Are engineers the same as game designers?

Hello,

Quick answer, no. Game designers and Engineers do NOT share the same job responsibilities.

Game designers design games and engineers create solutions (depending on the type of engineer you are) to issues that arise in the game.

However, I'm an engineer for a gaming company and i've always been encouraged to have the mindset of a game designer. Meaning, when I approach the problem I have to keep the player in mind and ensure that the solutions that i'm engineering affect the experience of the user in a positive way. So one can argue that you can be both a game designer (lightly) and an engineer at the same time :)

Hey Javonte, based on my experience here at Zynga, game designers and engineers are quite different. As an engineer, I work closely with game designers-- but ultimately, the game designers are responsible for "gamifying" features, for making sure the game is fun, and for ensuring that people keep coming back to play. As an engineer, while I'm definitely able to provide inputs to this process, my core responsibilities lie around translating the game-designer's ideas into actual code.

So while you're right that engineers and game designers both solve problems, they're looking at the same problem from a different perspective. A game designer would look at it from the perspective of "how do I make this more fun for a player, how do I ensure he/she derives enjoyment out of this feature", whereas an engineer would be thinking more along the lines of "what technical challenges do I need to overcome to make this vision a reality".

Hi Javonte,

Engineers and Game Designers have different job responsibilities. There are lots of different types of engineers and game designers, but in a general sense the big divider is that engineers are programmers and most designers are not. While some game designer roles might use technical skills, such as the ability to script or understanding programming languages, it isn't a requirement in the same way that it is for an engineer. Engineers, for the most part, require a Computer Science degree or similar, which isn't required for game designers. Game Designers solve creative problems (gameplay), while engineers tend to come up with creative solutions to technical problems. It's really oversimplifying it, but one way you can look at it is: Game Designers come up with the 'ideas' for the game, and Engineers actually program and make the game work.

That said, it never hurts to be a game designer with engineering skills or an engineer with a good sense of game design!

Hope that helps.

Gina