This comes up occasionally, usually in the guise of people who want to assert they are not game designers but merely an amateur in the field. 

So then: What makes someone a game designer? 

If it is a case of simple making a game, then that's a pretty easy answer but I've talked to people who have made games and don't consider themselves game designers? 

When I started out, I don't know if I really did. I usually appended something like "beginning" or "aspiring". At some point along the way, I embraced the term but I don't know that I could say at what point or why. Maybe it was simply that it was something other people said?

So I want to turn it over to the audience: What is it to you? At what point are you a game designer? And at what point are you no longer a "beginner" or "aspiring to be" or "amateur"?