What are the disadvantages for video game designers

Much of a designer's time is spent working on computers to create story plots, gaming strategies, characters and graphics, so heavy computer use can lead to fatigue. Video game producers have deadlines, so the job often requires long hours and demanding and stressful workloads. Video game production is a competitive industry, with positive and negative implications. Since video game consumers are always looking for new challenges, there's demand to design games that outperform previous releases. This leads to job security as long as your skills, innovative ideas and technical expertise make you a highly competitive designer.


One of the disadvantages video game designers experience is technical difficulty. Designers must address bugs in their designs, tweak game play malfunctions, amend story plots and redefine characters. Post-production is often time consuming, demanding strong problem-solving skills and cutting-edge solutions. Designing video games is a complicated process that requires editing and re-editing to make sure game play is fun, challenging and innovative.


There are no educational requirements for video game designers, but a college degree in game design, game development, graphic design or computer science is beneficial, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Experience in the industry is a plus because some computer programmers and graphic artists become video game designers. The BLS states that background knowledge in scripting languages and computer software, such as Lua, Python and 3-D modeling programs, is beneficial to the job. The BLS doesn't gather salary information on video game designers, but its research indicates that the median annual wage was approximately $33,840 in May, 2010 for workers in the industry.