Yeah that’s the first thing that can make it confusing but my specialty is core gameplay on AAA games so it usually goes something like this:
Oh so you draw the characters?
No I don’t really draw, those are artists. I help make the characters move though.
Oh so you animate them?
Er not really, those are animators, I help with the logic
Oh so you’re a programmer?
No, I do use scripting languages but I’m no programmer
… and so on…
I usually end up saying something like that if you were to make a board game, you would need an artist to draw up the assets and a game designer to make up the rules and they both work together so that’s basically what I do but on a larger team and in a more micro scale.
depending on the size of the team I could see “game designer” encompassing a large range of scopes.
Yeah that’s the first thing that can make it confusing but my specialty is core gameplay on AAA games so it usually goes something like this:
I usually end up saying something like that if you were to make a board game, you would need an artist to draw up the assets and a game designer to make up the rules and they both work together so that’s basically what I do but on a larger team and in a more micro scale.
Deciding whay mechanics are in the game, how they work together, depending on the team size maybe level design.