Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
The roles in an indie mobile team
What follows here is a review of the main roles required for an ideal mobile indie team.
For each role, we provide a description of duties, skills, personal traits, and the aca-
demic formation.
We don't mean that this list of roles is a requirement for any team; it is possible for
people getting into the game industry to have different backgrounds.
Also, we don't mean that each role represents a person. There can be people cover-
ing more than one role, as it is likely that more people will share one role.
The game designer
The game designer defines what happens in a game and what the player does to pro-
gress through it. He is responsible for turning a game play idea into a detailed design
document, which is constantly updated and used by all other team members as a ref-
erence guide to develop their part of the project.
During the pre-production phase of a game, the designer is responsible for defining
what the game is about, its story and the game world, what the game mechanics are,
which features the game will implement, what its Unique Selling Points are, and its
main competitors.
This information flows into the pitch document of the game, a sort of presentation doc-
ument of a game-to-come, usually presented to potential investors to get the approv-
al on the project, as for example, with the videos on Kickstarter. We will address the
pitch document again by the end of the topic, when we will create one for a mobile
game.
During the production phase, the work of a game designer consists of checking that all
the team members work towards the realization of the vision he has in mind. With the
producer, the game designer acts as the coordinator of the project and a living wiki.
Whenever a team member has a question on how a specific piece of game should
work or look like, he will look to the game designer to provide the answer. Be ready
for that and know your game!
