About gamedesign

Game design is the game development process of designing the content and rules of a game in the pre-production stage and design of gameplay, environment, storyline, and characters during production stage. Game design requires artistic and technical competence as well as writing skills.
 History
Overview
Game design starts with an idea, often a modification on an existing concept. The game idea may fall within one or several genres. Designers often experiment with mixing genres. The game designer usually produces an initial game proposal document containing the concept, gameplay, feature list, setting and story, target audience, requirements and schedule, staff and budget estimates.
Many decisions are made during the course of a game's development about the game's design; it is the responsibility of the designer to decide which elements will be implemented, based on, for example, consistency with the game's vision, budget or hardware limitations. Design changes may have a significant positive or negative impact on required resources.
The designer may use scripting languages to implement and preview design ideas without necessarily modifying the game's codebase.
A game designer often plays video games and demos to follow the game market development.
It is common for the game designer's name to misleadingly be given an undue amount of association to the game, neglecting the rest of the development team.
Funding game publishers must be taken into account, who may have specific expectations from a game as most video games are market-driven — developed to sell for profit. However, if financial issues do not influence designer's decisions, the game becomes design- or designer-driven; few games are designed this way because of lack of funding. Alternatively, a game may be technology-driven, such as Quake (1996), to show off a particular hardware achievement or to market the game engine. Finally, rarely a game may be art-driven, such as Myst (1993), mainly to show off impressive visuals designed by artists.
Game designer
A game designer is a person who designs gameplay, conceiving and designing the rules and structure of a game. Many designers start their career in testing departments, where mistakes by others can be seen first-hand.
Lead designer coordinates the work of other designers and is the main visionary of the game. Lead designer ensures team communication, makes large design decisions, and presents design outside of the team. Often the lead designer is technically and artistically astute. Keeping well-presented documentation also falls within the lead designer responsibilities. Lead designer may be the founder of a game development company or may be sent by the publisher, if the game's concept is provided by the publisher.
Game mechanics designer or systems designer designs and balances the game's rules.
Level designer or environment designer is a position becoming prominent in the recent years. Level designer is the person responsible for creating game environment, levels, and missions.
Writer is a person often employed part-time to conceive game's narrative, dialogue, commentary, cutscene narrative, journals, video game packaging content, hint system, etc. It is the responsibility of the writer to collaborate with primary designers to seamlessly place this content into the game, creating immersion, avoiding repetition, providing feedback, etc.  Writing for games involves a different set of skills from those for traditional works, such as novels or screenplays, as the writer must collaborate with the other designers during the writing process.
Compensation
In 2010, a game designer with more than six years of experience earned an average of US$65,000, $54,000 with three to six years of experience and $44,000 with less than 3 years of experience. Lead designers earned $75,000 with three to six years of experience and $95,000 with more than six years of experience.
Disciplines
World design
World design is the creation of a backstory, setting, and theme for the game; often done by a lead designer.
System design
System design is the creation of game rules and underlying mathematical patterns.
Content design
Content design is the creation of characters, items, puzzles, and missions.
Game writing
Game writing involves writing dialogue, text, and story.
Level design
Level design is the construction of world levels and its features.
User interface design
User interface designer constructs the user interactions and feedback interface, like menus or heads-up displays.
Audio design
Audio design involves the process of creating or incorporating all of the sounds that are in the game, like sound effects or voice acting.
Game elements
Narrative
Numerous games have narrative elements which give a context to an event in a game, make the activity of playing it less abstract and enhance its entertainment value, although narrative elements are not always clearly present or present at all. The original version of Tetris is an example of a game apparently without narrative. It should be noted that some narratologists claim that all games have a narrative element. Some go further and claim that games are essentially a form of narrative. Narrative in practice can be the starting point for the development of a game, or can be added to a design that started as a set of game mechanics.
Gameplay
Gameplay is the interactive aspects of video game design. Gameplay involves player interaction with the game, usually for the purpose of entertainment, education or training.
Design process
The design process varies from designer to designer and companies have different formal procedures and philosophies.
The typical "textbook" approach is to start with a concept or a previously completed game and from there create a game design document. This document is intended to map out the complete game design and acts as a central resource for the development team. This document should ideally be updated as the game evolves throughout the production process.
Designers are frequently expected to adapt to multiple roles of widely varying nature: For example, concept prototyping can be assisted with the use of pre-existing engines and tools like Game Maker. Level designs might be done first on paper and again for the game engine using a 3D modelling tool. Scripting languages are used for many elements—AI, cutscenes, GUI, environmental processes, and many other behaviours and effects—that designers would want to tune without a programmer's assistance. Setting, story and character concepts require a research and writing process. Designers may oversee focus testing, write up art and audio asset lists, and write game documentation. In addition to the skillset, designers are ideally clear communicators with attention to detail and ability to delegate responsibilities appropriately.
Design approval in the commercial setting is a continuous process from the earliest stages until the game ships:
When a new project is being discussed (either internally, or as a result of dialogue with potential publishers), the designer may be asked to write a sell-sheet of short concepts, followed by a one or two-page pitch of specific features, audience, platform, and other details. Designers will first meet with leads in other departments to establish agreement on the feasibility of the game given the available time, scope, and budget. If the pitch is approved, early milestones focus on the creation of a fleshed-out design document. Some developers advocate a prototyping phase before the design document is written to experiment with new ideas before they become part of the design.
As production progresses, designers are asked to make frequent decisions about elements missing from the design. The consequences of these decisions are hard to predict and often can only be determined after creating the full implementation. These are referred to as the unknowns of the design, and the faster they are uncovered, the less risk the team faces later in the production process. Outside factors such as budget cuts or changes in milestone expectations also result in cuts to the design, and while overly large cuts can take the heart out of a project, cuts can also result in a streamlined design with only the essential features, polished well.
Towards the end of production, designers take the brunt of responsibility for ensuring that the gameplay remains at a uniform standard throughout the game, even in very long games. This task is made more difficult under "crunch" conditions, as the entire team may begin to lose sight of the core gameplay once pressured to hit a date for a finished and bug-free game.