Hammer_Deus said:
touching on design, art, and programming

That's not a job.

Companies hire designers in design disciplines, like level design, character design, and so on. Companies hire various art roles like concept artists, environment artists, modelers and riggers, UI art, animators. Companies hire for programming roles. Companies hire for QA roles. Companies hire for production roles.

Unfortunately the generic “lots of skills related to games” is a path lots of people want and are willing to pay schools to teach them, even though it isn't directly useful in the industry. The schools will happily take the money and teach the curriculum the students asked for, with teachers often knowing it isn't going to lead directly to a job. Most employers I know, and myself personally, prefer schools that focus on a single discipline and then offer exposure to the rest, like a CS degree plus a game development certificate, or a BFA in digital art plus a game development certificate, or similar. But you can't change the past.

Game studios have openings for entry-level design positions, although they're rare relative to other positions. A single designer might be working with 10 programmers, 5 artists, 7 animators, 25 QA, and a few other roles. Some very small studios and startups do want the background you've had, a lot of general topics who can help in multiple areas, so apply there too.

Apply for the jobs you are looking for. If you like the exposure you had to programming and want to do that, look for jobs as an entry level programmer. If you like the exposure you had to art disciplines (not sure if modeling, texturing, animating, UI, or what) go for an art discipline. If you prefer the design tasks you did, look for level design, character design, and associate/assistant game design jobs. If you liked the coordination aspects, look for associate/assistant producer roles.

Hammer_Deus said:
Can anyone give me some insight as to what employers are looking for in new hires who have recently graduated?

Regardless of whatever role you end up in, the expectations at the junior level are the same.

You are seen as a raw beginner in the industry. You will require training and handholding. You're expected to know enough from your schooling and background that you can begin to do the job with some guidance, but that you're still learning the craft.

Do your best. Show up and work hard. Don't break things too much (you're expected to break things occasionally) and try to produce and generate more than the costs you cause. They expect you'll take time and effort for training, and that after a few months you'll start being useful to the project.

• Can't rig or animate a fraction as good as someone specialized.
• No math background to program anything substantial.
• But can probably sew together a few frameworks to “design” a game.

Sorry for the pessimism. I always recommend a software degree over a (nearly) liberal arts degree like game design. I'll side with Elon Musk on this one though: college degrees are worthless because everything can be learned online basically for free.

Programmers implement the designs. Understanding the big picture helps make better implementations.

The actual “Game Designer” is generally a fairly experienced person with creative control over a 5M−15M budget. “Senior Game Designer” may have creative control over a 30M, 50M, or even larger projects. This is NOT an entry level position.

Level design, character design, and titles like “Associate Designer” are more common at the entry level. Positions are fairly rare as described above because a large team only needs a few in the role. Many designers are pulled from other positions in the company, but a few are hired directly from the outside.

Playing a pure numbers game, getting a job as a programmer is safer, far more programmers are hired for a project than designers.

At some studios programmers have very little design control, especially at the junior level. At most studios programmers give feedback on designs, making suggestions based on what is easiest to implement, faster, or can be adapted from the rest of the game. Once the programmer is doing the work, the programmers make thousands of implementation decisions that build the feeling of the game.

With experience programmers are given wide latitude in implementing systems. As an example, the vague description might be to take some control points and generate walls or buildings out of it, and the programmer is expected to find a solution. The game designer wants a comprehensive system to allow building dynamic structures to help with gameplay. The programmer might pull from an asset pool to make wall segments, or turn spline paths into meshes that are textured automatically, or build some other system that fits the needs. The programmer makes a lot of design decisions, but it is generally not game design because it does not introduce mechanics or story, it is not level design because they are not building up the world and balancing choke points, flow, and emotional feel, but it is certainly a system that impacts the game, how the teams can build the world, and the framework that the story is draped around.

The design discipline figures out broad mechanics, figures out how to leverage them in maps and levels and puzzles and combos and crafting and whatever. The art disciplines create the resources and representation, with animation giving them life. Effects and audio enhance them. The programmers bind those ideas with the resources to make systems, and the design folks treat the systems as building blocks, iterating between the various groups to build up their game.

All are important disciplines. Knowledge of the other components helps, which is why I wrote I prefer to see someone dedicated to a specific field with exposure to others rather than exposure to a lot of fields with no real depth. The person needs to know their primary role in as much depth as possible.

If you find one discipline more compelling to you than another, go for it.