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often being characterized by systems that respond to the user and respond to
other systems within the game. Game designers are predominantly respon-
sible for constructing the “procedural rhetoric” of a game, or the dynamic
systems that bring the game to life. In some cases designers are imagined
to be the kind of “director” or “author” of a game, as can be seen by the
kind of following that particular game designers garner, like Shigeru Miya-
moto, the designer of Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo 1985) and The Legend
of Zelda (Nintendo 1986) or Clif Bleszinski (“Clif y B”), the lead designer of
the Unreal (Epic 1998) game series and Gears of War (Epic 2006).
Although the software engineer is often imagined to be the galvaniz-
ing force behind a game's development, they now frequently make up
only 30-40 per cent of a game development team. Engineers in the game
industry are responsible for developing the software that consumes the art
content produced by artists along with the design data produced by game
designers into the game's engine. A game's engine is not the game, but the
software that brings together the content created by artists and the design
data assembled by game designers and puts it into motion.
Producers serve as project managers, maintaining a game's vision and
development timeline. In many cases, a game will have an internal producer
and an external executive producer, who works for the game's publisher.
Internal producers are hands-on, working with project leads to make sure
a game is progressing. The producer is the interface between a game's team
and the internal organizational structure of a studio and a game's publisher.
As the complexity of game development has risen, hybrid roles, such as
technical artists and tools engineers, have emerged. Technical artists serve
as a kind of intermediary between artists and engineers. They take a sig-
nifi cant role in ensuring that artists are being served by a game's engine,
rather than artists serving the game's engine. Tools engineers occupy a
space between a game's engine and its designers, building tools that allow
designers to work more ei ciently with the dif erent aspects of a game as it
is being developed.
There are several distinctions between the kinds of game development
studios in North America. “Third-party” game development studios are
the most common. These studios develop games with contacts at one game
publishing company or another. They develop titles under contract with
specifi c publishers, who are then responsible for securing licensing for a
game. “First-party” game development studios are those owned and oper-
ated by console manufacturers, often producing game titles only for the
console developed by that organization. “In-house” studios are third-party
studios that have been acquired by a publishing company; they operate
largely autonomously, although under the direction of the parent publish-
ing company. There are a shrinking number of “independent” game devel-
opment studios, which are autonomous game development studios. Many
successful game development studios are either acquired by a publishing
company or themselves become publishers.
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