An introduction to the Game Industry

Making a game is an extremely complex process. These days’ games seem to be becoming produced even quicker than usual, with the likes of Ubi soft churning out the assassin’s creed franchise every year to meet fans demand. In order to successfully create games and next-generation game play ideas like Ubi soft, a wide range of skilful and creative individuals are needed.

Games Designers decide what a game consists of and how it plays, and they are often the people who come up with the idea in the first place. Game design is a complex activity requiring a combination of skills – design, management, scheduling, research etc. – and Designers need an understanding of all aspects of a game. They also need to be able to document their vision and communicate it to other members of the project team. Games are usually large projects, so the design process is often shared between a number of different people who each take responsibility for a section of the game, or 'level'. Level Design includes the mapping, detailed layout and building of the environment in which the level is played, as well as interactive placement of objects and assets within that environment. For very large projects, there may be more than one Game Designer on the team, each one taking responsibility for a group of levels and collaborating on the overall design of the game. In such situations, a Lead Designer or Creative Director takes overall responsibility.

Game Artists create the image to the game – all the objects, buildings, landscapes and characters. Animators define and create their movement. Game Artists work at many different levels in a games development. Job roles include concept artists, environment modellers, object and vehicle modellers, character modellers, animators, and texture artists. A Lead Artist or Art Director takes overall responsibility.

The programming team is responsible for creating the code which makes the game actually work. There are numerous sub–disciplines within the programming department, including artificial intelligence or AI; physics; graphics rendering engine development; character control; gameplay programming; and middleware tools development. All these are usually overseen by a Lead Programmer who is also responsible for the technical specification of the game and for strategically managing the code development process

Sound design and audio engineering are increasingly important areas within the games development process. Depending on the size of the company, the audio department might consist of one or two people who are responsible for creating and producing music, sound effects, recording dialogue, and often supervising voice performance. In some cases, bands or DJs are used to create the tracks to the game.

 In some cases more than one company can be brought together for the development of a game. An example of this was the development of Aliens: Colonial Marines. The entire campaign was outsourced to TimeGate studios from Gearbox because they wanted to focus more on the multiplayer.

(http://uk.gamespot.com/news/aliens-colonial-marines-development-was-a-total-train-wreck-says-ex-dev-6403761)

 The finalising aspect in game development is Quality Assurance. This field includes the role of Tester. Testing is a highly disciplined role as it involves identifying and describing bugs and faults in games and communicating these in a clear way. Testers need to love playing games for long periods of time, organisational skills, some programming experience or knowledge, and the ability to meet deadlines.

With the development of online technology, bugs can now be fixed after the game is released. Updates for particular games will be released via connection to the internet that addresses problems that have been brought to the developers attention by users after purchase. 

http://www.polygon.com/2012/12/7/3739476/black-ops-2-patch-bug-fixes-balance-tweaks-out-now-ps3-this-weekend-360