What are the ways to be a game designer?

I'm pretty junior compared to a lot of the crusty old dinosaurs in the industry (just joking, guys!), so I can't tell you what it's like to be a master of design. But I can tell you what has worked for me in getting started in today's industry (~3 years in now): Clone something Pick a game and figure out how to copy it, as closely as possible. Choose something small. It's a rookie mistake to try to recreate World of Warcraft or Call of Duty. Try a small Flash or mobile game, or a mini-game from within a larger title. Cloning has a bad name right now for commercial reasons, but it's amazing for learning. Students of creative fields have done it for thousands of years. Writing teachers will show students a piece of writing and then have them attempt to recreate it from memory, or to paraphrase it many times. Artists often recreate the paintings of masters. Copying the masters of your field will teach you more than any number of theoretical concepts or books. And when you show others your work, they'll know that you can actually build something, rather than just talking about it. Just don't be a jerk and release your clone as a commercial game ;) Choose a specialty There are many types of games to design, and the skills to make a great one can vary drastically between each. Trying to become a great designer of every type of game at once is probably a mistake for a beginner. Instead, pick a genre that you're attracted to and start to dig into it and learn what makes it tick. Even better: choose mechanics that you want to master. The mechanic of running in a first-person shooter is one example, and something that you could easily spend months improving on. So is map design for a strategy game, or structuring dialogue for an RPG, or figuring out how to generate the bubbles in a match-3 game. Get familiar with everything else What kind of learner are you? Do you learn from hearing, from doing, from watching? Figure this out and start accumulating material in your chosen format. Personally, I find that I learn best as a reader and writer, so I often jot down passing thoughts in article form. Being forced to give structure to your impressions about games will help you learn, and it's probably equally valid to create videos, do voice logs or sketch out gameplay (I do that sometimes too). The time honored advice of "play a lot of games" obviously fits in here too, but probably doesn't need to be said for most people. (via http://www.onemrbean.com/) Make friends Like any professional industry, gaming is driven by relationships. Game designers should be extra motivated to form relationships for two reasons, though. 1) A game designer is often the social glue of a team -- not necessarily the leader, but definitely a person who draws together everyone's creativity and passion and helps make it a reality. It helps to be likeable. 2) Most companies are pretty clueless about how to evaluate and hire designers, so it's more important for designers to have a strong network than, say, a programmer or artist (who have more traditionally testable skills). Start wherever you can There's a lot of competition for game design jobs. And game designers need to know a little of everything. Make this combo work for you by starting out in a different position if necessary. Programming is great, as is art. Q/A would be fine. Even working as an assistant is better than nothing. (Personally, I jumped over from journalism.) If you're smart and hard-working, you'll be able to work your way up. Also, who knows? You may find out that other things will make you just as happy as game design. At the end of the day, every member of the team (in a good company) has a huge creative role to play in making a game. Good luck!

To become a games programmer, there's a pretty clear educational pathway. Great games programmers are great programmers.  You can improve your chances of being hired by creating demo apps which show that your programming applies to games.   So graphics and interactivity demos or simply games. To become a game designer there is not clear pathway. Within games companies designers sometimes move from another discipline into design. Some games designers are former programmers, former artists and even former game testers.

Will Wright said to look outside of the gaming industry (Japanese gardening, cars, architecture) to find out why making a game is interesting to you. You may also find inspiration for a game outside of the industry, too. I was inspired to read Christopher Alexander's 'A Pattern Language' and 'Industrial Dynamics' by Jay Forrester which Will says influenced him in SimCity.