This is Not a Software Industry - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 8

Teams of engineers work to construct the game's “engine” and support-
ing “tools”. Engineers may develop certain profi ciencies around particular
aspects of a game's underlying software systems. Graphics, physics, game-
play, scripting and audio are a few examples of these distinctions. Each
must anticipate how those subsystems will interface with incoming con-
tent from artists as well as the ways in which a game's designers will then
orchestrate those systems into something recognizable as a game.
If games are software, then it is only at this point that such an analogy
makes sense. Engineers construct the software of a video game in service of
artists and designers. They are the true “users” of game software. When a
game's engine is particularly successful it may be sold or released as open
source software (OSS). However, the supporting art assets as created by
the art team or the host of data, levels or missions created by designers are
often omitted from these releases.
Entire software systems may be created for ancillary purposes through-
out the game development process. The focus in game development is not to
produce a marketable software system, but a played experience on the part
of the player. This distinction is critically important for game developers.
What they are constructing is not software, but experiences and content
for users/players. Artists and game designers are the rightful users of video
game software. The player experiences a complex system as constructed
above and beyond the software of a game. It is this distinction that is often
lost in an understanding of video game development as software develop-
ment. Software is a tool to be used to construct other things.
Casey: So, do you still love development?
DESIGN_LEAD: Did I ever love it?
Casey: That's a good question.
DESIGN_LEAD: It is one of those things. Sometimes you love it and
sometimes you hate it. I haven't completely lost the
romantic notion of game development, because every-
one has hopes that they're going to work on something
really cool and it's going to do well. Each project that
you work on kind of grinds away on that dream, if it's
not successful.
Casey: Are there things going forward that are exciting to you?
DESIGN_LEAD: Yeah. Why didn't independent game development come
along earlier? There is more of a scene now, because the
tools and the resources for making small innovative
stuf has come down. There are avenues for distribut-
ing independent content to a mass market, which there
wasn't before. I'm also interested in socially respon-
sible games and serious games. Games still have a lim-
ited audience. People tout all the time that it is bigger