Alexis Madinier, Trainer, DSK Supinfogame.

What are the roles of a game designer during the creation of a game?



A game designer is at the same time at the beginning of the creation process of a game, at the middle of the process for "building" the game and at the end to ensure of the quality of this entertaining experience we call a video game. We, game designers, have different roles depending on the phase the game we are working on is.

The first phase of the creation of a game is the Concept Phase



We, the designers, are creating what we call the "Game Concept document", a small document that explain briefly what the game is about, who is the target (age & sex of the player) and why this game is worth investing millions in. This document is used to sell the future game to possible investors as to the team that will create it. Once a deal is secured, the game starts its next phase.

The Pre-production phase



During this phase the game designers write the Game Design Document that describes everything, from the way the player will start the game from the most complicated rule to be coded by the programmers, from the text that will be displayed on the buttons in the menu pages to the dialogues between characters, from the epic story the character will experience to the tedious list of items the player will be able to buy in a shop (with price/ stats/ description etc.).



Everything needs to be thought of, discussed with whoever has input on it (can be another designer, a programmer or an artist depending of the topic.) and written down in that bible document that is the game design document (it is usually a list of smaller document where it’s easier to seek the relevant information you are looking for than a 5000 pages unreadable document). That’s the biggest job of the game designers. From this document, all other department (art/sound/programming) will extract their own specific bible (Technical design document for the programmers, Sound design document for the sound designers and Artistic Design document for the artists).When the pre-production phase is over we start the production.

The Production Phase



That’s where the thinking time is over and the time of acting starts. During this part, some game designers change of role and become Level Designers. A game designer think and do things at a Macro level in a game (i.e. : "what happen when the character health reach 0") while a level designer that is in charge of creating the game by creating its levels needs to answer more ground based questions (i.e.: "I need to ambush the player, where can I hide my monsters ?"). The Level designer follows the rules and the guidelines written in the Game Design Document but he is also writing his own document: the Level Design Document, in which very specific things only related to his level will be explain.



For example a level designer can be asked to create a level for a game that takes place in an old castle. The level designer will have to draw roughly the layouts of the game area and place events and gameplays in this map. That is what is in the Level Design document, along with the list of specific resources needed by his gameplays (sounds, cinematic, characters, animations etc.).



Usually the level designer also need to create the rough level in 3D using cubes or already made assets in order to script the events, place enemies and challenges and play it to make sure the level he is creating is fun. The Level designer works closely with the artists that will create the set of his level. He also needs to work with the gameplay programmers to make sure the gameplays he designed will work as designed.



During this production phase the Game Designers still work on the design to adapt and do the needed compromises between unexpected technically undoable features and gameplay.

The Tuning / Polishing phase



During this phase, everybody in the team (programmers /designers /artists / sound designers etc.) fixes the bugs found by the quality assurance department.



Level designers have the most work to do in that phase since usually most of the bugs are their doing. The tuning phase is also very important, that’s where the designers balance the difficulty, the fun, the reward etc. in the game in order to deliver the player an as close as possible of perfection fun experience. This is the hardest phase, with people in the team that start being tired of working on the game and are not objective on the quality of their work anymore. Tension between people arise with the huge work load like working 15 hours a day 6 or 7 days a week until the game gets approved by the publisher or the console maker to be released.