I received an e-mail from a girl who wanted to interview one of our game designers for a class project. I thought I’d post it up here in case anyone was interested. Nicholas Riley, a Junior Designer at Relic on the Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts team provides his answers below for your enjoyment and information! 
1) What is your typical day like?
Anything but typical = )
In truth, game designer means many different roles in this industry. Right now I am doing single-player mission design, so my day revolves around checking to see if the missions I am responsible for have received any feedback from fellow designers, and then making those changes a reality in the mission. I also play through the missions constantly, making changes and tweaking difficulty as I go. I am also working on another team that is doing menu system work, so I talk to the artists, programmers and producers to make the entire menu system as easy to use as possible. It is nearly impossible to describe a typical day
2) Of all the things you did to prepare for this job, what helped you the most?
Prior work experience in the games industry and outside the industry.
As simple as this may sound, working out of the games industry gave me a tremendous perspective on work ethic. In the games biz, it is extremely easy to take things for granted like having a Friday social event at work or being able to wear jeans and a t-shirt to the office instead of a suit.
3) What 2 or 3 skills help you the most in doing your job?
Interpersonal skills, research and writing are the two things I would say have been a primary benefit. We work with so many different personalities that you have to know how to deal with people in sometimes tense situations. And since e-mail is so popular, being able to clearly express your point in a few sentences (as opposed to half a page) is always helpful to your career. One of the tasks a designer does that I have found fundamental to our jobs is research. You need to pick a subject (such as a specific battleground in World War 2) and find out as much as possible about it from 100% reliable sources – and the internet is not a very reliable place for information.
4) How did you learn these skills?
A combination of work experience and post-secondary education. I have worked in the computer tech industry, received a diploma in journalism and worked as a reporter.
5) What is the hardest part of your job?
Handling criticism well, no matter how hard you worked on something or if what you’re being criticized for is the result of someone else’s opinions. This truly is a critical part of being a designer. Almost everyone thinks their idea is better than someone else’s, and the games industry is full of people with valid and diverse opinions. The real challenge is when you have worked for days on something, most of it is near perfect, and then someone criticizes a small aspect of it instead of acknowledging the project as a whole. You need to be able to smile, take in their feedback and move on.
6) What kind of education did you need for this job?
For every game designer, there truly is a different path they took to get into their position. I went to college, gained a lot of work experience and then worked in Quality Assurance (game testing) for a few years before breaking into this career. You need high school, and almost any kind of post-secondary education and work experience is valuable to this career.
7) What kind of courses do you recommend for high school?
Anything that stretches your creativity and analytical skills. English, Literature, History, Computer Science, drafting, animation and Math all teach great skills.
8) What kind of education will I need after high school?
As per question 6, some kind of post-secondary education is important. A degree in psychology, computer sciences, animation, art, English, history, and many more can be applicable. I would hesitate to run out and go to a ‘game design school’ with a goal of getting right into a design position after graduation, however, as you need more than a piece of paper to become a designer.
9) What do you like most about your career?
Everything, and I am serious. I can walk into work in jeans and a t-shirt, read about World War 2, and sit down to the nitty gritty of crafting a mission that thousands of people will play as part of a great game. Every day is a challenge (in a good way), I feel like I am learning constantly and becoming a more skilled individual all the time, and that my work is appreciated and valuable.
10) What kind of salary can I expect at an entry level?
Games industry salaries are all over the map, and most companies require their employees to sign contracts that do not allow us to talk about our salaries. Go to http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/article_display.php?category=33 for three years worth of salary surveys in the industry. While not recent, they are a good sample.
11) What do you think the future prospects are for this career?
Since gaming has grown from a small garage endeavor to a huge multi-million-dollar industry across the world, I think there is nowhere to go but up for us game designers. As long as there are games, versatile designers will be needed to help craft them.
12) If you had a chance to do this over again, what would you change?
Instead of believing what ‘everyone’ said about how games weren’t going to allow me to ‘make a living’ or how it’s impossible to become a designer, I should have pursued this a little bit earlier, but overall I have very little in my career path that I would truly change.
13) What motivates you with your job?
The desire to create the best possible game for people to play, one that I and all of my colleagues can be proud of releasing to the public.
14) What keeps you excited and interested about it?
Everything changes all the time in design, so there is something new and exciting almost every single day.
15) What kind of personality does well in a career like this?
A personality that is engaging, likes communication and collaboration with people, can focus on tasks at hand and juggle multiple priorities, and above all else loves video games and everything about them.
16) Is there a question you think i should have asked to better understand this career?
Good questions, I don’t think you missed any. Probably the only thing that you might have asked about would be the ‘breaking in’ stage of getting into game design. You have to ‘pay your dues’ before you can get this job. I was a QA tester for about 2-and-a-half years before I got here, and every single thing I learned in that time helps me today.
17) Is there any other advice you would like to give me?
Go to the websites like www.gamasutra.com, www.igda.org and http://www.sloperama.com/advice.html (there are MANY others as well) and absorb everything. Don’t take any single person’s word for something when they try and tell you what your path should be into the video game industry. Get involved in mod projects on the internet, they teach you about that game’s tools, and a LOT about how to design.
Thanks Nick!
