Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
drives human behavior and what fantasies humans would like to have. All this, as
you might expect, can create some very interesting personalities
—
from the collabora-
tive inspirer to the egomaniacal dictator. As a programmer working among designers,
being able to understand their vision and help them create it is likely one of the most
important skills you can have beyond the technical ones.
I
ve always enjoyed working with audio engineers and composers. One thing I can
pass on is that the last content that gets tweaked or made in games is generally
audio. Story is usually told through voice-over, sometimes with well-known actors.
Final sound effects can
'
t really be perfected until all the animations and particle
effects are completely and absolutely final. What this means to you is that anytime
something you are working on runs a little behind, you basically steal a little time
from the guys who work last, which tends to be audio. Even so, you
'
'
ll never find a
more laidback and fun group of people. How they can be so pressed and keep a bet-
ter attitude than almost everyone else on the whole team I
'
ll never know.
I
ve tried very hard to have a great relationship with game testers. They can be every-
thing from a high school kid working part-time to a real test engineer formally
trained in software quality assurance. Either way, they are your last, best hope to
release a game that will be fun to play and free of game-stopping defects. They can
sometimes be frustrated game designers, but most of the time they are just game
enthusiasts who really know the difference between fun and
“
meh.
”
Listen to them,
try to be patient when they keep telling you your code is broken, again, and they
'
'
ll
save you from introducing some bug that gets mentioned in a Metacritic review.
Producers, or project managers, I know the best because I
ve spent probably as much
if not most of my career managing as I have coding. They are typically obsessive-
compulsive organizers, energetic, gregarious, and team cheerleaders. They can also
be like that guy in Office Space asking you where your weekly report is, which never
goes over very well. Best advice I can give you is to put yourself in their shoes
'
play-
ing a live action resource allocation game and trying to get thousands or even mil-
lions of creative works all completed in the right order and the right time, hopefully
without asking everyone on the team to work every weekend for the next two years.
Most producers want the best game possible without killing the team, and with any
luck, they want to see that the team has some fun while doing it. Remember that, and
you
—
ll see their pesky questions in a new light.
All told, this group of people brings an incredible amount of talent and diversity to a
team
'
—
and that is something you just can
'
t get in many other jobs.
