Game Development positions/roles (Q's)

[Refreshment]

Greetings, i hope this is the correct board for this:

I was searching definitions for some of the roles in game development, but the conceps were some times really vague or in other times the different positions in game development, acording to the definitions, shared so much things in common that they were hard to difirintiate.

So whats the role of the: Producer, executive producer, director, game designer, supervisor, planing manager?

Acording to what i found the "producer" is the main man, it has its hands of all aspects of game development (artistic, busyness, gameplay, etc). The executive producer has more to do with the busyness part and relations to share holders.

But what about director, game designer, supervisor, planing manager?

I always though the director was the person most involved with the proyect and the creative force behind the game.

Btw, who's the person that take most of the credit or most of the blame in case a game is a success or failure respectivly?

Thanks for the help.

 

[ERP]

There is no simple answer to this, it depends on the company.
Even something as simple as what a "Lead Programmer" does varies between companies.

In my book there are Programmers, Artists, Designers and a lot of management.

 

[Refreshment]

Thanks for the answer ERP.

Im kind of dissapointed, not with your answer , but that there isnt a clear definition to distinguish a producer, from a director or designer inside the game development realm. Even if the 3 positions some times appear in game credits.

 

[MrWibble]

ERP is right that definitions will vary a lot from company to company.

I'll give some rough ideas from places I've worked though.

Generally, I'd consider a "producer" to be kind of the manager of a team. Responsible for schedules, budgets, hiring and firing, generally making sure the game gets made on time. If they're a good producer, they'll keep things running smoothly but will let the team get on with making the game. When their finely calculated schedule finally does fall apart they should be around to feed the team through the crunch period However IME a lot of producer want to be more in control of the game itself and tend to meddle in the design. Maybe that's in their role or not, but IMHO it tends to be detrimental a lot of the time.

A designer would produce documentation describing the game for the artists and programmers to implement. They'll be playing the game constantly as it progresses, and probably tweaking it assuming there's an editor for it. Naturally the precise nature of the design will vary according to the game - Quake pretty much just needs level designers. GTA needs interesting characters and missions. A racing game needs loads of balancing (well... most games need that too). They can possibly make fairly fundamental changes to the game, but most likely they can't decide to turn a sports title into a 3rd person shooter - they're there to design a fairly specific type of game, as decided by management (though possibly having solicited concepts from designers in the first place). I've seen designers boss artists around, but it seems to work better when they just provide outlines for how things should look and let the art team come up with the actual look.

A director is not something I've personally had on a project. To me this role seems to be a more extreme version of a designer... whereas a designer would not be any more senior than an artist or programmer, and ultimately decisions would get made by the producer, having someone act as "director" would give them more clout to essentially boss everyone else around. How this role fits in with a producer, I really don't know. In some cases, the producer would probably turn into the director's assistant and just keep doing stuff like scheduling. In other cases, maybe they'd still be in charge but let the director do most of the day to day running.

Qualifiers like "senior" or "executive" really don't mean much IME, other than seniority. For "executive" I'd probably suspect that it's someone that didn't really do much explictly on the project but they're senior enough that they get to have their name in the credits anyway. Maybe they have some kind of token management role within the company.

Frankly even within a single company, if there are multiple teams, they could well have different definitions of the above roles. Some places might have very rigid definitions, others may leave it up to the teams to find their own dynamic.

Read some job adverts - you'll see a bunch of different descriptions for jobs with the same titles...

 

[Refreshment]

Thanks for sharing your expiriences MrWibble, that was very interesting to read.

Whats the role that the person who came with the game idea, basic concept,
settings and gameplay mechanics typicaly asumes?

Of course, in case it comes from one person, from what i can gather by your response, is that the whole team is involved in apects of the creation process that can extend beyond their fields. At least in your work environment.

 

[TheChefO]

ERP is right that definitions will vary a lot from company to company.

I'll give some rough ideas from places I've worked though.

Generally, I'd consider a "producer" to be kind of the manager of a team. Responsible for schedules, budgets, hiring and firing, generally making sure the game gets made on time. If they're a good producer, they'll keep things running smoothly but will let the team get on with making the game. When their finely calculated schedule finally does fall apart they should be around to feed the team through the crunch period However IME a lot of producer want to be more in control of the game itself and tend to meddle in the design. Maybe that's in their role or not, but IMHO it tends to be detrimental a lot of the time.

A designer would produce documentation describing the game for the artists and programmers to implement. They'll be playing the game constantly as it progresses, and probably tweaking it assuming there's an editor for it. Naturally the precise nature of the design will vary according to the game - Quake pretty much just needs level designers. GTA needs interesting characters and missions. A racing game needs loads of balancing (well... most games need that too). They can possibly make fairly fundamental changes to the game, but most likely they can't decide to turn a sports title into a 3rd person shooter - they're there to design a fairly specific type of game, as decided by management (though possibly having solicited concepts from designers in the first place). I've seen designers boss artists around, but it seems to work better when they just provide outlines for how things should look and let the art team come up with the actual look.

A director is not something I've personally had on a project. To me this role seems to be a more extreme version of a designer... whereas a designer would not be any more senior than an artist or programmer, and ultimately decisions would get made by the producer, having someone act as "director" would give them more clout to essentially boss everyone else around. How this role fits in with a producer, I really don't know. In some cases, the producer would probably turn into the director's assistant and just keep doing stuff like scheduling. In other cases, maybe they'd still be in charge but let the director do most of the day to day running.

Qualifiers like "senior" or "executive" really don't mean much IME, other than seniority. For "executive" I'd probably suspect that it's someone that didn't really do much explictly on the project but they're senior enough that they get to have their name in the credits anyway. Maybe they have some kind of token management role within the company.

Frankly even within a single company, if there are multiple teams, they could well have different definitions of the above roles. Some places might have very rigid definitions, others may leave it up to the teams to find their own dynamic.

Read some job adverts - you'll see a bunch of different descriptions for jobs with the same titles...

Very nice insight into the developers world - I love this stuff! Thank you!

 

[MrWibble]

Thanks for sharing your expiriences MrWibble, that was very interesting to read.

Whats the role that the person who came with the game idea, basic concept,
settings and gameplay mechanics typicaly asumes?

Of course, in case it comes from one person, from what i can gather by your response, is that the whole team is involved in apects of the creation process that can extend beyond their fields. At least in your work environment.

Yeah, where a concept comes from can vary a lot. Obviously a lot of places deal with relatively unoriginal stuff - they're doing sequels or licenses, or at least games of a particular theme (sports, racing, whatever) which can dictate a lot of the process.

If there is some flexibility with a future concept, then it may be that studio management will come up with something, perhaps the team will be allowed to submit a design or two, or perhaps there will be some prototypes already in progress that will be chosen from.

Generally speaking, beyond the initial concept, the person fleshing it out will be a designer - or maybe a team of them. I guess a "director" might also do that - like I say, I sort of lump them in with designers.

I've walked into a project before now where the game-design had largely been done by the producer, with some help from an artist. It was very pretty, involved a lot of plot and little in the way of actual mechanics, and was entirely unworkable from a technical point of view. It took months of wrangling with a proper designer to get it into something we could actually imagine playing.

Of course I've also worked with "real" designers who have written similarly useless documents, and worked with programmers and artists with a fantastic understanding of game design. It's one of the most accessible but also misunderstood disciplines.

Also, just because someone fancies themselves as a designer and has the managerial clout to influence a game doesn't mean they should... I've seen managers practically ruin a game because they can't leave the design to the designs they hired to do the job...