Getting into Game Design (Score 4)

I'm a young game designer myself, with 1.5 titles under my belt (intern on dark reign 2, lead designer of Strifeshadow)

There are a lot of ways into game design, and a number of skills that are useful.

Designers get their jobs one of four ways:
1) They get peter principled up from game tester by kissing ass or seeming particularly smart.
2) They are good game programmers who have a knack for game design, and manage to switch over
3) They are a management guy (assistant producer) who feels he has a knack for game design, and transfers over (I say he, because 90%+ of game designers are male)
4) They cut into game design directly by displaying an extraordinary understanding of game design either through level design, making a shareware game, or extreme playing skill + analytical ability.

The skills/qualifications necessary for good game design are:
1) Strong understanding of systems design, or even if you dont possess a formal knowledge of it, an ability to make "big-picture"-centric decisions on a project. Game design is ultimately about taking a core set of atomic gameplay "fun elements" and building a game system around them. Thats an engineering project -- make a vehicle based on a combustion engine, design a software system for certain strengths, etc. I personally feel that engineers are better qualified than most other types of people because more engineers are good at systems-design related stuff.
2) A wide playing experience (gives you good ideas, gives you a contxt to compare, gives you a feel for what sorts of things can be fun and which are not)
3) Ability to communicate. Game designers are responsible for bringing the art and programming teams together for a common purpose, and making sure everyone understands the central vision (so they can all contribute coherently). This is the case because game design dictates so heavily how the rest of the project will be. Well most of the time...
4) Ability to be objective and not get too attached to ideas. Game design is always a little hit or miss, and people that grow too attached to ideas can easily compromise themselves when the ideas dont work out too well.

If you want to be a game designer, I recommend the following:
1) Play games. With bad games, try to figure out why the game is bad, and moreso, why the designers made the decisions they did (i.e. what they were trying to accomplish, but failed at doing). With good games, try to figure out how they couldve been better, and also why they are good. Serious thought spread over years will make you very good at designing your own games...
2) Take some systems engineering classes.
3) Design some games on paper, analyze them, then do some more. I recommend also getting involved in game projects like shareware and MUDs -- good experience.
4) Try to actually make a shareware game if possible, but its dicey if you just want to do design and have minimal programming skills...

Game design, unlike what most 15 year olds think, is not about having cool ideas, or lots of great ideas. Its about choosing good ideas. Everyone has good ideas, but the best designers know how to combine them into a coherent, fun game, or better yet, come up with a gameplay concept, and assemble good ideas around it that fufill the concept. On the topic of getting into game design, like anything in life, game design comes to those who want it the most... Tom Cadwell Lead Designer Ethermoon Entertainment (a small indy developer) http://www.ethermoon.com my ancient course notes from a class i taught over IAP at MIT: http://web.mit.edu/tcadwell/www/gamedesign.html