I recently had a conversation with one of my friends whose little brother was studying to be a game designer at University of Michigan and my friend was trying to get him involved in the game development community at Michigan State University. But no matter how much my friend tried, his brother was still not making games. My friend asked me what he should do.

I told my friend that his brother should reconsider his career choice.

Game Design is a tough task, but if you truly enjoy the process, it can be extremely rewarding.

Getting a design job is not easy, not one bit. I can count the designers that got game development jobs from my school on one hand. Half of those jobs were producer jobs. There are two main reasons for this. The simple one is that there aren’t many design jobs in the industry when compared to art and programming. It’s not a matter of necessity, but of the amount of work to go around. And since there are fewer positions, companies want to fill them with the most qualified designers possible. This means the bar is set very high for us designers.

The second reason why getting a Game Design job is difficult is that Game Design isn’t straightforward. There isn’t a series of classes you can take or a specific text book you can memorize to guarantee a job. Game Design is a skill, one that can be very abstract at times. Sure there are books you can read that will help you, but ultimately the only way to get better is to practice Game Design and develop your own style. In short, make games.

So when I hear that my friend’s brother is a sophomore in college studying game development and he hasn’t started making games, I told him the hard truth. If things continue at this rate, he’s not going to make the cut. What kind of portfolio will he have coming out of college if he hasn’t even begin to develop his skills?

Unless you’re a student, you probably know all this by now (except about my friend’s brother, that would be weird if you knew that). But this next point should apply to anyone.

If there is something you want to make, go make it. If there is something you need to learn, go learn it. There are simply no excuses. Between books and online tutorials, there are some many resources for free at your finger tips. It’s all just a google search away.
As a designer, you need to be making games. Notice I didn’t say video games. If you want to make an fps but don’t know programming, make a board game or a card game that captures the fps experience. I guarantee you would still learn a lot. If you want to make a video game, then gain the necessary skills. Learn some programming and play with some modeling software. And just like that, you’ll be able to make a game.
From there, it can only go up.
This applies to more then just students. If you are looking for a game development job or are currently in a game development job, fine tuning your skills or gaining some new ones will always help you make better games.

And making better games is what it’s all about.

So slacker game developers, bring your “A” Game. These are things you have to do in your free time and not in class or at work. You need to enjoy learning game development. If this isn’t the case then you should strongly reconsider your career choice.
If this is the case, let’s make some video games!