it's the only art designing I can do
We do things the same way. I'm on a 2-man team, and we are making our first game in our spare time. I have lots of experience with motion graphics, and have a vision of some kind for just about everything creative. Although I do have a technical bent as well, my teammate is a very intuitive programmer. He knew nothing about the programming language to begin with, and in just a few weeks had built the entire game engine from the ground up. Of course, we've also known each other for 25 years, so working together comes easy and natural.
My background is as a games designer. I have worked for companies large and small. Some of them you will have heard of (Acclaim, Atari), some not. As a team grows, there is more than enough work to make sure that the design works a a cohesive whole, that difficulty rises on a decent curve, stopping players from getting lost or losing interest, etc. I then started in as one of two people on an indie iPhone game. The other did the programming, me everything else, so I had to expand my skills base. When the programmer ended up too busy to finish the project, I learnt Unity and programming to do games on my own. Design in a very specialised and valuable role in big teams. Indie projects generally do not have teams big enough to allow someone to work on that full-time. It either requires someone to multi-task, or to have someone working part-time, or to contract someone in as needed. The largest workloads are at the beginning of the project (setting up the framework to guide the team) and end (gameplay balancing and dealing with small issues to compensate for shortfalls / extra capacity).
I'm mainly a designer, but in the end, everyone on the team does at least a little bit of design. Because the size of our team is so small, there isn't really a call for me to be designing full time. So, I also do some marketing, writing, art support, producing, web site management, and whatever else I can. I'm part of a four man team, and we all have to wear multiple hats to get the job done.
sadly this is true... although i don't think i have the skills yet to fill a position like this, there's TOO many games out there that overlook the game designer and they end up with a Ham sandwich with peanut butter and chocolate... like that game 1112 ep 1, amazing art, music and plot... but everything gets devastated because the game fails at the most basic level of structure. [hqyoutube]6GuulMaTdhw[/hqyoutube] every part by itself is awesome, but you can't just put them together and expect them to work, i can't blame you if you get bored halfway the video or the game, i did, and this is coming from someone who played larry, fate of atlantis, maniac mansion, myst, etc... i'm no stranger to interactive story games. My point is that with a good game concept, led by a good game designer, even with basic graphics , sound, and limited coding knowledge you could end up with a serious hit... take Mr. Space!! and Pig Shot for examples of great game design, and VERY basic but quality coding, graphics and sound sets. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mr-space/id342621037?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pig-shot/id385904943?mt=8 when i reviewed pigshot, it was the second game i got on video, and even with the VERY uninspiring title.. i end up playing the game even further after finishing the first look.
