Imagine a world where you have the power to create immersive visual experiences to captivate players for hours on end. That’s the world of game design. 

As a game designer, you can shape the world through your games. You develop a deep understanding of game mechanics, player psychology, and storytelling, allowing you to create games that entertain and have a lasting impact on players.

The process of game designing is a systematic one that involves several stages. It starts with creativity, where designers develop concepts and ideas for the game. It is followed by prototyping, where designers create a basic version of the game to test its mechanics and gameplay. 

The next stage is playtesting, where players test the game to identify flaws and areas for improvement. Finally, designers refine the game based on feedback and prepare it for launch.

If you want to know more about game design for beginners, learning these five essential skills can help you create engaging and immersive games that players will love.

What are the 5 Game Design Skills Every Beginner Should Master?

Whether you’re looking to design a mobile game or a console game, here are five essential game design skills that every beginner should master.

• Understanding Game Mechanics

For game design for beginners, it’s crucial to understand that game mechanics are the foundation of any game. These mechanics establish the rules and goals of the game, such as movement, combat, and puzzle-solving, and determine how players can engage with the game world. 

Games can be dull, vexing, or perplexing without well-crafted game mechanics. But a game can become captivating, engaging, and unforgettable with good mechanics.

Game designers use a variety of tools for game design, including game engines like Unity and Unreal, 3D modeling software like Blender and Maya, and programming languages like C# and Python. They also use prototyping tools like Sketch and Figma to create wireframes and mockups of game interfaces and analytics tools like Google Analytics and Unity Analytics to track player behavior and engagement.

Here are the steps to create good game mechanics:

• Define your target audience
• Research existing games in your genre
• Determine your game’s core gameplay loop
• Create a prototype to test your mechanics
• Balance your game’s difficulty
• Incorporate feedback from playtesting
• Continuously iterate and refine your mechanics.

Here are four games with excellent game mechanics:

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – The players can climb almost any surface, use a paraglider to glide from high places, and use elemental effects to solve puzzles and defeat enemies.
• Portal 2 – Portal 2’s game mechanics are excellent because they center around the portal gun, which creates portals that players can use to teleport around the game world.
• Super Mario Odyssey – The game mechanics in Super Mario Odyssey are excellent because they allow players to use Mario’s hat, Cappy, to capture and control various characters and objects in the game world.
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – The game mechanics in The Witcher 3 are excellent because they allow players to explore a vast open world filled with interesting characters, quests, and monsters. 
• Storytelling

When taking a game design course in Pune, designers learn that storytelling involves brainstorming ideas for the game’s world and characters based on factors such as genre, setting, and tone. They then develop the game’s plot, outlining the key events and conflicts driving the narrative forward. 

This process requires you to carefully consider the factors such as pacing, character development, and the use of dramatic tension to keep players engaged.

After the narrative structure of a game has been established, a master in game design will oversee the game’s dialogue and other storytelling elements, such as cutscenes and scripted events. 

It involves careful scripting and voice acting to bring the characters and world to life and ensure that players are fully immersed in the game’s story. Game storytelling is important because it gives players a sense of purpose and motivation, making them invested in the game’s world and characters.

Here are some games with excellent storytelling:

• The Last of Us 
• Life is Strange 
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
• Bioshock

• Level Design

Enrolling in a game design course in Pune can help aspiring game designers understand gamers’ crucial role in creating a game’s level design. The process involves a series of steps, starting with brainstorming ideas and sketching rough drafts. 

After that, gamers create a level layout, including obstacles, enemies, and items the player will encounter. They also design the environment, such as the terrain, buildings, and other structures.

Gamers use various tools, including level editors, game engines, and 3D modeling software. Level editors allow gamers to create and edit levels within the game, while game engines provide the framework for the game’s physics and mechanics. 3D modeling software creates the environment and objects within the level.

Here are some games with excellent level design:

• Super Mario Bros. (NES) 
• Half-Life 2 (PC)
• Portal 2 (PC) 
• Bloodborne (PS4) 
• Celeste (PC, Switch) 
• The Legend of Zelda

• Balancing

Creating a game’s balance involves analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of each character, weapon, and ability in the game. It is done by testing the game in various scenarios and collecting data on each element’s performance. Once the data has been collected, developers adjust the game’s balancing.

One of the most important tools for game balancing is player feedback. Gamers provide valuable insights into how the game feels, what they like and dislike, and where they feel the game is unbalanced. 

Developers also use data analytics tools to collect and analyze data on how players interact with the game. This data can include win/loss ratios, usage rates of characters and weapons, and player behavior.

Here are five games with excellent balancing and storytelling:

• Dark Souls 
• DOTA 2 
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
• Street Fighter V 
• Monster Hunter: World

• User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX)

As a master in game design, you understand the importance of gamers in shaping a game’s User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX). The process of creating a game’s UI and UX involves several stages. First, developers research what gamers want in the UI and UX. They then create wireframes and mockups to visualize the design. Once the design is approved, gamers implement and test it to provide feedback. This feedback is then used to refine and improve the UI and UX until it meets the gamers’ expectations.

Here are five games with excellent UI and UX:

• God of War (2018) 
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 
• Overwatch 
• Portal 2 
• Assassin’s Creed Odyssey 

Conclusion

If you want to pursue a career in game design, it’s crucial to hone your skills in programming, game engines, storytelling, art and design, and user experience. By perfecting these skills, you’ll be able to develop games that are entertaining, captivating, visually stunning, and immersive. 

These skills will set you apart and pave the way for a successful career in game design. So, start practicing and perfecting these skills today and watch your game design career take off!

FAQs:

Could you describe the role of a game designer?

• A game designer creates and develops video games.

What are the necessary skills for a career in game design?

• Game designers require skills such as programming, graphic design, and storytelling.

How can I begin pursuing game design?

• Learning game engines and programming languages is essential to start game design.

What software is commonly utilized in game design?

• Popular software used for game design includes Unity, Unreal Engine, and Autodesk Maya.

Date : 24th July, 2023

Venue :  Savitribai Phule Auditorium

Preface:

Aptech – Perspective Event held a three-hour session for all Arena Animation Pune students on July 24, 2023 at Savitribai Phule Auditorium.Mr. Anirban Das (Head of VFX, Redefine, Pune) and Mr. Sougato Majumder (Character Art Lead,Avalon,Pune) led the session.

Participants:

The event was attended by over 300 students and professors from all Arena Animation institutes in Pune.

Description about the Event:

The entire event was co-ordinated and managed by Aptech.

→ The event’s host opened it with a brief introduction of Arena Animation. Mr. Vishal Mehra, Mr. Tarun Narula, and all of the directors of the Arena Animation Institute performed the ceremonial lighting of the first Diya. Mr. Vishal Mehra gave a short welcome speech for all the students.

→ The first speaker, Mr. Anirban Das (Head of VFX, Redefine, Pune), began by briefly introducing himself and engaging the audience. He emphasized to the students the importance of learning the basics of each department before concentrating on one in particular. Redefine, which is a subsidiary of DNEG Group, had information shared about it. ReDefine brings a fresh and dynamic approach to the art of Visual Effects (VFX) and Animation for film, episodic and multiplatform content. Displayed every honour won by Dneg, such as Primetime Emmy Award, VES Award, BAFTA Award, Academy Award, AIS Lumiere Award and many more. Showed their offices all around the world and how robust their pipelines are for huge projects that anyone from any office can access. Displayed all of their most recent work, including trailers for GLASS ONION, HALO, RRR, and BRAHMASTRA. Stated that the showreel shouldn’t be longer than two minutes. He answered several questions from the audience, and his tagline was “CREATIVITY HAS NO LIMITS.”

→The Event host showed National Student Meet Video and mentioned that we will be having this meet again in 2023.

→ Last Speaker was Mr. Sougato Majumder (Character Art Lead,Avalon,Pune), He spoke briefly about himself and chatted with students about gaming. Shared the significance of gathering references, following the art style, doing research on the genre of the art style, brainstorming and randomly improvising on the selected art genre, creating the moodboard for the asset selected, emphasizing on the essence of story-telling through your art and conducting study on the art style’s genre.

Below are the pointer on which he discussed in detail:

• Importance of Designing : Emphasizing and giving importance to designing while creating the high poly of any character, going beyond the concept and improvising the concept, improve and grill your mental library, brainstorming on the design, preparing the block out and a strong pre-production!!
• Detailing and balancing the details: First we block out the character, and then we move on to detailing, major focus on volumes and proportion, detailing the character wisely, silhouettes, avoiding unnecessary details, do not overcrowd or over do with the character, do not rush, take breaks to look at you art in a fresh eye, accept feedbacks (constructive ones), challenge yourself and do not compromise.
• Difference between working in A Studio and working on your personal art: Working in a studio is like having a deadline, time constraint, project constraints, pipeline restrictions, application of new techniques and methods and helps you to enhance your skill and speed. whereas working on your personal art will have no deadline, proper utilization of time, exploitation of your own expertise, no strict pipeline to follow, until you update yourself to new techniques, you will get stagnant and helps you to keep your skill expertise and creative portal charged
• To prepare yourself for your career: Focus, learning anatomy is a must for a character artist, watch good movies, read new books, comics, graphic novels, discuss new ideas and concepts, observe, be ready to learn new tools, techniques and methodologies, be humble, stay up to date, work-hard, main aim is to build a creative and strong portfolio, look out for inspirations, be patient, disciplined & practice, practice and practice!

→In the last a group photo was taken of all speakers, directors of Aptech and directors of all Arena Animation Center.