Week 6 Game Design

Game designers arent realy a specific role, yeah you need to meet specific criteria to get the job but as a role, your never really in a specific field.
They can cover elements of programming, modeling etc as they need to be in every field to pull together their design, yes they arent the only ones who make decisions, group crits an evaluations happen on a daily basis, but they are usualy the ones to come under fire if a game flops, the main element of the game is pinicle on the point of it having a good design, the most amazing graphics an intense story cannot cover up bad design, back tracking is a major trick thats been used in one particular next gen title *coff coff* halo 3 *coff coff* were although it is a very good game, the back tracking is a complete failure, and although it may be due to the higher ups in Bungie makin cuts on costs an expecting more gametime no matter what, these antincs have not done them any favours!

Weve came to a point where game designers are even more important than ever, where as in the old days of Ultima Underworld where the games design was balancing on technology, and limitations therin, now graphics are fairly common, and so the drive is how you tie up the graphics, story, sound and actually invent good gameplay.

Its true that the mechanics of games seem to recycle, mike was quite right in sayin that Fear in all essence, is infact a shiny version of Pac-Man, but then arnt the concepts for anything the same, a game designers really limited in what he can actually bring to the table.
He could have creative genius, but unless he has an able squadron of team members, then its not going to go very far, and the main deciding factor is money, you cant experiment too much because failure isnt an option, so reinventing that which is known to be good is sumet that is abused intensly, not mentioning any developers at all........... EA GAMES YOU DICKS!! frigin sports crap!!!

But unlike most aspects of the games industries work force, designers are usualy fairly specific in their role, unless they have an expansive understanding of various game genres, an FPS designer would not be able to walk in an produce an RPG, these aspects break down further with region, an RPG in the UK has an entirely different feel from a Japanese one as their compensating for a totaly different demographics.