Become A Game Designer Without... Anything!

Oh, let me correct the topic, you need a PC before doing anything.

👋 Hello, world! For almost everyone who loves gaming, being a game designer is a dream job. While most of them and up dreaming about it, people like you try to achieve it!

There are so many myths about becoming a Game designer, but some of them are not 100% wrong. Anyways, I'm not going to prove them but lemme give you are clear roadmap about becoming a Game Designer.

What do I need? 🤔

Only some soft skills and a PC, no matter whether it is Windows 7 or Windows 11. All you need is some storage for Game Engine, SDKs, and Code editor.

Soft skills may include, self-confidence and passion. Game design is a thing that needs some time to see the results, but the results are also pretty big and awarding if done right ✔

Let me bust a big-myth first— You don't need a degree to become a game designer. If you are good at Game design, a degree doesn't matter. Even though you have a degree, if you are not good at game design, you're fired. No difference, right? A degree would be great for your confidence, but your level or experience in game design doesn't depend on it, never.

Well, then how to?

Lemme show you, step by step.

Step #1: Learn Programming Concepts, not the whole language at once

I was just a novice when I started to design games. I even didn't know what is programming, so I just searched it and read some articles, that's it! I didn't learn C# or anything.

Did I fail then? Of course, No. But it was a little bit difficult, coding the same script in videos. I'm not saying that it is good, but not that bad too. You can start learning game design without knowing to code, but you can't end up being a game designer without knowing to code. Oh bud, calm down! It's not that bad otherwise a lazy person like me won't learn it, right?

How to learn to code is different from person to person. Some need to take courses while others just learn it by themselves. If you're watching videos, most probably the YouTuber will explain things so you just need to grab them in and that's it! Trust me, this works perfectly and is not so hard. Give it a try 😉

Step #2: Learn a Game Engine

Unity, Unreal, Godot, GameMaker, Construct, and many other engines exist which provide a complete set of tools necessary to make your dream a game. Learn it and master everything inside your game engine.

If you’re a newbie in game development(most probably you are otherwise you won't read this haha), I highly recommend you use a freely available game engine instead of trying to write your own. Well, let’s just say you can’t write your engine because it’s that difficult. Even people with multiple college degrees and decades of experience struggle to create an engine in a reasonable amount of time. For me, it's completely a useless thing unless you want to create a Game engine and make it a business.

You don't have to learn multiple game engines, one would be enough. Unity is a great beginner-friendly and professional game engine, which has a lot of games made with it. About 50% of games on the play store are made with Unity.

Step #3 Play Games of your genre as well as others. (And observe everything)

If you wish to create a good game, you need to have the right vision. It all starts with a concept, how the game should look and play. What genre should it be, and which mechanics to include. If you don’t play games yourself(then you're a 1 in a thousand haha), it will be pretty hard to come up with a good idea. You need to look at well-designed games from different time periods, across a variety of platforms and genres.

Note that this doesn't mean you have to copy others. Create only genuine games if you want to succeed.

Step #4: Then Choose A Programming Language + Engine And Become Really Pro With It

Most of the engines like Unity or Unreal have a native programming language that the engine supports for scripting. Like C# for Unity and C++ for Unreal. You can learn JavaScript, Python, Lua, and many more languages but the key is to not overburden yourself with too much.

Stick with one language at first, become really good at it. Choose an engine that has all the features you need, along with tons of tutorials and documentation. That's totally enough.

Step #5: Read Game Dev Blogs and stay up-to-date with Game development

Check out GitHub, r/gamedev, UnityForums, Stack Overflow, the Android Development Community, and similar online forums where you can meet up with game developers/ enthusiasts who have similar interests just like you! Also, by this, you have a great opportunity to find experienced game designers and get some pieces of advice.

Step #6: Just don't give up!

This one is obvious, but a lot of people tend to give up on their game development aspirations mid-way because it takes too much time and effort. Game development is like that New Year’s resolution you make to lose 50lbs of weight during the year, but you end up forgetting about it after the first week. It takes constant effort, and a desire to keep learning. Besides, it may give you huge results!

That's it, 2 more words— You Can!

If you don't need to make your first job at Ubisoft or Gameloft, you never need a degree to start becoming a Game Designer. There are thousands of resources available on the internet and a huge community of self-taught game designers. Why waste 4 years for a degree at college if you can do it one year? If a novice like me did it, you can do it too.