Game Designers shouldn't try to code, make your Job well and a real Programmer will make their Job

From my point of view, is your product in demand? What is the competition? Promotion models and what is the budget for development and promotion? Computer games are a very competitive market so think about it!

Shaarigan said:

Game Designers shouldn't try to code, make your Job well and a real Programmer will make their Job

I'm sure there are many designers who are great programmers as well. The two are not mutually exclusive and a designer would certainly become better at game design if they learned to program as well (all other things being equal). But I do agree that if you are a designer without coding skills and you've managed to find some experienced programmers to work with, you shouldn't try to “join in” and start coding yourself and use up the programmers' time by trying to get them to teach you how to code. I've seen a bit of this happening in a team and it becomes a bit disruptive.

But the biggest issue with your line of thinking is that there wouldn't actually be any game completed. Finding skilled people to work on your game for free when you only have ideas and no previous projects, is close to impossible.

You surely never had any ideas of what would be a cool FPS if you could make one?

OP.

perry_blueberry said:
I'm sure there are many designers who are great programmers as well

My statement is quiet a bit more than just that. What I've seen over the years when Unity and Unreal evolved from experts only to open for everyone game development solutions is that they generate the impression that programming (or coding which is quiet a different thing) can be disregarded because it will work somehow. Looking at the start sequences of AAA games, the impression gets even stronger. Game Design, Art, Environment Art, Audio, Story, everyone seems to be more important than the programmers that make your dream come true. You could have best graphics and best story, without programmers knowing their job, there won't be a game!

The difference between a coder/scripter and a programmer is that the later one isn't just clashing code together but also needs some knowledge about algorithms and quality of code to get a good performance. Some game designer just clicking stuff together in Blueprint isn't a programmer. I'm totally ok for people to prototype something but stop thinking that even if you could google for certain features of a programming language, that YOU are a programmer

perry_blueberry said:
But the biggest issue with your line of thinking is that there wouldn't actually be any game completed. Finding skilled people to work on your game for free when you only have ideas and no previous projects, is close to impossible.

That's right and for a reason. As same as you're saying game designers can be good coders, can also programming people good game designers or at least good enougth to get something exciting on track. The question always is what is YOUR value in a project and nobody wants to spend time into working with “just the idea guy”. It has been said over and over and over, everyone has their own ideas and why should they work on yours if they could work on theirs?

Shaarigan said:

perry_blueberry said:
I'm sure there are many designers who are great programmers as well

My statement is quiet a bit more than just that. What I've seen over the years when Unity and Unreal evolved from experts only to open for everyone game development solutions is that they generate the impression that programming (or coding which is quiet a different thing) can be disregarded because it will work somehow. Looking at the start sequences of AAA games, the impression gets even stronger. Game Design, Art, Environment Art, Audio, Story, everyone seems to be more important than the programmers that make your dream come true. You could have best graphics and best story, without programmers knowing their job, there won't be a game!

The difference between a coder/scripter and a programmer is that the later one isn't just clashing code together but also needs some knowledge about algorithms and quality of code to get a good performance. Some game designer just clicking stuff together in Blueprint isn't a programmer. I'm totally ok for people to prototype something but stop thinking that even if you could google for certain features of a programming language, that YOU are a programmer

I agree to some extent but I think us programmers that know all the technical details are a dying breed. There will always be a need for optimizing things behind the scenes, but the tools have advanced to such a point that you don't need to know proper software development to create most games that are getting published these days. I've seen youtubers with an art background cobble together interesting looking games (with fun gameplay from what I can tell) without prior coding experience. PontyPants is an example but there are tons of others that show up in my feed. I cannot say there is much of a difference between me coding stuff at work (whether that's UI or embedded) in C++ and dragging arrows around in Blueprint in Unreal Engine. The tools look different but at the end of the day it's the same kind of problem solving and attitude with both.

Shaarigan said:

perry_blueberry said:
But the biggest issue with your line of thinking is that there wouldn't actually be any game completed. Finding skilled people to work on your game for free when you only have ideas and no previous projects, is close to impossible.

That's right and for a reason. As same as you're saying game designers can be good coders, can also programming people good game designers or at least good enougth to get something exciting on track. The question always is what is YOUR value in a project and nobody wants to spend time into working with “just the idea guy”. It has been said over and over and over, everyone has their own ideas and why should they work on yours if they could work on theirs?

You are arguing my point exactly: don't be an ideas guy; get your hands dirty with coding, art, level design and so on.