In my time as a game designer, I've lead a few sub-teams and design teams (8 total). Each team has included at least one brand new, junior designer with no experience. I think this is kind of important - I think new designers bring something to the mix of designers in a team that you can't get any way else: Passion unmitigated and not yet beat down by experience.

We love to talk about how much experience matters in this industry, and it does, but what we fail to mention when we talk like that is that all the years of working in this industry, they wear you down. You start to censor your own ideas before you ever air them out for people to hear, because you think to yourself, "That didn't work on project X" or "No way engineering can pull that off" or "There's no way we'll get the art for that."

When you're the new guy, those concerns don't exist. It's a huge open world of "All it takes is a little effort and we can do anything!" and that can lead to the type of breakthroughs in your game that can be downright brilliant... Read more»