Thread by @MorelloNMST

Today, let's talk about design "subclasses" - that is, what sort of type of skills outside of game design responsibilities do you want to pursue?

A lot of designers have a subclass or two, making the shape of an individual designer sort of unique!

It's another reason design is harder to "grok" what it exactly is - there's so much variance. That's not a bad thing, though!

It speaks to what roles are more or less attractive, and what unique skills you can offer your team.

These should be defined by interest and background, I think. As a new designer, these can be nice to leverage for being more qualified or useful, but you'll still be very focused on getting the designer part right.

This is more a long term thing to think about.

Let's go;

* Production

This subclass is involved in the details of development. Timelines, schedules, resource management, stakeholders , etc.

Designers who want to go into leadership, love the process of getting things done, or have the background for it might find this attractive.

Design leadership often involves these tasks; helping your team (everyone making the thing) and discipline (the other designers) organize this is a way you serve your team and add value.

You have to set folks up for success across the board. It's not about "making calls" as much

In my mind, designers are on the hook for *not screwing their teams*. This is because design has a lot of work earlier in the process of making things that impacts everyone else.

This bears spelling out; design is a big responsibility.

If your planning for the feature is way off, you're either going to have to be OK to cut scope of the feature, or you're asking everyone down the chain to crunch.

This is, at least, 3D artists, animators, VFX, audio, QA, release. This is minimum 6 people -often more.

So if your plan is to "iterate and see what's fun", or underscope a feature from lack of understanding, the impact is massive.

This takes experience, interest, and care for your fellow dev

A lot of studios do *not enforce this* on design, which I find criminally irresponsible.

Soapbox on this: do not do this, nor design leadership, if you don't care about your team's welfare.

It's fine if you're not interested in this stuff, but don't put yourself on the hook for doing it if you want to be much more focused somewhere else!

*Technical

This is your very engineer/designer combo. This subclass has a coding understanding or background, and likely a strong interest in the technical side.

People with CS degrees often do well here, as do indies.

This is good for you if you also love the act of scripting and building things, and "clean code" is satisfying to you. For the service-inclined, you can often help your design and sometimes art teams with tools to make workflow easier.

A lot of opportunities for impact!

Another bonus is Technical Designers are usually in higher demand, and can command higher salaries.

I also recommend that getting an associate-level engineering position is a good start, as the qualification difference between dev role 1 and dev role 0 is about 1000x

Also consider if you would like to be a Gameplay Engineer; this is the other side of the same coin - engineers who are more involved with the design and gameplay elements. This is a great choice if coding day-to-day is cool, but you also want to be involved in the design stuff.

* Creative/narrative

This is a sub-branch of design, but I think it's also fitting here.

This is great if you want to be more involved with the writing and storytelling of a game. If you have another creative background, this is a good fit.

It's not a writing job, though

Creative and narrative design bridges the gap between systems and narrative. Think about something like Mass Effect's dialogue choices, how the choices themselves work and how to scope that - and you're in that space.

It's design, but design *for the narrative*

Skills like storyboarding, wireframing narratives, and things like talent management (for voice over, etc) tend to come into play here more than writing copy or pure storytelling.

It's not "what story are we telling" as much as "how are we telling the story?"

Disclaimer: I'm an absolute disaster at this stuff, and 10 years of esports work hasn't really helped. @kchironis is a master at this and general design, so she's a good source for real knowledge and experience here.

* Level/World

This is understanding how to make spaces intentionally designed - emotionally, mechanically, spatially - a lot goes into great level design.

In a perfect world, it's a consideration of all the elements of gameplay and how it fits into the world or map, too.

Architects, Interior designers, civil engineers and other people with expertise in space design are natural fits in terms of backgrounds.

If you really enjoy about thinking about the flow of the world or level and how it all looks and plays, this is an attractive option.

It's also a very good one for a career path; many AAA studios need legions of level designers, and modding is easily accessible via maps and levels comparatively.

There's a big risk to this path, though, based on how the industry treats it;

This is can be such a specialty you have level designers that know nothing of mechanics, and vice-versa.

Some places will have level designers ONLY touch levels, and not have the chance to learn broader design thinking or techniques. This can be a career damper.

For people who go this path, curiosity and keeping yourself engaged with other elements will save you from this trap. Don't rely on your employer - you'll have to drive here. They're likely more motivated in having you "pump out good levels" than growing your breadth.

Again, I'm a tragic level designer (just due to little, outdated practice) - where I think @Pearl_Hogbash and @SalGarozzo do this right - blending total game experience with level design seamlessly.

Hopefully this provides insight into the "shapes" of designers, and can help you visualize a potential career and some goals.

As a new person, being a great designer is first priority, but a little subclassing will let you shape your role as a designer over the years.