   Future game developer needs help
  Hello, I am Shawn Herndon and I am from Louisiana. I am very intrested in becoming a game desighner. I have already helped with a completed game called HACX, which was pretty cool and had a lot of new ideas for its time. I am also currently working on two other games with a few friends of mine. I am in need of some knowledge about how to actully become a hired and payed game desighner. What would my majors probably have to be in college to be qualified to make a game? I don''t want to get involved in the actual programing or codeing of the game, I am more intrested in coming up with story, characters, and other desighning jobs. I am also good at presentations and get very into games I''m trying to push onto others and it usualy works. It is a dream of mine to become a game desighner and I would love if anyone could help me out with how to actully get into the business. Thank you for your time.~Shawn~ 
  Click on the "For Beginners" in the Resources Column at the top of the pageor  http://www.gamedev.net/reference/start_here/-DD ;quote:Original post by spikeguy86  I am in need of some knowledge about how to actully become a hired and payed game designer.At this point in time, no company in the game industry hires "game designers." Generally, the people who can lay claim to that title - Warren Spector, Will Wright, Chris Crawford, Chris Taylor, Ernest Adams, Peter Molyneux - rose through the ranks from Quality Assurance, Art or Programming; one or two may have been producers. It is conceivable that in the future this will change, but currently lacking precedent there is consequently no defined "how".Btw, there is no "h" in "designer" (you spelled it that way twice).quote:What would my majors probably have to be in college to be qualified to make a game?Anyone can make a game. Anyone can become anything, really. That said, since your specified area of interest is in stories, characters, themes, environments and such, I''d recommend focusing on the Liberal Arts: Literature, History, Art History, Fine Art - anything that will expose you to a wide variety of cultural resources, from the paintings of the Renaissance to the deities of the Mende peoples, because There Are No New Stories™. The same archetypical ones simply get recast and retold for new generations.Minor in the sciences, preferrably in the computer sciences. While you may not wish to program for a living, having the ability to do so and being familiar with the constraints of programmers will help you to create and phrase your designs better. It may also help to get you hired (as a programmer-designer or a designer-artist you are more valuable than just as an unproven "designer").Good luck. ;  Thank you for your help, your the first person who has actully told me anything that would help. i was thinking of getting a double major, one in Business and the other in computer science. My dad has told me that a business degree would be good to fall back on. Thank you once again for helping me out in my delima, most people cant really tell you what to do because they are unaware that it is even big yet,. iIt is getting better known, the gaming industry, but right now mmost only think of it as a cabal of people you know what i mean. Oh yeah sorry for my lack of spelling skills, it''s not my strong point in life heh.