Game Design

#1 For myself, I took up 3d modeling, sketching, and level designing. apart from writing and dreaming, their the only things that come nautraly to me. as a side effect of modeling, Ive tried making sound effects and doing textures. which arnt as easy as they seem.
being a jack of all trades (master of none) has major drawbacks.

Far as a role is concerned. I dont think there is one yet. maybe conceptualist (sp?) or just producer.
personaly, I think "Idea man" suits me fine.

why worry about it? long as the job gets done

#2 From what I've read the game designer usually doesn't start in there position as game designer. They will usually start on the art side and progress then have some sort of programming ability that would warrent understanding of what can and can't be done when crossing art and programming. I would say game designer does coordinate everything together and keep all the divisions updated each others progress and basically tells people what is good enough to end up being part of the game. A lot of work.

I wouldn't say that there is a limitation to the number of game designers but the too many chiefs not enough indians rule does apply.

#3 Deleted.

#4 well - as far as i have seen game designers can start as either programmers - level designers - or even game testers.

People from the graphics side becoming game designers are less common - as graphics people are usualy just too caught up in the look of the game to realy be good at game design (dont mash me if im wrong - Im sure there are many exceptions to this - but of the handfull of developers I know personaly none have game designers based in art)

#5 It's so true... those of us who are graphic designers would almost never make a good game programmer or developer.
Although, we are the shiot when it comes to making your game or advertising look better than a kick in the teeth... you know you need us. =)

It is tough for a Graphic Designer to switch to programming... 2 different ways of thinking entirely. But for those of us who began on computers in the days of DOS, old UNIX systems... we know the basic programming ideas... so luckily we can adapt... but indeed, very rare to find the two skills in one single person.

By the way... Jacob... who's da man?
You da man!
(and I'm your backup foo!)

#6 To me, a Game Designer is a little bit of everything. Within my team, I am the lead designer. But besides ordering the team around I'm also programming, writing, modeling, creating textures and concept art. I have hands-on involvement in every aspect of our projects. Hell, I'm even the one that got stuck with the job of creating and maintianing our website (which is why we don't have one up yet :p LOL). I haven't even been able to talk the rest of my team into signing-up here at GG, so they expect me to be our voice and presense here as well :\

In the industry today, I think a game designer needs to be skilled in all aspects of the development process. It makes things allot easier for the team as a whole when the lead designer knows what is and is not possible, feasable, or even worth trying to do in the first place in each individual aspect of a project's design.