Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
It's usually dictated by the schedule. If it is going to take all the remaining time left
to complete and debug the game as the design stands, then clearly you can't add
anything more to the design without making the project late! However, that is
more of a reactive than a proactive approach to the issue. You should really lock
the design at the point at which you feel that it is complete and harmonious, even
if there is time for more design work.
Once you have locked the design, you still have work to do. Design work enters the
tuning stage, during which you can make small adjustments to the levels and core
mechanics of the game as long as you don't introduce any new features. This stage,
more than any other, is what makes the difference between a merely good game
and a truly great one. Tune and polish your game until it's perfect. Polishing is a
subtractive process, not an additive one. You're not putting on new bells and whis-
tles but removing imperfections and making the game shine.
A large video game is almost always designed by a team. Unlike Hollywood, in
which guilds and unions define the job roles, the game industry's job titles and
responsibilities are not standardized from one company to another. Companies
tend to give people titles and tasks in accordance with their abilities and, more
important, the needs of a project. However, over the years a few roles have evolved
whose responsibilities are largely similar regardless of what game or project they are
part of.
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Lead Designer.
This person oversees the overall design of the game and is
responsible for making sure that it is complete and coherent. She is the “keeper of
the vision” at the highest and most abstract level. She also evangelizes the game to
others both inside and outside the company and is often called upon to serve as a
spokesperson for the project. Not all the lead designer's work is creative. As the
head of a team, she trades away creativity for authority, and her primary role is to
make sure that the design work is getting done and the other team members are
doing their jobs properly. A project has only one lead designer.
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Game Designer.
The game designer defines and documents how the game actu-
ally works: its gameplay and its core mechanics. Game designers also conduct
background research and assemble data that the game may need. On a large proj-
ect, these jobs may be split up among several game designers, all reporting to the
lead designer.
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Level Designer/World Builder.
Level designers take the essential components
of the game provided by the other designers—the user interface, core mechanics,
and gameplay—and use those components to design and construct the individual
levels that the player will play through in the course of a game. Level design used
to be considered an inferior position to game designer, but modern level designers
frequently need to be able to build 3D models and program in scripting languages.
