When studying the related skills, it is always important to keep in mind what you will do in your daily work as a game designer. After researching plenty of job descriptions for game designers, I summarised the key responsibilities and required skills below:

Jam City

• Work on the game balance: Character Stats Character Abilities Group Abilities Character Roles and Archetypes Character Rarities Character Upgrades Character Popularity (with the Product Manager) Character Creation (Design + Data entry)
• Create the Metagame based on the franchise:
• Narrative research on the Character in the Lore
• Understand the Role/Impact of the character in the current established Metagame
• Create GDDs. the High-Level Design, Mid-Level Design and Low-Level Design
• Collaborate with the VFX artist to define the actual visual of the ability

○ Integrate the Character in Unity (using Placeholder assets)

• Create the character using our Character tool with visual programming connecting boxes together (Name, Stats, Roles…)
• Create the Abilities using our Ability Editor (Attacks, Passive…)
• Integrate all the remaining Data and Assets in order to make the character playable

○ Playtest the Character in-game and validate the initial intentions Use the Battle Editor to do test battles Balancing (Excel + Simulation Tools)

• Balancing (Excel + Simulation Tools)

○ Do a balancing pass on the implemented characters Create simulations using Excel and identify the expectations Run different simulations with the characters using our Simulation tools