Game design#Game designer

A game designer is a person who has developed games. She creates the rules and structures of a game. This includes all categories of the game, of computer games on tabletop games, to board or card games. A game designer has the same value as a screenwriter for a movie for the game. In relation to traditional games instead of game designers, the term " game designer " used.

History

When the first board game was invented is unclear. In Egyptian tombs that were created around the year 3500 BC, they found the game Senet. The oldest card games were discovered in China and date back to around the 9th century AD It is believed that dice were invented in the third millennium BC in India.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the first computer games were developed. There was no possibility of computer games to sell or make money at this time by the development of a computer game, since they require a mainframe computer. Therefore, the development of computer games for programmer was solely a hobby. Some games ( OXO, Tennis for Two ) have been developed by electrical engineers that provided them as showpieces for visitors of mainframe systems. Other games were developed by students for Friends ( Spacewar!, Star Trek, Dungeon ).

Some of the incurred at this time games such as Zork, Baseball, Air Warrior, Adventure and later managed their game designers made ​​it into the computer games industry.

In the early history of video games, a game designer was often the lead programmer of a game, if not the only programmer. This did not change when the computer games industry expanded in the 70s. Sometimes it also happened that the game designers united the entire team of artists in a person. This is true for example in a known game inventor as Sid Meier, John Romero, Chris Sawyer and Will Wright.

As the games more complex and computers and games consoles became more sophisticated ( and thus more games possibilities opened ), the tasks of the Game Designers developed more and more to its own field of work. The main programmer now had to meet, and thus switch between the two roles back and forth both the work of a game designer as well as a programmer. The complexity of the games took the time to such an extent that a person has been required that only cared about the game design. Many of the old video game inventor decided in favor of game design, leaving the programming of the games their employees.

Today you can find hardly any console or computer games, in which the main programmer is also the main game designers. An exception to this are the so-called casual games, such as Tetris or Bejeweled. With very complex games, such as MMORPGs or action and sports games with big budget, the number of game designers go into the dozens. In such a case, there are usually one or two senior designers, and many subordinate designers that focus on the various subsystems of the game. In large companies such as Electronic Arts, each area of the game (control, level design or vehicles) can have its own director, lead designer and several major designers.