I thought I had a good understanding of all the roles within a dev team...but can someone provide definitions for each role and what they normally do on a daily basis? Designer - art and story creators? do they code? Programmer - coders? do they design or get involved with art? 3D Artist - artists? do they code? Networkers (is that a role?) Sound - sound and music creators? QA - bug/glitch seekers? Did I leave anyone out? Also, let's say in a team of 100, what is the ratio of each role? I just made this up... 5 - Designers 50 - Programmers 10 - 3D Artists 20 - Networkers 5 - Sound 10 - QA

Thanks Tom. I've read a ton of your articles...but it looks like I need to revisit them.

Yea. This varies widely. Amazingly so. It depends on the company itself, the product being developed, and the people themselves. An artist, for example, may be entirely non-technical and simply work her magic in Maya all day. At another company, or maybe even down the hall, may be an artist who has a bit of a knack for programming and does some scripting of the cutscenes or perhaps writes the Maya exporter. It's not something that can be so easily categorized and defined.

I looked in the back of the manuals of games I have, to see how many of what they used. :)

But yeah, it differs by how many of what a team needs, and how much the amount of pay is available.

You're leaving out a ton of stuff a dev team needs, too, but which isn't as glamorous to kids. I forget where I got this, but I managed to get a sample budget spreadsheet for "Generic MMORPG" which had a $10 million budget. It's not from a specific MMO, but it was someone giving examples. I put in parenthesis what I, personally, think the position means.

It includes:

Producer (the person whose job it is to get the funding, make sure it all gets made, yell at people, focus them)
Lead Designer (overall game design, to make sure it stays on track)
Lead Programmer (overall programming and to keep it on track)
6 Programmers
3 AI Programmers
Server Architecture specialist (the guy who knows the hardware and software of the server)
3 Database Programmers (Those who make and design the database as per the needs of the design)
Distributed Computing (I have no clue here)
Programmer (I guess he programs the distributed computer stuff)
Assistant (assists)
Community Relations (the person on the forums who answers all the dumb questions and soothes nerves)
Public Relations (does a lot of the white papers and interviews and stuff?)
Lead Artist (in charge of overall concept look)
Tech Artist (I guess in charge of whether the art matches what it's supposed to be representing)
Animator (Person in charge of how the characters will move)
Organic Modeler (Not sure)
Structure Modeler (In charge of the buildings?)
Texture artist (Needs no explanation)
9 Artists (the main brunt of the work)
Logo and web graphics
Web designer
Lead Client Programmer (The programmer in charge of making the GUI)
2 Graphics Engine Programmers (the people programming the engine)
User Interface Lead (Guy programming what buttons do what)
UI Client-side Programmer
2 UI Client-side assistants
8 World Builders (No clue. The people who put everything where it should be?)
2 Tools Programmers (Programming the tools used to build stuff in the game)
5 Content Creators (write the story)
1 Sound Engineer (sound effects, etc)
Network Routing Specialist (The guy making sure the internet connection is good?)

Product Quality Head and 5 QA people (testing for bugs)

Tech Support Head and 5 Tech Support

Enforcement Support Head and 5 Enforcement Support (No clue here. Probably only for an MMO)

Customer Service Head and 10 Customer Support folks.

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That's what I have. :)

dang! thanks for the breakdown.

Quote:
Designer - art and story creators? do they code?
Programmer - coders? do they design or get involved with art?
3D Artist - artists? do they code?
Networkers (is that a role?)
Sound - sound and music creators?
QA - bug/glitch seekers?

Designers - Usually deal with the overall game concept, and the "feel" of the game. They write the detailed documents describing every object in the game, and how all of the game emchanics work. They design the maps. Most designers are also able to script. Terminology here changes from studio to studio. Some call the scripeters designers, others put scripters in their own category.

Programmers - Depending on the studio, programmers often get involved in the design process. Many times a game design is driven, or molded by technology limitations. Programmers often have a better insight into these limitations and guide and suggest things to the designers. The programmers work very closely with the designers, and rely on the design document the designers write to be consice, and exact as possible. Programmers are usually loosely arranged into specialties(UI, Network, Sound, Engine, Animation, Tools, and General Game Code)

Scripters - If they are not considered designers, scripters are in their own category. They use scripts to mould the more simple behavior of the game. Quests, Puzzles, Simple in-game cutscenes (for example, when the player pushes this button, a door opens and 4 monsters are created)

"Networkers" as you put it, is usually one of the programmers with experience in networking (This is actually what I do. Although i specialize in networking, I work in most of the other game code as well). With many engines such as "Unreal" the scripting language allows for network keywords, and much of the load can be handled by the more technical scripters.

Artists are usually separated into more than one category:

Concept artist - These are the guys who create the look and feel of the game, they will often work with watercolors or paint to define the "feel" of the game. They will design the shape and look of the objects in the game, and pass them off to the modellers.

3D Modellers - these guys take the concept artists drawings, and build the 3d models based off of them. In many teams, this process is strictly modelling. after the item is modelled it goes to the Texture artists

Texture Artists - These guys are 2d artists. Their job is to create the textures and apply them correctly to the models. There may be several iterations where the texture artists sends the model back to the modeller to make changes so that the textures look better

Animators - At the same time as the texture artists are working on a model, the animators are most likely working on the animations for this model. This involves "rigging" the skeleton (attaching vertices in a model to the "bones" of a skeleton which they manipulate in the animations") A set of animations will be created for each skeleton (most often, many characters in a game will share a skeleton, yet use different models bound to them)

FX Artists - These guys work with the particle editors, and generate textures, and simple geometry to create cool effects. In most studios this is a full time job.

Sound - Usually one or 2 guys do sound. There are two parts to this, sound effects, and music. Sound is one of the most commonly outsourced positions, with contractors doing the work.

QA - Most studios actually have a fairly small QA depertment. Mostly interns testing for basic functionality. The publishers usually have a much bigger QA depertrment, and the publisher is the one who will really hit the title hard trying to find bugs. After the publisher (for console games at least), it moves to the manufacturer. The manufacturer goes through a thourough check of the title (100 hours with no bugs found)and if nothing is found the title goes to manufacturing.

wow, thanks for that!