作者：Liz England

为了解释“游戏设计师究竟是干什么的？”这个问题，我想从不同设计师类型入手进行说明。这里既有所谓的插手所有设计元素，有时候甚至还参与美工和编程的“多面手”设计师，也有像“系统设计师”和“战斗设计师”、“关卡设计师”这种“术业有专攻”类型的设计师。

事实上，任何笼统的设计定义都有瑕疵，但为设计师的实际职责要取决于其所在工作室的规模大小、平台、题材、游戏范围，以及工作室关于角色分工的文化氛围，人员的专业性，甚至是工作室是否存在“设计部门”等多种因素。第一人称射击游戏的设计师所承担的实际职责可能远比连线消除手机游戏设计师更多。

统称

设计师/游戏设计师

这是针对任何设计专长、适用于任何规模的工作室、游戏题材的设计师的统称。多数公司将其作为一种工作头衔，但设计师本人仍然具有其专业性特点。工作室越大，他们就越可能拥有专门的设计师头衔。

总体而言，设计师要负责游戏规则，玩家与游戏的交互方式，机制和故事如何为玩家提供理想的体验等环节。

初级设计师/助理设计师

初级或助理设计师通常经验更少，并且创意控制权也较少。他们可能要花更多时间在设计师或高级设计师的眼皮下执行工作。这通常是一个初级职位，适用于行业新人（例如毕业生），或者在公司内转岗的员工（如从美工转向设计），或者受雇于不同规模类型的游戏项目的设计师（如从2D游戏工作室转向AAA工作室）。

高级设计师

这是设计部门中的高级职位。有些人甚至还会扮演“领导“角色，并通常会接管游戏中的一个大型系统，例如所有的战斗或关卡，并且会委托或引导其他设计师的工作。他们可能是某个系统的关键人物，并且与程序员和美术师合作，令一个理念升华成一个功能齐全的系统。

主设计师

主设计师可以将创意总监的愿景传达给设计团队（就像美术总监在美术团队中的作用）。他们会从宏观到微观全面审查游戏玩法，为设计师提供方向和反馈，并根据玩法机制制定决策。

创意总监

这个角色处于游戏开发的金字塔顶端，将直接向公司老板和赞助游戏的发行商述职。他们掌握着游戏的“愿景”——这与所谓的“梦想家”十分接近。他们相当于电影导演，在媒体的曝光度也更高，通常被视为开发团队的脸面。

创意总监可能来自任何部门——美术、编程、设计，甚至是公司所有者。有些工作室是用总监或执行制作人来描述这个角色，但创意总监的用法最为普遍。

级别&任务

关卡设计师

关卡设计师要负责关卡中的结构和玩法，他们关注玩家如何在关卡、谜题、敌人或其他可能遇到的障碍中穿行，并植入基本的关卡几何体和每时刻的玩法。他们要与关卡美术人员密切合作，令场景中的美术元素到位，并与玩法程序员合作实现自己所需的特定功能，与文案及创意总监合作确保关卡不与整体游戏脱节。

“我该在哪隐藏intel？下一个目标在哪？玩家如何从A走到B——通过电梯还是楼梯？哪个敌人会在这个房间攻击玩家？掩体要设置在哪里？这里存在哪种谜题？探索空间在哪里？我该向玩家传达什么故事元素，何时进行？”

多人关卡设计师

这些设计师的基本职责与其他关卡设计师相同，但他们要专注多人玩法的特定需求和挑战。他们关注兼容竞争性或协作性玩法的关卡设计，以及任何特定模式的指定元素的布局（例如旗帜、控制点、敌人波等）

“这场追踪持续多久，它是否足以容纳所有玩家？玩家必须夺取哪个控制点？夺旗战斗中的旗帜还有多远？玩家在哪重生，如何避免玩家在同个地方扎堆重生？这个区域该有多少玩家来抵抗boss？这个关卡的结构性功能该如何更好地迎合不同玩家职业，例如狙击手、近身肉博者的需求？”

世界创建者

世界创建者是一种关卡设计师类型——他们多数职责相同，有些人具有转向另一者的资质。世界创建者的头衔更常见于开放世界和MMO领域——这些游戏并没有独立的具体关卡，只有供玩家穿越探索的大型区域。因此，这些空间通常具有多种用途（故事任务，支线任务，活动或迷你游戏，多人模式中心等），而传统关卡设计通常是拥有单个用途的空间。

“这个区域是否存在大型城市建筑，高速公路，商店，山峰，河流或公寓？这个区域该如何与周围区域兼容？这个区域的独特地标是什么？这个区域该有什么类型的敌人、建筑、植被或者其他特征？玩家如何在其中导航？玩家可以采用哪些关键路径作为捷径，他们应该避开哪些死亡区域？”

任务设计师

有时候任务设计师和关卡设计师是可以相互替换的，但在开放世界或MMO游戏中，任务设计师通常要为一个已经存在或为多种目的存在的空间手动创造玩法。任务设计师要关注玩家在某个任务中的行动——击打、目标、战斗，植入对话和确保向玩家传递故事元素。

“玩家的当前目标是什么——它是否有趣？这个任务如何与整体故事兼容？为完成任务玩家如何穿越？最终可得到什么回报？这个任务是否引进新功能？玩家会遇到哪种类型的战斗、谜题，或者其他障碍？任务是否存在合理的标志性景象？”

探索设计师

这与任务设计师极为相似（有时候也可以互换）。他们关注的是二级故事性玩法，通常是更小但仍会使用到许多相同机制作为任务或主要故事情节。工作室中的探索设计师通常是制作角色扮演游戏和MMORPG。

“这个任务是否是某个任务链的一个环节？这个任务的最终回报是什么？它的任务原型是什么——探索和发现、获取，战斗还是其他？其中涉及什么敌人？玩家必须获得，参与什么事情并完成任务？这个任务覆盖了哪个世界区域？玩家如何首次接到任务？这个任务讲述了什么故事，它如何与整体游戏设计兼容？”

系统

系统设计师

这是多种系统设计的统称。系统涉及整体规则或者玩家与整款游戏的交互情况，并不特指任务、探索、区域或关卡。他们并不那么事无巨细地关注游戏每个时刻的玩法。举个例子，系统可能是“战斗”这种广泛概念，而机制可能是“抛手榴弹”这种具体操作。他们要花许多时间制作电子表格和整理信息。

“玩家可使用哪种装备盔甲或服饰的插槽？玩家如何升级，速率如何？玩家获得新武器的频率是多少？这些武器在整款游戏中如何分布？所有不同的谜题机制是什么，你该以什么速度向玩家引进这些机制？游戏中有多少任务、挑战、迷你游戏以及其他可选择的玩法？”

战斗设计师

这些设计师在大型工作室中通常制作以战斗为主要交互形式的游戏。战斗设计师要关注敌人、武器、boss、弹药、难度平衡，以及任何基于玩家职业的战斗技能。他们要关注许多与战斗系统有关的内容，也要管理玩家在游戏过程中不同战斗场景每时刻的玩法体验。

“玩家何时遇到一个新型敌人？散弹枪和狙击枪的最佳射程是多少？敌人齐射时有多少发子弹，他们开火的频率，以及每颗子弹的准确度是多少？游戏是否会根据玩家的游戏风格动态调整难度，还是使用简单/中度/困难这种普遍设置？玩家弹药耗损速度应该是多少？boss是否有弱点，有哪些攻击他们的最佳方法？玩家有多少命值，医生这个职业可治愈多少玩家？”

像《街头霸王》这类竞争型游戏的战斗设计师实际上是与上述描述有所不同的特殊角色。他们还需要关注一个攻击动画播放的帧数等细节，并且要处理类似锤子剪子布这种概率问题来确保每个角色都得到充分的平衡。

经济设计师

经济设计师要关注设计、执行，最重要的是虚拟经济的平衡。这主要包括玩家赚取多少游戏内货币，以及他们在哪花掉这些货币。它本身极少成为一个职业头衔，更多是作为一种系统设计类型的描述。例如，Valve和CCP公司都有全职经济学家，但任何含有战利品和卖主的游戏都需要一名监管这种系统的设计师。

“配制一种新药剂需要什么原料？你需要多少经验点才能升级？敌人身上要掉落哪种战利品？这些战利品的掉落率是多少，稀有或普遍道具的掉落率分别是多少？玩家能否彼此交易道具？拍卖行如何运作？如果游戏中有卖主，玩家如何与之互动？”

多人模式设计师

多人模式设计师关注定制合作型或竞争型玩法模式和设计，例如死亡竞技、群体模式，MMO群组、公会或部落、积分排行榜等。他们还要扮演多人模式关卡设计师的角色（取决于团队规模或游戏风格）。

“这个多人模式要采用合作型、竞争型还是二者兼具的玩法？这款游戏中有多少种模式——群组、死亡竞技、夺旗？玩家能否组建自己的公会或部落？在单个竞赛中可容纳多少名玩家？积分排行榜如何运作，其计分标准是什么？玩家从多人模式成就中可赢得什么奖励？玩家如何从单人模式竞赛进入和退出多人模式？”

谜题设计师

谜题设计师相当于一种战斗设计师，只是其游戏设计中的障碍并非敌人，而是逻辑片段，例如被锁上的门或一系列分散的字母。谜题设计师通常也是关卡设计师，例如《传送门》或任何移动方块类型的游戏。但是，这一角色也会扩展至并非基于手工阶段的谜题游戏——它们还包括《Candy Crush Saga》或《宝石迷阵》等平衡游戏。

“我在这个谜题中可以传授哪些新机制？我该如何以令玩家觉得新鲜的不同方式重用相同的机制，例如开关和门？每个谜题都要呈现渐进式的难度吗？玩家是否获得了完成谜题的所有必备信息？游戏中是否存在计时器，它的倒计时速度如何？在这个宝石配对游戏中，匹配了一连串3个、4个或6个宝石的奖励机制是什么？”

故事设计师

故事设计师要关注允许玩家与故事互动的玩法元素或机制，这可以是线性结构或通过有意义的选择产生的分支故事。他们当然要处于一定程度的写作问题（视工作室的情况而变），但主要关注故事相关玩法的设计和执行。许多工作室会雇佣文案（游戏邦注：因为多数游戏，尤其是AAA作品都有一个故事），但故事设计师的角色主要存在于专攻故事型游戏的工作室，例如Bioware或Tell Tale。

“玩家如何与故事元素互动——通过对话选择，快速反应事件，还是文本输入？这是线性故事还是分支故事？如果是分支故事，要有多少分支，它们是否一直进行分支，还是在关键时刻回溯到同一点？玩家选择是否绑定了道德系统？如何向玩家传达某个富有意义的选择？”

交叉职位

交叉角色通常混合了设计和其他专业，所以它们有可能存在或不存在于设计部门。

盈利设计师

这是设计和商务之间的交叉，盈利设计师要处理如何用玩法或美学（非玩法）元素令玩家掏钱，以及这些元素的成本问题。这些职位存在于手机和社交游戏公司，以及制作免费模式游戏的工作室（例如Riot的《英雄联盟》），制作MMO的工作室（如暴雪），游戏中含有微交易和小型DLC内容包的大型发行商中。

大型工作室中的常规开发者并不需要担心资金或成本问题——因为这是制作人、高管和商务人士的事情。盈利设计师要与收益打交道，所以他们通常具有商务或营销背景，并且主要来自高管而非基层设计群体。

技术设计师

技术设计师通常具备软件工程师或玩法程序员的技能，他们实际上是编程和设计部门之间的桥梁。有时候这意味着他们要采用设计师提交的特殊需求，并与编程部门合作来执行。这可能是编码和开发新功能，或者使用脚本语言设置玩法（如任务）然后将其提交给设计师进行调整（取决于工作室的需求和技术设计师的水平）。这一角色通常存在于大型公司、开放世界工作室、以及其他领域，但通常并不会作为一种职业头衔。

UI设计师

这一角色通常是用户界面团队而非设计团队的一员，但具有许多交叉职能。他们的工作就是以HUD和菜单形式——任何显示于屏幕的图像元素向玩家呈现信息。这些元素包括命值指示器、目标文本、教程、按钮提示、库存、地图和锻造界面。

文案

文案专注于游戏的整体叙事内容，它必须反映创意总监的愿景以及其他设计师的需求。他们还要编写整个游戏的文本、描述、名称、对话，并与团队合作将文本进行其他语言的本土化处理。

有时候文案是设计团队的一员，因为他们要与后者密切合作，有时候则由故事设计师全权代理这一角色功能。在小型公司中可能根本就没有全职文案，这一职位通常由设计师来补上。但通常情况下，如果你想为游戏编写故事，你必须擅长写作而非设计。

设计助手

这一角色是低端的设计职位，主要执行一些繁琐的任务，以便让其他设计师腾出手来解决更大的问题。他们可能要负责在游戏世界中添加板条箱或鱼，或使用脚本触发玩家在战斗中的爆炸特效。他们可能要布置一些关于游戏AI如何与玩家互动的提示，并将这种提示纳入游戏中的每个战斗场景。

我知道自己的工作室以及其他一些公司中就有这种角色，所以才将其纳入本文（我们通常将其称为QA支持，因为他们都是用来协助设计师的QA人员）。根据不同公司的情况，这一角色也可能是助理或初级设计师，或者纳入临时性的“外包人员”范围。

非设计师的“设计师”

这些角色的名称中虽然有“设计”一词，但传统上并不能算为游戏开发工作室中的设计团队成员。

图像设计师

这是专用于以2D美术制作诸如UI按钮、论坛图标、网页设计、logo、启动画面以及类似图像元素的美术师。他们通常并不创造任何游戏内部中的内容，除非他们是用户界面团队的成员，如果属于这种情况，他们通常又被称为UI美术人员而非图像设计师。

用户体验设计师

有时候也称为UX设计师或者易用性专家，他们通常并不直接参与开发游戏。他们的职责就是将游戏的不同形式——例如样本或大部分片段呈现在潜在玩家面前并进行测试。他们要关注玩家是否理解游戏，是否融入游戏机制等信息，并将这些信息反馈给团队的其他成员。这种测试并非旨在找到技术漏洞，而是糟糕或错误的设计。

UX设计师通常为EA或动视这类发行商，以及像暴雪这种大型开发商效力，也有一些是以自由职业形式受聘。小型工作室要依靠其发行商来执行集中测试或易用性测试。

声音设计师

这属于音频团队成员，他们要处理整个游戏世界中出现的音效问题（游戏邦注：如玩家脚步声，枪声，以及赢到钱的声音），用户界面（包括点击按钮、出现新对象）声音及其伴随的音乐。他们可能会创造自己的音效，或者从公司订阅的声音库中选择合适的音频，并对其加以改进使之可为游戏所用。

软件设计师

软件设计师是描述程序员角色的诸多称谓中的一者。除了名称，它与设计职位毫不相关。

硬件设计师

这一角色主要存在于处理硬件问题的公司——如索尼、任天堂、微软和Valve等主机制造商。也包括一些处理配件的公司，例如RedOctane和即将问世的Oculus Rift等。创造儿童电子产品的玩具公司也有这类角色，他们在此也称为玩具设计师和产品设计师。

游戏建模师

尽管建模和关卡设计具有许多共享元素，但“游戏建模师”实际上是编程或工程部门一个高级角色。

例外情况

也有一些不在此列表的设计师，但要记住这些头衔和角色通常具有许多相似的职责。例如，我自己就曾经是一个项目的关卡设计师和任务设计师，同时还要处理与技能树/升级有关的系统设计。

有些公司仍在使用不同于以上称谓的设计师头衔，所以你可能还会发现一些奇怪的例子。为撰写此文，我查看了一些AAA公司列出的职位，发现还有“主玩法设计师”和“动作设计师”以及“产业设计师”这类称谓。它们有一些反映了行业中还不存在的独特工作（例如Valve），也有一些通常只是反映其所传特定玩法体验（例如Bioware）。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Types of Designers

by Liz England

“So who writes the story? Who designs the bosses? Do you make the levels? What about skill trees?”

In an effort to help clarify “what does a game designer do?”, I want to go over all the different TYPES of designers. There are designers who are affectionately called “jack of all trades” who dip their hands in all elements of design and sometimes even art and programming, and then there’s specialized roles like “systems designer” and “combat designer” and “level designer”.

The truth is, any general definition of design has flaws because the actual responsibilities of a designer varies depending on the size of the studio, the platform, the genre, the size of the game, the studio culture regarding roles, how specialized people are, and even whether there is a “design department” at that studio. The designer on a first person shooter has very different practical responsibilities than the designer on your next favorite match-three mobile game.

GENERALISTS

Designer / Game Designer

Generic term to mean any or all of the design specializations, used at any size studio, any genre, etc. Most companies just use this term for job titles, while individual designers might still specialize informally. The larger the studio, the more likely they will have specialized designer titles.

Overall, designers are concerned with the rules  of the game, what ways a player can interact with the game, how the mechanics and story work to provide a desired experience to the player. This is the vague description that gets clarified as you read on.

Junior Designer / Associate Designer

Junior or Associate designers usually have less experience, and less creative control. They may spend more time implementing under the eyes of a Designer or Senior Designer. This is often an entry level position, catering to new hires from outside the industry (such as students), those transitioning between roles within a company (from art to design), or existing designers hired into very different scale of games (moving from a 2D game studio to a AAA studio).

Senior Designer

A senior-level position in the design department. Someone who could fill the position of “lead” and usually takes charge of a large system in the game, such as all combat or all levels, and delegates to or guides other designers. They may be the major point-person for a system and work with programmers and artists and the leads to bring it from an idea to a fully featured system.

Lead Designer

Leads translate the Creative Directors vision to the design team (much like the Art Director or Lead does for the art team). They review the gameplay from its macro to the moment-to-moment bits, giving direction and feedback to designers and making decisions regarding the gameplay mechanics.

Creative Director

The top of the game development pyramid who reports directly to the owner of the company and to the publisher funding the game. They hold the ‘vision’ of the game – this is the closest to “the idea guy” that you can get. They are analogous to a film director, and are usually the most visible in the media as the face of the development team.

Creative Directors can come from any department – art, programming, design, or even an owner of the company. Some studios use Director or Executive Producer to describe this role, but Creative Director is the most common.

LEVELS & MISSIONS

Level Designer

A level designer is responsible for the architecture and gameplay in a chunk of physical space – a level. They care about how the player flows through the level, puzzles or enemies or other obstacles they encounter, and implement basic geometry of the level and the moment-to-moment gameplay. They work closely with level artists to get the aesthetics in place, and gameplay programmers for specialized functionality they may need, and the writer and creative director to ensure the level fits within the overall game.

Where do I hide the intel? Where is the next objective? How does the player get from A to B – an elevator or a ladder? Which enemies attack the player in this room? Where is the cover placed? What kinds of puzzles exist? Where are the exploratory spaces? What story elements do I need to communicate to the player, and when?

Multiplayer Level Designer

These designers have the same basic responsibilities as other level designers, but they focus on the unique needs and challenges of multiplayer gameplay. They focus on designing levels that accommodate competitive and/or cooperative gameplay and the placement of any elements specific to a certain mode (flags, control points, enemy waves).

How long is this racetrack, and is it wide enough to accommodate all the players? Where are the control points that players need to take over? How far apart are the flags in Capture the Flag? Where do players respawn and how do you prevent spawn-camping? How many players need to be in this arena to defeat the boss? What architectural features of the level best cater to different player classes, such as a sniper vs. short-ranged melee attacker?

World Builder

World builders are a type of level designer – many of their responsibilities are the same, and someone qualified as one would usually be able to move to the other. The world builder title tend to exist more in open world and MMO spaces – games that don’t have individual concrete levels but rather large areas for the players to traverse around. As such, these spaces usually have multiple purposes (story missions, side quests, activities or minigames, multiplayer hubs) as opposed to traditional level design where the space has a single purpose.

Does this area have large city buildings, highways, shops, mountains, rivers, or flat? How does this area fit in with the areas directly around it? What landmarks make this area unique? What kinds of enemies, architecture, plants, or other features populate this area? How does the player navigate through it? What are the critical paths players take as shortcut, and what are the dead spaces players tend to avoid?

Mission Designer

Sometimes a mission designer and a level designer are interchangeable, but in cases like open world games or MMOs a mission designer usually handcrafts gameplay in a space that already exists, or exists for multiple purposes. Mission designers are focused on what the player is doing during a mission – the gameplay beats, objectives, combat, implementing dialogue and ensuring story elements are communicated to player.

What is the player’s current objective – is it interesting? How does this mission fit into the overarching story? Where does the player traverse to in order to complete the mission? What is the pay-off at the end? Is there any new functionality being introduced in this mission? What kind of combat, puzzles, or other obstacles does the player encounter? Is there appropriate spectacle in the mission to signify its importance in the game?

Quest Designer

Very similar role to the Mission Designer (and sometimes interchangeable), Quests tend to be secondary story-focused gameplay, usually smaller but still using many of the same mechanics as a mission or main story line. You find quest designers in studios making role-playing games and MMORPGs.

Is this quest part of a quest chain? What is the ultimate pay-off of this quest? What kind of quest archetype is it – explore and discover, fetch, combat, or something else? What enemies are involved? Where does the player have to go to get, engage in, and complete the quest? What area of the world does the quest cover? When does the player first get the quest? What story does the quest tell and how does that fit into the overall design of the game?

SYSTEMS

Systems Designer

A catch-all term for various systems design. Systems refers to global rules or things the player interacts with across the entire game, not specific to missions, quests, areas, or levels.  They aren’t focused on the moment-to-moment experience so much as the overall birds-eye-view of the game. To help clarify, a system may be something like “combat” while a mechanic may be “throwing grenades”. They spend a lot of their time in excel sheets and organizing information.

What kinds of slots can the player equip armor or clothing to? How does the player level up, and at what rate? How often does the player get a new weapon? How many pieces of intel are they, and what is their spread across the entire game? What are all the different puzzle mechanics and at what rate do you introduce them to the player? How many quests, challenges, minigames, and other optional pieces of gameplay are there?

Combat Designer

These designers are often at large studios that make games where the main interaction is fighting. Combat designers are concerned with enemies, weapons, bosses, ammo, difficulty balancing, and any class-based combat skills. While they are focused a lot on the combat systems, they also govern the moment-to-moment experience a player has in various combat scenarios throughout the game.

When does the player encounter a new enemy type? What is the optimal combat distance for a shotgun and a sniper rifle? How many bullets is in an enemy volley, how often do they fire, and how accurate is each bullet? Does the game use dynamic difficulty adjustments to the player’s style, or a flat easy/medium/hard setting? How much do you want to starve the player of ammo? Do bosses have weak points and, if so, what is the optimal way to attack them? How much health does a player has, and how much can a medic class heal them for?

Combat designers on competitive fighting games like Street Fighter actually have a pretty unique role that differs a bit from the above. They are concerned with such details as how many frames it takes for an attack animation to play, and dealing with the rock-paper-scissors elements to ensure that each character is extremely well-balanced.

Economy Designer

Economy designers are focused on the design, implementation, and – most importantly – the balance of a virtual economy. This mainly covers how the player earns and where they spend in-game currency. This is rarely a job title on its own but rather a descriptor for a type of system a design may be in charge of. For example, both Valve and CCP have full-time economists on staff, but any game that has loot and vendors would need a designer to oversee this system.

What ingredients are required to craft a new potion? How many experience points do you need to level up? What kind of loot drops from enemies? What are the loop drop rates, and how often do rare or common items drop?  Can players trade items with each other? How does an auction house work? If there are vendors, how does the player interact with them?

Multiplayer Designer

Multiplayer Designers focus on custom  cooperative or competitive gameplay modes and design, such as deathmatch, horde modes, MMO groups, guilds or clans, and leaderboards. They also serve the role of Multiplayer Level Designer where appropriate (depending on the size of the team or style of game).

Is the multiplayer mode cooperative, competitive, or both? What type of modes are in this game – horde, deathmatch, capture the flag? Can players organize their own guilds or clans? How many players can play together in a single match? How do leaderboard work and what do they score on? What, if any, rewards do players earn from multiplayer achievements? How do players enter and exit multiplayer from the singleplayer campaign?

Puzzle Designer

Puzzle designers are kind of the mirror of a combat designer, except that the obstacle is not an enemy but a piece of logic, like a locked door or a series of scrambled letters. Puzzle designers are often a level designer, such as in Portal or any sokoban style block-moving game. However, the role extends to puzzle games that are not based about hand-made stages – they also include balancing games like Candy Crush Saga or Bejeweled.

What new mechanic am I teaching in this puzzle? How can I re-use the same mechanics, such as a switch and a door, in different ways that feel new to the player? Does each puzzle become progressively harder? Does the player have all the necessary information to complete the puzzle? Is there a timer and how fast does it count down? In this gem-matching game, what is the bonus mechanic for matching 3, 4, or 6 gems in a row?

Narrative Designer

Narrative designers are concerned with gameplay elements or mechanics that allow the player to interact with the story, whether that’s in a linear fashion or through meaningful choices that result in branching stories. While they certainly deal with some level of writing (which varies by studio), they mostly focus on the design and implementation of narrative-related gameplay. While many studios hire writers (because most games, particularly AAA titles, have a story), narrative designer roles tend to exist at studios that specialized in story-oriented games, like Bioware or Tell Tale.

How does the player interact with story elements – through dialogue options, quick time events, or text input? Is the story linear or branching? If it branches, how many branches are there and do they always branch or do they loop back together at key moments? Is there a morality system tied to player choices? How do you communicate that a choice is meaningful?

CROSSOVER POSITIONS

Crossover roles are usually a hybrid of design and another specialization, so they may exist in the design department or not.

Monetization Designer

A cross between design and business, a monetization designer deals with how to take gameplay or aesthetic (non-gameplay) elements and sell them to players for real money, and how much these elements should cost. These positions exist at mobile and social games companies,  studios that make free-to-play games (like Riot’s League of Legends), studios that make MMOs (like Blizzard), and at large publishers that have microtransactions and small DLC packets in their games.

Normally your regular developers at large studios don’t worry about money or costs – that’s the job of producers, upper management, and business people. Since monetization designers deal with revenue so much they usually have a business or marketing background and come from upper management rather than up through design.

Technical Designer

Usually qualified to be a software engineer or gameplay programmer, tech designers actually bridge the engineering and design departments. Sometimes this means they take the specs given to them by designers and work with the programming department to implement them. This can be full coding and the development of new features, or it can be using scripting languages to set up gameplay such as missions and then pass them to the designers to make modifications (depending on the studio’s needs and the tech designer’s skillset). You find this role at larger companies, open world studios, and few other places, but it’s not particularly common as a job title.

UI Designer

This person is usually part of the User Interface team, not part of the design team, but has a lot of crossover responsibilities so it’s not unheard of for them to be considered a designer. Their job is to organize and present information to the player in the form of HUDs and menus – any of the graphical elements that are displayed on screen for the player. These elements include health indicators, objective text, tutorials, button prompts, inventories, maps, and crafting interfaces.

Writer

Writers focus on the overall narrative of the game, which is informed by the creative director’s vision as well as the needs of individual designers (jn the case of a mission or level-focused game). They also write the text, descriptions, names, and dialogue throughout the entire game and work with (usually external) teams to localize this text into other languages.

Sometimes writers exist on the design team, since they work very closely with them, and sometimes narrative designers may take on writing duties.  At very small companies, there may be no on-staff writer and this position maybe filled by a designer. But typically if you want to write for games, you need to be good at writing not at designing.

Design Support

This role is a low-level design position that focuses mostly on implementing tedious grunt tasks, freeing up other designers to concentrate on bigger issues. They may go through and populate the world with crates or fish, or use scripting to trigger FX explosions as the player fights in a big battle. They may place volumes or clues around pieces of cover that tells the game how AI can interact with them, and then place those volumes throughout every combat scenario in the game.

I know this role exists at my studio and at least a couple other places, which is why I am including it (we technically call it QA Support, as they are all QA people we’ve brought into support roles to help designers). This role might be that of an Associate or Junior Designer, depending on the company, or fall into a more generalized “contract work” temporary hire.

NOT-DESIGNERS DESIGNERS

These are roles that have “design” in their name but are not traditionally considered part of the design team at a game development studio.

Graphic Designer

A term for an artist that specializes in 2D art such as UI buttons, forum icons, web design, logos, splash screens, and similar graphic elements. They do not typically create any in-game content unless they are part of the user interface team, at which point they are usually called a UI artist and not a graphic designer.

User Experience Designer

Also sometimes called UX Designers or Usability Professionals,  these people are usually not directly developing the game. Their job is to take the game in various forms – often demos or larger chunks – and put it in front of potential players in focus groups to test it. They’re concerned about whether players understand the game, are engaging with its mechanics,  and where communication is breaking down – and then passing that information on to the rest of the team. This kind of testing is not about identifying technical bugs, but about poor or misleading design.

UX Designers often work for publishers like EA or Activision, large developers like Blizzard, or hired on a freelance basis. Smaller studios will rely on their publisher to organize focus tests or usability tests for the game.

Sound Designer

Part of the audio department, a sound designer deals with the sound effects found throughout the game world (from the player’s footsteps, to the firing of a gun, to the ch-ching of money earned), in its user interface (button clicks, new objective dings), and the music that accompanies it. They may create their own sound effects, or choose effects from a sound library their company subscribes to and modify them to fit the needs of the game.

Software Designer

A software designer is one of many terms to describe the role of a programmer. Despite the name, this is not a design position.

Hardware Designer

This is a pretty specialized role that exists at companies that deal with hardware – console manufacturers such as Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, and Valve, for example. There are also companies that deal with peripherals, such as the belated RedOctane and upcoming Oculus Rift. You may also find these roles at toy companies that create electronics for kids, which may also use the terms Toy Designer and Product Designer.

Game Architect

Despite architecture and level design having a lot of shared elements, a “game architect” is actually a highly technical and senior role in the programming or engineering department.

EXCEPTIONS

Oh boy are there a lot of exceptions, but I think if you internalize this list you’ll be 90% of the way there. Remember that titles and roles usually share a lot of responsibilities. For example, on one project I was a level designer and mission designer for a one-hour chunk of gameplay, while also juggling systems design for skill trees/perks/leveling.

One of the big exceptions is that some companies still use different titles than the ones listed above, so there are still some weird cases out there that you might not recognize. For this article, I looked at a bunch of job posting at AAA companies and found titles like “Lead Gameplay Designer” and “motion designer” and an “industrial designer”. Some of these reflect unique jobs that don’t exist everywhere in the industry (ex: Valve), and others are just quirks of the studio’s organization, often reflecting specific gameplay experiences they deliver (ex: Bioware).（source：gamasutra）