multiplang

I don't know what the industry norms are here (I would say there probably aren't any), because every studio has its own internal structure, and the lines often blur when it comes to the who and how of game design processes.

When you say you want to be a game designer, what exactly do you want to do - day to day - in your professional role? If the answer is that you see yourself providing top-level creative direction to a dedicated technical team, then there's likely a very long road ahead. Forget any kind of magic bullet approach. You have to do the nitty gritty, and essentially build demonstrably EXCELLENT games.

So build some games. While you're at it you'll get to find out whether you're actually good at game design.

Out of curiosity, what do you mean by having the right potential?

I recently started using twitter, not because I think people might be interested to know my mood every twenty minutes, or what position my cat is sleeping in right now, but because there is some genuinely interesting content hidden away in there.

In particular, it's become one of my preferred methods to skim tech and industry news.

I also recently followed Carmack and found that almost every post was kind of an interesting (if brief and impersonal) window into the daily workings/ponderings of another person building games. It immediately made me wonder who else out there I could follow that also post mainly this kind of dev stuff. For me, it's the perfect way to kill five minutes after work waiting for a train.

So does anyone have any recommendations?

If you don't use twitter or know first hand who has quality posts, maybe you could suggest some other well known people in the industry doing good stuff at the moment? the Twitter accounts of studios themselves are more news-based - pretty much geared for franchise fans, and that's fair enough too. I'm looking more for individual people posting their idle thoughts and learnings about all things game-tech related.