This is Not a Software Industry - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 6

The very name game developer at a surface level is often equated to that
of software developer. Although this made sense in the development of
early video games, as can be seen, the truth of that misconception only con-
tinued to break down throughout the rapid expansion of the video game
industry. Yet, the misconception remains, even years later. Game developer
is often assumed to be synonymous with “game programmer,” with many
designers, artists and audio producers responding to such carelessness with
“we live here too, you know.”

THE VIDEO GAME STUDIO WORKPLACE

Modern video game production studios look quite dif erent from those
small teams of even the early 1990s. Small independent, or “indie,” game
developers may at fi rst appearance hearken back to the “good old days” of
one- or two-person game development teams. However, oftentimes devel-
opers in these cases wear multiple hats in the process of production. One
developer may handle several dif erent elements of game development.
Interdisciplinarity now lies at the core of an industry once rooted almost
solely in engineering culture. Whereas entire game companies were once
composed of a handful of developers, many now house armies of develop-
ers, working on dif erent teams on dif erent games playing dif erent roles
throughout a game's production.
In many ways, the game industry actually makes more analytic sense
through the lens of the “Art World” than it does imagined as a software
industry. The idea that even a small number of individuals make games
is a kind of gross generalization of even individualistic art. “Normal” art
production is actually a very collective endeavour, and resources, distribu-
tion, judgment, sale, censorship and numerous others actually enter into
the “worlds” of art producers. Video game production viewed as an art
world, rather than “industry,” constructs a much more critical and nuanced
perspective on the game industry (Becker 1984). All of the exchanges that
follow are excerpts from transcribed ethnographic interviews performed
by the author.

Casey: Do you think games are people-intensive in a dif erent

way from other forms of software?

TECH_ARTIST: Probably. In other software, you don't necessary need

the scale of cross-disciplinary stuf going on. Practi-
cally every discipline, of everything you can think of,
goes into making a game. Even more so than movies.
Every form of art practically ends up getting piled into
there: writing, visuals, engineering, all kinds of people
piling into it. I don't think there are too many things
like that.