Now I know what most of you are going to say, you are going to tell me "There are no real entry level game design positions in the gaming industry." and you are most definitely correct, but in all actuality there are. The truth is that there are entry level game design positions, though they are not what you think they are.
My name is Jack and I have been studying Game Art & Design at the Art Institute of Colorado for the past two years and am entering my final year of my bachelor of technical arts program. Since I am entering my final year I am beginning to start the portfolio process as well as portfolio classes, and I am having great difficulty in deciding what to do for my portfolio. The problem that I am having is that I want to be a game designer which as you might know is a very difficult job title to achieve let alone at entry level. The reason for this is that it is a very demanding and unique job within the industry that only makes up a very small portion of the development team, roughly 2-8%. This job title requires great knowledge and understanding of what makes good gameplay and game mechanics as well as the actual jobs, programs and techniques that it takes to make them possible. For these reasons it is a more advanced position.
So late last year a friend of mine sent me an email informing me that Blizzard Entertainment was offering summer internships for 2015. At first I was not that interested in the internship but out of curiosity and the fact that my friend took the time to inform me about it I thought that I should look into it. Now I did not have any intention of applying due to the fact that I live out of state from them and I would have to take time off school, but when I saw that they had an internship in Game Design I was stunned. Needless to say I applied while I had the chance and will hopefully receive a call from them in mid to late April. Now the reason that I was so stunned that they had an internship in game design was the fact that it is almost never an entry level job, but all of Blizzards internships are for entry level jobs meaning that they have them for game design itself. So I hope to get this internship not only for the experience but also to find out what it takes to be a game designer especially in terms of entry level and portfolio.
After a lot of research I have come to the conclusion that entry level game design positions do in fact exist and are obtainable. These positions are typically held by company's that have a very large amount of game mechanics for there games, games such as MMORPGS and other various other game types, which is why they are available at Blizzard Entertainment. I have found that these positions involve everything from quest design and creation to simple enemy mechanics, things that would not be put on the lead game designers shoulders.
So my question for you is, do you think that it would be a viable option to pursue in terms of a portfolio for an entry level job to try and get? Needless to say this would limit me in terms of job opportunity's in the future due to the fact that many companies do not offer the position. The safe way would be to try and go for environment or level design and work my way up to try and become a game designer. My thing is that if I manage to nail a job in the entry level version of game design than I could reach the lead game designer position in 1/4th of the time so it is risk vs reward. So what do you think I should do?