Mom, I want to be a game designer, what should I do?

Question

Game development

Good afternoon everyone. Actually, the essence of the subject is in the title. Probably the first thing to do is to introduce yourself.

And so, my name is Maxim, I'm 24 years old. Like an ordinary resident of our country, he graduated from school on the principle of "tyap, blunder and done", having neither interest in a particular discipline, nor a clue in which direction to move on, where to go, what to strive for. There were only a couple of things in my head: I would do DotA, and then hang out with my friends (ps: hang out, in my understanding - do not get drunk). Going with the flow, I was brought to FEM (Faculty of Economics and Management), majoring in economic security. Actually, I didn't care. Graduated from high school on 3,4,5. Then comes a year of looking for a job. I don't like everything, I don't like everything. From hopelessness, from lack of money, I go to a forced measure. I got a job at the CC in a bank, where I work to this day. I can’t say anything bad, I occupy a leadership position, range of responsibilities - control and improvement of indicators, reporting on them. Life could have ended as a guard in the top five, so it’s a sin to complain. But I do not feel a sense of self-sufficiency. I understand that this is not what I do. I don’t want to bury myself in Excel for the rest of my life and report for every sneeze of my employee.

After fully understanding the above, I asked myself: "What do I want to do?" By analyzing my hobbies, some youthful hobbies and current opportunities, I came to the profession of "game designer", which I learned about in one of the VK publics. But when I began to dig deeper, I found some inconsistencies in the understanding of this profession. As I understand this profession:
A person who leads a game project starting from the plot, ending with the mechanics of battles and musical accompaniment of certain scenes.
Project center. Through this position, designers, programmers, and others coordinate intermediate and final results
. Maintain project documentation (TOR for departments, etc.).
Please respond if this understanding is correct.

And the main question - in what direction to move? Certainly not without courses. And money is not a pity. But what's next? I would like to develop bypassing projects on mobile phones.

Answer 1

The main tool of a game designer is Excel. Suddenly! :)
Well, although even where there are different directions. Balancer is Excel. A screenwriter is more like a writer. But are you sure that you have the appropriate ability and talent? After all, the numbers in Excel seem to be the same, but now they need to be revived.
A game designer, like in any other profession, has a routine in his work. Yes, this is documentation. Try not even to draw up a game design document, but simply a concept for a future game - this is a couple of paragraphs. But how long will it take you? How many days?
Let's take your current question as an example. Do you think that the word "mom" in the question makes it better and clearer? Think saying "good afternoon everyone" makes you more polite? Everything is quite the opposite. This shows that you didn't even read the rules. And do not respect the responders who come here do not read greetings. Those. The question is in threes.
In this case, the responders are your audience. How and where you will need to clearly understand your audience. And this is a bias towards psychology. And in general, the more you know, the more erudition you have, and the more items you got 5 points in the past, the more cool you are as a game designer. Still sure this job is for you?
And, of course, you need the actual gaming experience. These are not childhood hobbies, this is a huge number of hours spent in games of various genres (or in the only game that you have disassembled into atoms). However, remember that anyone can spend 10,000 hours playing games, but not everyone can do it with attention and love for detail .

Answer 2

And money is not a pity.

Well, write a statement of work, order a couple of simple toys for your phone or desktop freelance.
See how things go.

A person who leads a game project from the plot to the mechanics of battles and the musical accompaniment of certain scenes.

Nonsense.
There are also composers, screenwriters, game mechanics consultants.
Again, the bank is not commerce at all in terms of work. This is a well-oiled bureaucratic machine, where corporate policy has been honed over the years in such a way that an idiot employee, and even more so an idiot boss, does not break the bank’s work, and where profit is obtained by methods that 90% of employees have nothing to do with.
Therefore, all sorts of effective solutions for the organization of these 90% of employees often do not affect the overall performance. Just a certain amount of millions is spent, everything is spinning, everyone is showing some graphs and figures to someone.
And in small projects, everything depends on competent management.

Answer 3

You can look at courses from XYZ there about game design.
https://www.school-xyz.com/gamedesign
It's already started but you can check it out at the warehouse.

Answer 4

If you like to play DotA, it absolutely does not mean that you have the ability to be creative and design. This is a comparison between entertainment and work. The same thing - I like to fly on an airplane, but I don’t want to become a pilot, because. This is a very dreary job and the schedule is inconvenient.
And about money for courses - what are we talking about? Services like GeekBrains? Don’t even look in their direction, not only will you lose a lot of money, they won’t teach you anything and you won’t find a job without a design degree at the University. And the diploma that they offer for money is just a piece of paper.

Answer 5

A game designer is a person who is responsible for making the game interesting. Depending on the size of the team and the position, this could include everything you wrote, or a subset of those responsibilities.
You don't have to start with courses. Download a couple of books, read articles. Try to make your quest/map/level in some editor (Skyrim, D:OS 2, Shadowrun, Super Mario Maker, thousands of them), ask your friends to play, evaluate what went wrong.