Free Candy For Everyone

I’ve been writing random thoughts for a couple of months now, and I haven’t really talked about my job directly. I’m a Lead Programmer at a game developer, and I’ve been working in the industry since 2000. One of the main things I’ve realized in talking to friends and family over the years is that most people have no idea how the game industry works. What is involved in making a game? What are the jobs involved?

Gamespy has a pretty thorough discussion on the topic that can be found here. I didn’t read it all, it’s pretty long. Maybe you don’t want to read it all either. Or maybe you just think I talk real pretty and you want to hear what I have to say. So I’m gonna post my own thoughts on how the industry works and what is involved in finding the right niche for you and your talents.

First things first, let me explain the business side of things. I work at a mid-sized game developer. We make the games. We work with a publisher to get out games out to the public. The publisher is usually the name you know - Electronic Arts, Vivendi Universal (or Sierra), Atari (once Infogrames), Midway, etc. They do all the marketing as well as the actual manufacturing. The relationship between the publisher and the developer is a lot like the one between an author and a book publisher. We enter into a deal where they pay us as we go for milestone deliverables spread out over the course of development. The game design is ours, but they have input as well. They provide a QA department to test the product, though many game companies have a small in-house QA department as well.

To confuse the issue a bit, many publishers have in-house development teams as well. I have a friend who works at one of Midway’s studios, for example, working on their football titles. I can’t speak for the differences between working at a external and internal developer, as I have only ever worked at an independent studio.

There are also exceptions the other way, where developers self-publish. But they tend to get snatched up. Blizzard, for example, publishes under its own name, but it’s owned by Vivendi Universal (which also owns the Sierra brand name and publishes games under that label).

So the first question is where do you want to work? At the publisher or the developer? I’ve never worked at a publisher. My sense is that there is room there for a variety of administrative positions that aren’t necessarily available at a developer. But I can only speculate on the jobs available there, so I’ll focus my attention on what I know. And that’s the jobs at an independent game developer. More to follow…