Fancy cars, late night parties, gold necklaces. Who doesn’t want that life? However, you have your mind set on becoming a game designer. No worries. There is still hope.
There are several paths to stardom available. The first is to develop an amazingly innovative game and get lucky enough to have someone see it that has enough faith and resources to run with it. If you set out on this path, be advised that it can take many years and your chance of success is fairly small. A more realistic path, but much less glamorous, is to work your way up in the industry. But before I go into that, let me enlighten you on what the final prize looks like.
Most readers of this column have played Dungeons and Dragons at some point and are familiar with the various publications. One of my old favorites was a book called Deities and Demigods. A Demigod is basically a god for a very small group of followers without a whole lot in the way of real powers. In the field of game design, the term sometimes thrown around is demi-famous. I heard the term first from a discussion by Monte Cook, a noted RPG professional, but the term probably goes back before that. It basically describes a person who is famous in a very limited circle, but generally unknown outside of that circle. Gary Gygax and Sid Meier would probably be good examples. Telling if someone is in this category is fairly easy.
Podcast #16: Jason Bulmahn [45:00m]: 