Team Structures

1. Oct. 12 Team Structures

2. Game Development Teams • The number of people involved in game development for each project has grown over the years • Team size for NES was about 5 and design took about five months • Team size for Xbox 360, Wii and PS3 is about 40 and design takes about two years

3. Game Designer • Responsible for play experience. • Ensures gameplay works at all levels. • Creates prototypes • Playtests/revises • Writes concept and design documents • Communicates vision for the game to the team • Creates levels for the game • Acts as advocate for player

4. Wisdom from t_rf • “I am a designer at a small third-party console developer. I did NOT go through the QA route, I went from doing my own Flash games straight into a scripting/level design position, upon which I soon got sucked into a suicidal crunch to ship a game scoped for a year in six months. (We did it, though the original schedule said five months.) • The roles and titles are fluid (or muddy, one might say) at this company but I do a mix of tasks from these categories: Design decision-making, answering design questions and writing design documents, writing pitches, writing scripts, writing tools, fixing up small bits of the programmers' work wherever I spot it, and various project-dependent things. (mostly, coming up with mechanics-side content, dialogue fluff, etc.)”

5. Producer • Project leader • Communication link between developer and publisher • Schedule and budget development • Allocates resources • Ensures deadlines are met • Motivate team and solve production problems

6. Wisdom from EgonSpengler • “I'm an Associate Producer at Relic Entertainment, and I just finished working on Dawn of War II. More accurately, I am finishing up my post-release vacation after shipping DOWII. I was on the project from the start, and we spent two and a half years making it. • AP jobs are pretty variable. Mine ranged through a lot of areas during Dawn of War II; I did scheduling for art outsourcing and audio recording, localization development, and I was responsible for multiplayer. There's also a bunch of administrative and bureaucratic stuff I deal with, like contracts and vendor payments. Those parts are boring but essential, since people need to get paid for services. In general the job is open ended problem solving.”

7. Wisdom from Baroque • “I'd like to add my view on my Producer/Game Director (Where I work, the Producer and Game Director is the same thing, this may not apply elsewhere); • I found a large part of a Producer's job is also ensuring that every single pipeline from one department to the other is never, ever, clogged. By that I mean, if there is ever some sort of dispute or conflict of interests, the Producer needs to be aware of it AND make some sort of final decision to not only appease both parties, but to keep the pipeline flowing. • Some people really underestimate the value of a good Producer/Game Director, when it really affects the project tremendously. If you're working as a 3rd-party company, the Producer is also becomes the main voice between the Developers and the Publisher; Presenting the current builds of the game, Discussing with the big-wig publishers, etc.. etc.. It's also the Producers job to ensure that every department is on the same page, having monthly team meetings and making sure the team knows what direction the project is going in, and knows where they currently stand. • Believe it or not, some people really don't divulge themselves into the affairs of other departments and focus on their own work. For example; an Artist will have no idea on what Game Mechanics are in the works, etc...I would even go as far as to say that the Producer has to do a great job keeping everyone motivated too! You can believe that alot of people get really discouraged after working on the same project for over a year. QA is another department of the industry that is really under-appreciated (low-salary, hard-hours) but that's a whole other discussion.

8. Programmers • Coders • Network and system engineers • Hardware support • AKA engineers and software developers • Draft technical specifications • Software prototypes and tools • Game engines • Data structures • Documents code • Coordinates with QA to fix or resolve bugs

9. Visual Artists • Design and produce visuals • Characters • Worlds • Objects • Interfaces • Animations • Cut scenes

10. QA Engineers • Quality assurance • Create test plan for project based on design • Execute test plan • Record all unexpected or undesirable behavior • Categorize, prioritize and report issues found during testing • Retest and resolve issues after they have been fixed • Craigslist ads for QA engineers common

11. Wisdom from Sigma-X • “ ‘QA is the entry level position everyone starts in.’ This is total bullshit. Maybe 10% of our new-to-industry hires have started there, and almost all of them are production/management, not QA.”

12. Wisdom from Splaa • “Yeah, I've found that the quality of QA seems to vary from publisher to publisher. Some are excellent, others seem to employ talking monkeys, something I found out the hard way back when I was working QA for a local games developer. • The shift I spent going through every inch of every level in the whole game, because some retard in the publisher's QA department submitted a bug that said nothing more than "The bridge is too low", is 8 hours of my life that I'll never get back.”

13. Wisdom from Doctor Fatty • “My entire QA career was compliance testing, and because of that I can design a game that's already compliant. It was one of the reasons I got into my current role, as designing a save / load system that already plays by the rules is valued over a save / load system that has to be overhauled multiple times once QA starts pointing out compliance issues. Less bugs to fix means more time is spent on the "cool" things.”

14. Specialized Media • Contractors like writers, sound designers, musicians, motion caption operators, etc.

15. Level Designers • Design and implement each level • Create level concepts • Test levels and work with designer to improve gameplay

16. Talk to people, play games • A “Game” forum • Game Designers' thread on this game forum • Other game forums: • cgtalk.com • game-artist.net

17. Some advice from Turbo D • Games designers generally have little to do with the look of a game. • Graphic design is a term which is not often applied to computer game development.If you want to be a game designer, you ideally need to get experience in one of the other fields first, such as art or programming, or has been mentioned, QA. • Programming and QA are probably the best two starting careers to become a designer but if you are driven to succeed it doesn't really matter. It's kind of a similar path to becoming a producer. What does a producer do? That would take another lengthy post to describe. They basically work very hard and don't get any of the fun jobs.If you want to take a degree, avoid computer games courses unless they come very highly recommended by people in the industry. Where I work, we get a lot of applications from graduates from places like Full Sail. We have pretty much given up interviewing them now because their resumes are indistinguishable from each other and their course grants them no useful skills whatsoever.If you're more of a coder than an artist, get a CS degree. If you're more artistically inclined, someone else can probably recommend a course, but in my experience the artist's portfolio speaks way louder than their education.A degree is not necessary to get into the industry, but it can help. What you MUST do, is to MAKE GAMES.

18. Wisdom from dolemite01 • “In hindsight you have to understand that ultimately everyone is collaborating on a type of art. Yet this art has to be maintained and sold and handed to however many people will buy it. As opposed to a painting that can be reproduced the artist doesn't have to go back in and make touch ups to the painting once its gone.”