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5 Crucial Roles In The Development Of A Game

If you are thinking about trying to foster a career in game development, you’ll have to get pretty specific about what you want to do. There are plenty of tasks that need completing in the development of a game, and they all require unique sets of skills. Here are 5 essential roles in game development.

The Sound Designer

Sound is a crucial part of any video game. Everything from the introduction of music to the foley sounds representing in-game actions are very carefully planned. Good sound design can help back up the visual story seen on screen. It can contribute to the creation of a sense of dread, anticipation, or wonder. Occasionally, sound design has become an iconic feature of a video game. You are probably at least subconsciously familiar with the sound design developed for the Super Mario series of games. A good sound designer is an indispensable member of a game development team.

The Project Manager or Producer

Project managers – also known as producers – have a very complex job indeed. They oversee the many tasks necessary in the production of the game. This includes developing schedules, setting goals, mitigating risks, enabling communication between teams, and talking with stakeholders.

Their job has been made a great deal easier in recent years by the proliferation of apps great for project management, but they still have a complex part to play in the development of any game.

The Designer

Video game designers create the narrative and gameplay features that are largely responsible for the end product receiving favorable reviews. They must be part programmer, part artist, and have a great understanding of what makes a game good. The smaller a development team, the more likely that a designer will have to be a jack-of-all trades.

Designers will communicate with level designers, producers, and testers to tweak their vision. Video game design takes a great deal of drafting and redrafting. When a game is rushed out or not drafted correctly, design flaws and poor mechanics are quickly noticed by eagle-eyed gamers.

The Level Designer

Level designers do exactly what you would expect them to. Level design is extremely important for the creation of an atmosphere, the driving of narrative, and the provision of goals for players to chase. Level design has become extremely complex in recent years, with huge teams being required for the creation of large open-world sandbox games. A very small quantity of games uses a more revolutionary method: procedural generation. Procedural generation is the practice of using a specially written algorithm to create a potentially infinite level that is generated at random. The mathematical theory behind the procedurally generated level design is relatively complex but has been used successfully to develop games like Minecraft and No Man’s Sky.

The Tester

Video game testing isn’t as fun as it sounds. The primary objective of a tester is usually to find bugs, design flaws, and glitches so that developers and programmers can eliminate them from the game. The work often involves exploring every possible corner and functional mechanic of the draft project!

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