What is the best course to do to be a Game Designer? AIE doesn't have any 'game design' courses.
AIE
AIE isn't really good for game design unless you also want to do either programming or art. They do a once a week lesson for the first half of the year on design so you learn the basics, and you get to be apart of designing and making a few small games(if you are a programmer) and one large game so it's really good experience, but really the courses are designed for the other two parts of game dev.
Dominic McDonnell
AIE 2008 Graduate
Good article
Here is a article with a few good points:
http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/Game%20Design/The_Education_of_a_Game…
I also think that taking up roleplaying (d&d, etc), and game modding would be helpful.
Dominic McDonnell
Programmer, Tantalus Media
you'll also find alot of
you'll also find alot of designers started in QA.
I don't often hear about people who went from uni to design.
Roleplaying
Yes, I do roleplay. I am currently in 3 games and DM 2 (of DnD). I also make quite a bit of homebrew content, specifically my campaign setting.
I do a little bit of game modding, but not much. I do make maps for most games though.
re:
"I don't often hear about people who went from uni to design."
I did, but I was heavily into the Unreal and Half-Life mod scenes. Get in there, show you can do level design and scripting (don't worry much about art, you won't be doing anything more than whiteboxes once you're in).
There are plenty of editor and design theory articles/tutorials online.
Get a Degree
If there's one piece of advice I've ever seen in more "So you want to be a designer?" topics, it's always "Get a degree".
Since you were looking at AIE, I assume you're of student age and are heading towards uni life. Many designer positions ask for tertiary education of some description, a Bachelor of Arts or a Bachelor of Comp Science seem to be the most common.
And then yeah, mods, roleplay, conceptulise, review games, etc. Build a portfolio, it's what I'm doing now whilst trying to get in now that I've finished my course (though I have to wait for May to get my Bachelor piece of paper...freaking UTS!)
Do mods while you are looking around. Games design courses don't come cheap and mistakes are pricey :0
If you can be a designer on a mod or two (maybe even set up your own), perhaps study some Maya, get into an independent game or do a QA gig or two, you may even find you don't need to do a course.