Game Development Roles

I explain the roles in a typical game development group.

Videos I reference:

[sean]

As a certified hater, I just want you to know I've really appreciated all your videos and what you've done for the gaming ecosystem. Love ya work mate.

[jarsal_firahel]

Hi Tim, it's me, everyone. Amazing video as always 👌

[montabon]

Just wanna say thank you Tim, for everything

[bensweeney]

Believe it or not I'm actually learning A LOT from these kinds of videos you make!

[Nimona-FTW]

As an EP, I would like to add to this great video.

There are difference between a

- Creative and a game director: Granted these two roles are merged into 1 in smaller companies.
- lead in programming disciplines often means something different to than other disciplines.
Your lead AI is the subject matter expert of AI. He may or may not have a team.


For instance leads titles can be used

- as lead of the craft
- as the people manager of a team

Every studio is different, most studios have challenges organizing due to “politics”, “legacy” and other stuff. :)

[sniperx]

As a solo developer, I never realized how much work I actually do on my own until watching this video I think lol

[NickBergOne]

Hi Tim! I find your content inspiring, and having had quit a rough go of it lately, I want to thank you. These videos give me a small respite in the storm called life. I feel like I'm sitting by a campfire, listening to a wise sage sharing his reflections upon so many topics.

[Pedone_Rosso]

I suspect voice related work is also pretty big for animators and for the sound department,
and possibly also for the mo-cap department,
depending on how and how much voice over is a thing in the developed game.

Thanks for your videos!

[vast]

There is also the management and evaluation for outsourcing of art content, and in programming the people writing tools (art workflow, leveldesign, asset pipeline, test runners etc)

[JosephHMama]

Your generalist vs specialist video basically answered this question, maybe that's what you were thinking of

[electricVGC]

You've spoken before about your interactions with marketing, but I would be interesting to hear about your interactions with localisation in the roles you've had working in game development. How often when you were working on implementation did you engage with localisation considerations, and when you were a project lead how frequently or in what ways did you work with people working on localisation? At what stage in a project would you look at engaging either someone internally or someone externally to begin localizing a project, or is this something which was largely handled by a producer or publisher?

[zwmmbrl]

Hi Tim, interesting topic. As an analyst in a more traditional it-field (healthcare), I wonder the following:

How do more creative and non-it technical roles such as narrative roles get their goals and ambitions translated to technical requirements? For example, in typical it-roles you have a business stakeholder, an analyst and a developer. The analyst is at the center of two 'clogs': the process and the 'why' of the product vs. the it-technical and their limitations. They make sure one end of the spectrum understands and appreciates the other.

I wonder how communication can be efficient if the two worlds don't have a translator of the other in between them.

Thanks for everything!

[KeiNovak]

Great overview on such a fundamental gamedev industry topic.

[lepigpen]

Not sure if there is a specific place for us to ask questions but, I did want to ask about the changes in Outer Worlds to go to 150 skill, how OP some of those abilities were at 150, and how it may have messed up the scaling through out the game. Notably the speech checks getting raised up quite high even at early levels. And how you could cap out less skills now, etc etc. Basically, how did 150 skills come about and do you look back on them optimistically or as a cautionary tale now. Thanks :)

[felixp]

Amazing video, really helps a lot!

Would love a concrete example for the design-side. What does the Design Director define? How broad/specific should their requests be? What does the lead designer exactly do? Do they only manage the design team or do they actually do design work? Who writes the design specs for programmers like damage formulas and such? Who reviews those specs? Who updates the GDD? Only leads/design director or each individual design member?

Would be nice to both know how it worked when you were working in big projects, and how you think it should work/how the process could have been improved at the time.

[danielvelkov]

Will you ever do a podcast or something like that? I would love to see you talk with Jonathan Blow or someone of that caliber

[incontinentia]

I have never once seen a Game Director who's played the game as much as QA or Design in both matters of encapsulating the vision of the final product and securing the risk value of a product.

[NCR_thedevil]

Well it's me, i do everything....

That's the rolls.

[huginf]

As a Game Director how much do you step into other roles? What system design you do on your own, what quests or dialogues you write for example. If any? When do you think it's ok to take the work from other team members?

[flamingburritto]

Hey Tim. I had a question 😶

When starting out as a game designer. Did you ever feel intimidated by big games? I started playing god of war 2018. And I was in awe of the game. And then it just hit me. Someone was lead on this. Cory barlog. One guy. Ofcourse he didn't do everything but when I look at the game and how absolutely massive it is. I can't help but feel intimidated. Like how can I ever get to the point of designing or being in charge of something so huge.

Maybe I have some misconceptions about how games as big as these are made. Cuz making just one short game of 20 mins of gameplay in a time of 6 months felt like we barely made it. And even then the game wasn't what we wanted it to be.