Explore jobs
Find specific jobs
Explore careers
Explore professions
Best companies
Explore companies
The differences between game designers and senior game designers can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. It typically takes 2-4 years to become both a game designer and a senior game designer. Additionally, a senior game designer has an average salary of $102,838, which is higher than the $87,645 average annual salary of a game designer.
The top three skills for a game designer include unity, UI and game development. The most important skills for a senior game designer are unity, animation, and AAA.
| Game Designer | Senior Game Designer | |
| Yearly salary | $87,645 | $102,838 |
| Hourly rate | $42.14 | $49.44 |
| Growth rate | 3% | 3% |
| Number of jobs | 45,227 | 44,999 |
| Job satisfaction | - | - |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 74% | Bachelor's Degree, 76% |
| Average age | 44 | 44 |
| Years of experience | 4 | 4 |
A video game designer is responsible for making a concept of a video game and creating the storylines, scenarios, maps, character development, user interfaces, and in-game objectives. Typical responsibilities include adding computer scripting using computer software, which will then generate events, objects, commands, and characters that end-users can choose from to interact with during the game. Additionally, you will write code using different computer programming languages and designing characters, animation, and levels. To become a successful video game designer, you must be creative, innovative, and ambitious.
As a senior game designer, your main objective is to create high-level graphical video games. You need to make sure that the games which you are designing are very much interactive and talk to the audience. As a game designer, you have to work closely with the top artists to create the effects for your video game. Working with programmers is also a part of this job. You need to make them understand the core components of your video game so that they can create the structure according to that.
You also need to make sure that the videogame that you design provides a balanced gameplay experience. You have to design the characters as well as the various components of the video game with high levels of precision and accuracy. You will be conceptualizing the characters and then prototyping new games one after the other.
Game designers and senior game designers have different pay scales, as shown below.
| Game Designer | Senior Game Designer | |
| Average salary | $87,645 | $102,838 |
| Salary range | Between $60,000 And $127,000 | Between $67,000 And $155,000 |
| Highest paying City | Reno, NV | Las Vegas, NV |
| Highest paying state | Nevada | Nevada |
| Best paying company | Meta | Meta |
| Best paying industry | Technology | Hospitality |
There are a few differences between a game designer and a senior game designer in terms of educational background:
| Game Designer | Senior Game Designer | |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 74% | Bachelor's Degree, 76% |
| Most common major | Graphic Design | Graphic Design |
| Most common college | Stanford University | Northwestern University |
Here are the differences between game designers' and senior game designers' demographics:
| Game Designer | Senior Game Designer | |
| Average age | 44 | 44 |
| Gender ratio | Male, 88.2% Female, 11.8% | Male, 77.5% Female, 22.5% |
| Race ratio | Black or African American, 6.2% Unknown, 4.7% Hispanic or Latino, 8.8% Asian, 12.0% White, 67.7% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.5% | Black or African American, 6.2% Unknown, 4.7% Hispanic or Latino, 8.8% Asian, 12.0% White, 67.7% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.5% |
| LGBT Percentage | 11% | 11% |