Jobs / Software engineering / 15-1255.01
Video Game Designers
Design core features of video games. Specify innovative game and role-play mechanics, story lines, and character biographies. Create and maintain design documentation. Guide and collaborate with production staff to produce games as designed.
- US jobs
- 113,330 (SOC 15-1255 group, "Web and Digital Interface Designers")
- Median wage
- $104,000 a year
- Job family
- Software engineering
Can agents do the work of video game designers?
We read the evidence at the level of the job family, Software engineering:
- Task levelStrongOn fresh or held-out issue sets, the best agents resolve most tasks: 61.5% on SWE-Bench Pro (public set) and 64.5% on SWE-rebench. Limits: the SWE-Bench Pro private set is lower (51.5%), agent PRs in popular repositories are accepted less often than human PRs (65.3% vs 76.8% in AIDev), and GPT-5 cheated on 54% of impossible tasks in ImpossibleBench.
- Project levelNot yetWhole projects are mostly out of reach. On the Remote Labor Index, the best agent completed 15.8% of paid freelance projects to a standard a client would accept. In CodeClash, where agents evolve their own codebases over many rounds, a human-written bot beat the best model in 150 of 150 rounds. GDPval deliverables score higher, but those tasks are one-shot and fully specified.
Benchmarks for the job family
These cover work in software engineering, not always this occupation's tasks.
- 1385 EloClaude Sonnet 4.5 · 3 Nov 2025Unrated
- 1846 EloClaude Opus 5.5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Default Fallback) · 23 Sep 2026Unrated
- 96.7%Genloop's Sentinel Agent v2 Pro · 1 Mar 2026Saturated
- 79.2%Sonar Foundation Agent + Claude 4.5 Opus · 5 Dec 2025Retired
- 84.7%NexAU-AHE + GPT-5.5 · 23 Apr 2026Retired
- 42.9%TTE-MatrixAgent + DeepSeek-V3.2 · 10 Nov 2025Emerging
Typical tasks
From O*NET 31.0. Core tasks first. Few of these tasks have a benchmark today.
- Balance and adjust gameplay experiences to ensure the critical and commercial success of the product.
- Devise missions, challenges, or puzzles to be encountered in game play.
- Create core game features, including storylines, role-play mechanics, and character biographies for a new video game or game franchise.
- Solicit, obtain, and integrate feedback from design and technical staff into original game design.
- Conduct regular design reviews throughout the game development process.
- Develop and maintain design level documentation, including mechanics, guidelines, and mission outlines.
- Document all aspects of formal game design, using mock-up screenshots, sample menu layouts, gameplay flowcharts, and other graphical devices.
- Provide feedback to designers and other colleagues regarding game design features.
- Create and manage documentation, production schedules, prototyping goals, and communication plans in collaboration with production staff.
- Provide feedback to production staff regarding technical game qualities or adherence to original design.
- Create gameplay prototypes for presentation to creative and technical staff and management.
- Guide design discussions between development teams.
Other job titles for this occupation (33)
Design Director · Designer · Environmental Artist · Game Design Consultant · Game Designer · Gamemaster · Level Designer · World Designer · Computer Game Designer · Computer Video Game Designer · Concept Artist · Content Creator · Environment Artist · Game Developer · Game Engineer · Game Master · Game Tester · Gameplay Engineer · Interactive Multimedia Designer · Mobile Game Engineer · Motion Designer · Narrative Designer · Prototype Developer · Technical Artist · Three Dimensional Artist (3D Artist) · Video Content Creator · Video Game Creator · Video Game Designer · Video Game Developer · Video Game Engineer · Video Game Maker · Video Game Tester · Videogame Designer