UnrealEd
 

I eventually want to get into game design as a career. I'm interested in game design, not level design, but as I lookup requirements for game design jobs I keep seeing that they need experience in 3d modeling and level design tools. Can anyone tell me how accurate this is and how much knowledge a person actually needs to be in game design.

Also, is UnrealEd a good, user friendly level designer for a beginner? I would also like to know how relevant it is to the industry. I'm interested in learning the programs that would help me out the most in obtaining a game design career, and was simply wondering is UnrealEd was a good option.

Well Unreal is huge in the industry and there is a great wiki out that will help you learn it. I haven't got the new one yet but I loved messing around with the last one. Any experience with something like that will help.

Very few people can get straight into a games design role without previous industry experience so the entry point is usually level design or integration. Knowing ANY scripting language and ANY level editor is going to help. The more the better.

Unreal is a popular choice because it is a very common middleware platform for games.

But are there game design jobs that don't require a vast knowledge of scripting? I don't want to go try and get into the industry only to find out that I have to know Python inside out or some other scripting language. Isn't the more technical side of game creation left to the programmers?

There are no entry level game design jobs that don't require some form of technical skill whether it be art of programming related. You don't need to have an intricate knowledge of scripting (although it helps greatly on the CV and interview process) just enough to get the job done.

There are game design jobs that don't require this but as I said earlier, the chances of going into one without industry experience is close to 0 without being 0.

(Just for comparison's sake, all the designers on my team know how to program to some level. Some of them have been in the industry for 5+ years).

I would recommend Python as a place to start. It is a very clean language, and it will be a good way to ease into programming. My university plans to switch the entry level computer science course to Python, and they can teach the same material that they did in C++ beforehand in half a semester.