I just wanted to know how many people here had ambitions to become a game designer in the future. Also if you are what are you currently doing to achieve that and what specific field are you interested in.

I have and am doing it. Though I work towards RPG's not computer games. I do a lot of the writing, philosophy of the games and mechanics. actually I'm a mostly a one man team outside the testers. Though I plan to finally put one of my projects to publication soonish. sigh, if I can ever get anyone of my friends or family to edit the darn work for layout :|

Me I have been at it for 2 1/2 years. As of now im pratincing on improving my art an writing because when I get in the business I want to start as a character/monster designer though I wanna go the Indie developer route for freedom. Ive also been practicing/playing with 3D Max, and I also have my notenook of game ideas I save them all in there.

its always been a thought fo mine to go into game design/programing after highschool, but it doesnt seem like a likely area to find a job seeing as i hear a LARGE number of people have recently gone into game design...hopefully the industry remains in need of workers.

after im done with community college I oan to go to the Art institute for there awesomely good programs

@.jayderyu and Xxain seems like you guys are pretty into it thats good as I am as well. Also Xxain i go to devry and the art institue is connected to our campus and they seem to really enjoy it there. I snuck into there classes a couple of times they have a very good curriculum.

@ Tx109 yeah  from what i have seen there are alot of people trying to get  in the industry but that makes it more challenging lol.

I am a software developer, and have made some minor games for fun, but I work in the business world. No games for me.

I do have an Apple developer license, and if I just had a good idea...

I love playing Doodle Jumper, but I hate knowing I could have written that game in a month, and the dev probably made $300,000 or so on it (and still makes thousands a month).

Yea... if I just had a good idea. Still working on it :)

I went to school for software engineering, and know of only one person who is working in the video game industry:

http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,177433/

I know a lot of people who tried to get into the business, however it is a very hard business to get into - the above person worked as a tester for a few years (making like $10/hr and parttime at that - maybe 20 hours a week)

I know another guy who did Computer Science then took one of those 20k for 8 month specialized gaming school places and he isn't doing anything related to video games now...

If you want to get into it, you MUST love your job, as you will be salary most likely, but you will be putting CRAZY hours in and not getting paid OT for those hours, so if you work it our per hour you will be making less than if you went into software on the business side, doing programming for banks, life insurance companies, etc

Me. I like programming so this is where I'm working. Also someone who works in the Mario club (Nintendo's debug team) said me to trying create a first game uscing Game Maker, so I started the development of something very easy to begin with.