If you want to land a job as a game designer, you are exactly where you need to be. I got my first break in the industry over 20 years ago, and it was brutal—it took me over a year and 500 rejected applications before I finally got my foot in the door. Since then, I have been on the hiring side at heavyweights like Blizzard, Phoenix Labs, and Netflix. In this post, I am sharing the exact insider knowledge I desperately wish I had when I was first starting out.
What does a game designer do?
Game designers build the content, mechanics, systems, and rules that players interact with, transforming raw concepts into a fun, playable experience. Massive companies like Blizzard and Ubisoft split designers into highly specialized sub-roles. Smaller indie studios, however, do not usually have that luxury; everyone just wears the generic “game designer” hat. For example, at Blizzard, I was specifically a systems designer. But at Relic, since there were only three of us on the team, I was just a general game designer doing a bit of everything.
You can group these roles into two broad categories: systems and content.
Systems designers
Systems designers focus on the underlying math and mechanics, like class balance and item progression. They might build out the entire profession tree for a role-playing game or tune the weapon recoil in a first-person shooter. Their main focus is establishing the hard rules that dictate player interaction.
- They are highly technical thinkers.
- They are comfortable with math, scripting, and sometimes even raw programming.
- They think very analytically.
- They grasp big-picture concepts and tie them directly to moment-to-moment gameplay decisions.
Content designers
Content designers focus on the player’s immediate environment, handling level layout, narrative arcs, and quest design. They build the physical maps, spawn the monsters, and create points of interest. That NPC you just talked to to get a quest? A content designer built that interaction.
- They are usually the more imaginative, narrative-driven designers.
- They often come from backgrounds in creative writing, art, or even architecture.
- They make some of the best Dungeon Masters I have ever played tabletop games with.
The hybrid roles
Some designers bridge the gap between systems and content, like user interface designers and technical designers. They build the functionality that delivers the systems and content to the player, essentially turning the work of both sides into a functioning reality on the screen.
Working with the team
All designers work incredibly closely with the rest of the development team, including artists, engineers, and producers. For instance, when my team built the Crusader class for Diablo, I was working shoulder-to-shoulder with technical artists, gameplay engineers, fellow designers, and our producers every single day.
Which role should you choose?
If reading this leaves you completely paralyzed on which path to take, do not worry; that is incredibly common when you first start. My advice is to just focus on designing, building things, and having fun. Over time, you will naturally discover what you are good at, what you hate doing, and what you actually enjoy. Your focus will sharpen on its own. The most important thing is to not let the fear of the unknown freeze you. Just start building.
Common misconceptions about game design
Let’s clear up some massive misunderstandings about this job.
- There is no such thing as an “idea guy.” Everyone in game development has ideas, and everyone contributes to actually building the game. Even the game director, who might not touch the engine tools daily, builds things: they build an effective team and craft the unified vision the team rallies behind. If you want to sit on a couch all day throwing out ideas for other people to build, this is the wrong industry for you.
- You will not just sit around playing games all day. Teams do have people who playtest all day—it is called Quality Assurance (QA). It is a highly specialized, incredibly valuable role, and it is brutally hard work.
- You will not get rich overnight. Working in game development, especially as you gain seniority, provides a very comfortable salary. But it will not make you a millionaire on day one. Just like any other career, getting wealthy is more about how much you save rather than how much you earn.
4 ways to stand out in an interview
Now that you know what a designer actually does, let’s talk about how to get from your bedroom to the interview room. If you want to stand out from the massive pile of resumes, focus on these four concrete steps.
1. Build games, but make them different
Whenever you research how to become a game designer, everyone says “build a game.” They are right, you absolutely should. But because everyone gives that advice, everyone is doing it. That is great, but to stand out, you have to go the extra mile.
Let’s say you decide to build a bullet heaven game. If you just build a carbon copy of Vampire Survivors, it won’t stand out because literally anyone following a tutorial can do that. To catch a hiring manager’s eye, you need to bring a fresh perspective to the genre. It should highlight your specific passion and focus.
- If you love systems design, try completely overhauling how the progression loop works.
- If you love combat design, implement heavily restricted player abilities tied to a complex resource model like cooldowns or energy.
- If you are a level designer, build a custom map that forces the player into unique tactical choke points.
Maybe your idea totally flops. For example, adding a strict resource-limited ability system to a bullet heaven game might actually ruin the fun. That is perfectly fine—share it anyway. Use that failed experiment to explain what you were trying to achieve. What did you learn? What will you try next? That kind of iteration is exactly what we do daily in professional game development, and proving you can analyze your own failures is an incredibly valuable skill.
When sharing your projects in your application, explicitly state what your focus was. That way, the hiring manager knows exactly what they are looking at.
Keep the scope small. Having multiple tiny projects that highlight your different areas of expertise is vastly better than one massive, bloated project where it is impossible to tell what you actually built. You can even try modding. When I was hiring at Blizzard, we frequently saw applicants who built complex World of Warcraft mods and used them as their portfolio pieces.
Smaller games also work in your favor because a hiring manager is not going to sit down and play your 8-hour narrative platformer. But a 5-minute platformer that introduces a completely fresh puzzle mechanic? I would absolutely boot that up.
Make sure your project is finished and playable. By “finished,” I do not mean it needs Overwatch-level graphics. But the specific area you are showcasing needs to feel polished. Going back to the earlier example: if you are adding new abilities to a Vampire Survivors clone, they must be fully functional, deal proper damage, have working tooltips, and trigger visual and audio effects. It needs to feel like a finalized piece of software.
Companies are desperate for people who can take a task from start to finish. Proving you can actually cross the finish line is huge. You would be shocked by how few people can actually finish a project.
2. Play and analyze games
Play as many games from as many different genres as possible, and relentlessly tear them apart to understand how they tick. The goal isn’t just to consume; it is to comprehend.
While playing, constantly ask yourself: Why did they build it this way? Why is the progression structured like this? Why do weapons have durability and break so fast? Move past whether you just liked it or hated it, and try to uncover the designer’s intent.
- What were they trying to achieve?
- Were they trying to solve a specific problem?
- Were they trying to evoke a specific feeling?
- Did they have to build around a technical limitation?
When you start thinking like this, you are thinking like a professional designer. We use this type of analytical thinking constantly when developing new features. The more games you play and deconstruct, the richer your vocabulary becomes when building your own solutions.
Also, find a community where you can voice and debate these thoughts. It could be a group of friends or a Discord server (like GMTK) dedicated to discussing game design. Playing a game, breaking it down, and then debating your findings with others sharpens your analytical and critical thinking skills. It also teaches you how to argue, ask questions, and push back on concepts in a positive and constructive way—which is a mandatory survival skill in a design pit.
I actually do this during interviews. I ask candidates how they view a specific feature, what they liked, and what they hated. I actively look for them to debate and push back on my ideas during the interview, because I expect them to do exactly that on a daily basis if we hire them.
3. Learn multiple tools
Game design is about building the content that gets put in front of the player. To do that, we use a massive variety of tools. I highly recommend learning as many as you comfortably can. Unreal, Unity, and Godot are all incredibly accessible, and there are endless free resources to help you master them.
If you only learn Unreal, you are in great shape if you are interviewing at an Unreal-exclusive studio. But the reality is, you might end up at a Unity studio, a place transitioning to Godot, or a massive company like Blizzard where every single game has its own proprietary engine and toolset. The tools used for Diablo are vastly different from the tools used for WoW.
Having a broad understanding of different tools gives you a massive advantage. In an interview, regardless of the engine they use, you can converse comfortably and prove you can hit the ground running on day one. You might even get the chance to share your thoughts on Unreal’s Blueprint system, or if it is a Unity studio, ask how heavily their designers rely on C# scripting.
4. Improve your communication skills
Great designers are fantastic communicators. Good communication is about sharing your perspective clearly and concisely. More importantly, it is about actively listening and practicing empathy.
As a game designer, you will not just be pitching your ideas; you will be constantly listening to—and actively seeking out—feedback, suggestions, and heavy criticism. Being emotionally mature enough to handle this is crucial. When a senior developer walks over and tears apart a feature you just spent a month building, you cannot throw a tantrum. You need to step back, swallow your pride, and say: “That is interesting, thanks for the feedback. Can we break that down a bit more? I want to make sure I fully understand the issue.”
Practice communicating, practice asking targeted questions, and research ways to build these soft skills. They will serve you incredibly well not just in your game dev career, but in your personal life. Everyone loves working with a great communicator.
My personal offer to you
I saved this offer for the very end because most people who aren’t truly committed will have stopped reading by now. If you followed my advice and actually built something, send it to me. Actually building something is the single most important takeaway here.
- If you built a project and finished it, email it to me.
- Mention that you saw this specific post/video.
- I will reply, play your game, and give you honest feedback.
Don’t give up
When I first started, I sent out at least 500 applications and only got two replies. That process took an entire year. During that time, I was working full-time building actual ships, and I would go home every single night and build games in my spare time. Despite the brutal grind, it is one of the most fulfilling careers I can imagine. You get to build worlds that people love, bringing joy to gamers just like us. It is absolutely worth the effort.
