Roles In Games | Jack Barber

Roles In Games Industry

Production

Games Publisher:

People who provide developers with money to produce a game. The publishers often provide an outline as to what they want the game to be. They then monitor development progress to ensure the development goes smoothly and that the game is in line with the publisher's requests. Publishers also help to market and test the game, as well as other complexities like selling games in other countries.

Games Producer:

Producers are the framework that brings all elements of game development together. They are responsible for planning the development process, handling areas like budgeting, testing and negotiating with publishers. They are often the figurehead of the development team and speak about the game to the press after release.

Assistant Games Producer:

Assistants help keep development running smoothly, often doing different things each day. Their main role is to organize produced assets like concept art and videos/art for marketing. They mainly help producers through organisation, such as having a clear view of the project's progress and organizing press visits post release.

Marketing Executive:

Responsible for marketing the game. They create advertising campaigns through social media, adverts, websites and events that help to get people talking about the game. They organize the use of promotional material like screenshots and videos, as well as interviews and press releases. They also continue to work post release, especially on online multiplayer games that intend to constantly draw in new players and keep people playing.

Community Managers:

The people who deal with the community and fans around the game. They write articles, attend events and listen to criticism. They help get the fan's views across to the designers, potentially allowing improvements according to fan reactions.

Esports Producer:

Responsible for creating interest for the game as an esport. They plan tournaments and live streams to get viewers interested in watching the game. They also manage the staff, such as the commentator and their script, to ensure events are exciting.

Design

Lead Game Designer:

Design the gameplay and look of the game. They decide the direction of the game, like characters, props and create ideas for the game. During production, they make sure deadlines and budgets are in check, and decide if any changes are needed before release. In smaller companies, they may also directly assist with areas like art, marketing and programming.

Gameplay Designer:

Design the core gameplay experience. They design all aspects of gameplay, from the core mechanics all the way to small details like how high characters can jump. This also includes the game's structure, and whether game is singleplayer, multiplayer or both. They work with the programmers and artistic teams to achieve the intended gameplay experience. They also advise testers, informing them about the intention of the game.

Level Designer:

Responsible for designing the levels for games. This includes the environment, actions, event, objects and how non-player characters behave. They consider the player's experience, including the challenge, pacing and logic of events in the game.

Writer:

Create the story of the game. Writers are often given the loose events that will happen in the game, and given a lot of freedom to put them together. Writers often work in teams and work with many areas of development. This can lead to the game having many different iterations before release, as people have many different ideas for the game's narrative.

User Experience Designer:

Design the surface level experience of the game, ensuring the game's interfaces, feedback and explanations are clear and not confusing. They design the user interface, including heads up display, menus and all the ways the game conveys information through the interface. In larger studios, the user experience designer often has a separate user interface designer, where the experience designer focuses more on the conveying of information to the player.

Art

Concept Artist:

Artists who create the first draft of the visual style of the game. This includes the look of environments, characters, enemies and the player character. These concept art pieces help 3D modelers and producers understand the look of the game. This is an important role as all proceeding artwork will be based off the concept art.

3D Modeler:

Create all 3D assets in the game, such as enemies, weapons and the environment. They base their models on either a brief or a piece of concept art. In larger studios, there will be many 3D modelers that specialize in different aspects of the game like the environment, characters or weapons.

Environment Artist:

Responsible for creating the 3D environments the game takes place in. They take art from concept artists and create an environment based upon that. They have to consider a lot of factors when sculpting these environments, such as the gameplay requirements and technical issues like polycount, meaning they must be careful how detailed they make environments for optimisation reasons.

Texturing Artist:

Apply textures to models created by 3D modelers. They map textures to models and ensure they look as realistic (or in line with the art style) as possible. They also create textures, using a mixture of photos, art and painting, and ensure all textured objects are coherent with eachother.

Animation

Animator:

Take both 2D or 3D assets and apply animation to them. They base their work off a storyboard created by a designer, and try to have their animations convey emotion, personality and realism. Games are different to animate than films, as animations must respond to player input and string together believably. They create libraries of animations that can be reused on reoccurring elements in the game like enemies or the player's actions.

Technical Animator: Help to solve the technical problems that come with creating animations for games. They ensure the animations are technically sound, and do not create lag. They help keep animators in check in terms of budgeting and time.

Technical Art

Techincal Artist:

Technical artists help to develop the game's engine. They ensure that artists create work that is feasible on the game engine and help them to find the best way to implement it.

VFX Artist:

Create all special effects that occur in the game. This includes explosions, wind, rain and water. They ensure that effects are visually impressive and fit within the established environment or event.

Audio

Music Composer:

Compose music for the game. They create the game's theme tune, as well as music throughout the game that corresponds with the event in the game, like a tense moment of explosive action scene. They often look through the game, with an understanding of the gameplay, and implement music where they feel it would enhance the experience.

Sound Designer:

While also helping with music, sound designers mostly focus on sound effects like rain, gunshots and explosions. Sometimes they work with the game from the start and design what the player should hear regarding the brief of the game, or they come in at the end to add sounds.

Audio Programmer:

Responsible for integrating sound effects into the game. They code functions like volume and make sound effects line up with actions in game.

Programming

Generalist Programmer:

Write the core code of the game, including testing and fixing bugs. In development there are often many specialist coders, and the generalist programmer's main concern is to keep it all stable and efficient.

Gameplay Programmer:

Write the code for the bulk of the gameplay. This includes many things like combat, movement and interaction.

Physics Programmer:

Responsible for the software that powers the physics in a game. They ensure that all objects conform with the laws of physics and are able to interact with eachother.

AI Programmer:

Create the code that powers the artificial intelligence in the game. This mainly means the non player characters in the game, how they move, act and interact with the player.

Engine ProgrammerL:

Develop the game engine the game is based on. They ensure the engine is well suited to the game being developed and create systems that the game can use.

Network Programmer:

Create the code behind the multiplayer aspects of the game. They ensure that all machines are synced and displaying the correct information on each screen. This is a complex area of programming as the programmer must understand both game programming and network coding.

Programming

Game Testers:

Test the game for bugs and document their findings for the developers to fix. They look for programming bugs, spelling errors and audio issues. They often have to play the same game over and over and examine every detail.

Quality Assurance Build Engineer:

Ensures that a up to date build of the game can be accessed whenever needed. This involves maintaining software and hardware systems, creating tools, running tests and conferring with the development team.

For me, I would be happy with a role as a gameplay designer. I feel I would enjoy to come up with ideas for game mechanics and I have more of an interest in the core design of games rather than the creation of assets, code etc. I could achieve this by creating some work of my own, or by entering university or an apprenticeship. I have no definite goals, however, and would be happy with any role in the games industry. The roles of level designer, 3D modelling artist and lead designer also interest me.