@JHighSmith, I’ll throw in my two cents worth.
I’ll particularly grab onto this question you asked Alg0801: “aren’t you confusing game design and game development?”
Nope, he’s not confusing anything. The problem is that lots of things can seem like a good idea in principle but when you actually put them into practice they suck harder than a tornado at a smurf convention. So a big part of designing games is actually trying stuff and seeing whether or not it works as well as you thought it would, and whether or not it’s actually fun to play.
I’ll also pick you up on the first thing you said “I don’t want to read a whole book and it would just bore me with details anyway”.
First up, that’s just high octane flame bait, if you talk like that on anywhere on the internet you’re just going to get dumped on plain and simple. Second, I heard a saying a while back “there’s a big difference between what people say they want and what they’re prepared to work their **** off for”. In other words, lot’s of people like the idea of being rich and famous and successful but it’s the ones who are prepared to do the work that actually get there.
So the big question for you is “if you realised that being a game designer was going to be ten times harder than you thought it would be and take ten times longer than you thought it would, would you still want to do it?”. If not, no shame, keep looking until you find the thing you don’t mind doing all that work for. If yes, dig in for the long haul and go for it.
Ok, links:
- Alex Galuzins world of level design : http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/
- Game design category at gamasutra : http://www.gamasutra.com/category/design/