Game Design and Development

How can one become a Game designer/ developer? If you have the analytical ability shrouded in your creative aptitude, you could be an ambi-brain person who can design games and other complex systems since your brain can process numbers and images with equal ease. Game Designing is one of the toughest tasks in the world. Firstly, to become a Game Level Designer you must have a passion for game design. Where you design the game itself, I. e. what happens on each level, and how things go about as well as the base story of the game. It is a stage that you reach due to your vast knowledge and passion that even exceptional technical skills cannot help you reach. This is usually the story designer. Also you must have passion for playing all kinds of games including card games, dice games, sports etc. The second option is Game Art Design (it's different from Game Design or Level Design), where you design all the Graphics, Interface, Textures and Lighting. You even Animate. To become a Game Art Designer, you must have a good knowledge of 3D software as well as preproduction. Usually in Games the environment is created in 3DSMax and Character animations in Maya, only the models are made with fewer polygons and more textures. So choose a programme that teaches you these software. It would not matter whether the programme is called a game design programme or not. The third option is to become a Game Developer/ Programmer. Now there are two paths to becoming a Game Developer. The traditional path has been C, C+ (now the path includes C#). However, things are changing fast and even leading games come to be made in Game Engines. The most prominent Engines are Unreal, Gamebryo, Cry Engine and Unity. The first three are easier and have better graphics facilities, but unity takes over when converting games for mobiles. There are very few centres which have a course to cater to these needs. I believe DSK, Arena and AIGA have programs covering these. For e. g. there is a programme GAD (Game Art and Design) at Arena which covers all three paths. This is being run at Arena Chandigarh and some other centres only.
Regards.