Well Newbie101, practically everything that''s been said here is the good stuff so i guess it all comes down to your interpretation of it now. Note:I especially agree with one major point that ahw said "BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF" the hardest thing about game design is being both bullheaded and open minded when needed.

I love Game Design and it loves me back.

Our Goal is "Fun"!

I can understand you want to learn all you can about game design.

It is something that is very difficult if not impossible to do if you are not involved in the industry in some way or another.

You require upto date laymans knowledge of the technology and techniques used in making the games both on the code and art side of things.

I mean, a design is implemented by these people and if for instance you were designing....say a transfer system for a soccer game, a coder might appreciate a modular higherarchical system of decision making with lots of yes/no answers, as he could turn this into 1''s and 0''s and therefore code it. He certainly wouldn''t appreciate nicely writen airy fairy meaningless words on three sides of paper.

All this said, I am getting sick to the back teeth of people saying that being able to program is required or of benefit. Sometimes it is of no benefit whatsoever, programming and game design are different disciplines.

When was the last time Hideo Kojima programmed a game or Myamoto for that matter.

Game designing is about knowing the subject matter, the history of the genre of game you are designing (only by knowing the mistakes of the past can you hope to avoid them), knowing the difference between good and bad ideas and games. It is also about being able to present clear and logical ideas, quite often taking on board advice from people in there specialist fields or working with them.

If you want to know about game design and you want to get into it, get you foot in the door of the industry by becoming a tester. Work hard, become a lead tester and then apply for junior designer/lead tester/designer roles.

Go for it, you have nothing to lose if it''s your passion.

Ignore any detractic sarcastic comments, you''re trying to learn about something your interested in, since when was that something to be ashamed of.

In the UK they have something called YTS, youth training schemes and just recently we have had quite a few guys your age working at our company and getting a feel for what it is all about.

I don''t know whether they offer such schemes in the US, if I were you I would see my teachers/lecturers and ask them whether there are any schemes that would allow you a work placement with a computer games developer for a short period of time so you can see if it is something you will want to take up once you are 18.

Whether you can do that or not, get stuck into as much literature as you can on the industry, not games magazines that just review games, but more technically minded mags.

This site will certainly help you as will the garmasuta site, even siggraph papers (www.siggraph.org) can help in learning about the industry. Although the later can be very technical if you search for... motion capture say, you will find one or two articals that will explane it for you in laymans terms. learning about appropriate issues that relate to the design you are intersted in, in laymans terms is invaluble.

In the meantime I will say this, think of design being represented by the human body. You have the bones and you have the flesh.

The bones come first, this is your design overview document or concept doc. In this you should have your vision, aims and objectives. Your ideas for the game in all areas, your modes of play etc.

Then you have your second document, your design document where you put flesh on the bones of all your ideas explaining in the most minute of detail everything you are going to do in the game.

Both documents are vitally important to good design, the first gives you the scope and direction of you would-be project.

e.g one part may be.. we''re going to use have a scenario mode in John Madden''s where you can select to play as a team at historic moments in American football history in order to re-create or change the outcome.

The second one goes on to say how that whole mode of play will work, what the moments from history will be, how the skill levels will alter, what secrets are ulocked by winning etc, "putting the flesh of design on the bones of concept".

My explanation is very basic, but hopefully it will give you an idea. It is not the definitive way in which to design, everybody works in different ways and the only thing that matters is that you are successful in what you do.

It is also worth knowing designing different types of games requires very different knowlege, knowlege of previous design work of that genre and often different technical knowledge.

E.g. Knowlege of 3d rendering, motion capture and animation systems wont be of much use to somebody designing a poker game for Mobile phones.

The skill of being able to flow chart heirarchical decisions in a modular way may help somebody designing a transfer system for a soccer game but such a skill will not help somebody working on designing a beat''em up.

So make sure that when you are reading about design that the information you are getting/being given whether it is technical or not can be applied to what you want to design...selecting the right information is vital.

I hope i have been of some help, again all the best.