Posted by: DrBunsenHoneydew
Posted by: SonicJohn
Wanna be a designer? Research how things are put together in a game. Go through it and take notes about how it's laid out to help the player without being in their face. Research how characters are built to support the world they're in. Plays lots and lots of games. If you're the sort of guy who watches a movie and thinks always about "I know how that was done" or "I wonder how they did this shot" then you're a designer of some sort.
I'd actually disagree slightly with this. Learning to be a designer is more about "doing" than "research". If you want to be a designer, start making games. There are lots of ways for someone to start making their own games without advanced skills. Play other games and study them, sure. But just like you're not going to be a writer unless you write every day, you're not going to be a game designer unless you're actively, constantly designing games.
One of my favorite indie games, Audiosurf, was made by the husband of a former coworker of mine. Before he made Audiosurf, he set himself a personal challenge of cranking out a little Flash game every week and kept that up for months. It didn't have to be super fun or complex, just something playable. Eventually, one of those little games formed the seed of Audiosurf.Oh whoops, yeah, exactly this. I just didn't give my full speech on getting into the industry, which upon reflection was a bit silly of me.
You're totally right, though, you should start making them as soon as you can. It's what I'm doing with Whisper. Started it as a little Flash Game team right when I started learning how to make Flash in my first year at College and now this is what it turned into 3 years on.