Objective: Map your skillset into the general game development process alongside other disciplines.
Use material from Chapter 13: The Good and Bad of Game Dev Processes
QUEST: Review the phases of game development and reflect on your specific role in each of these phases. Where are you needed most? Where do you need others most?
Review the phases of game development and reflect on your specific role in the game development process.
If you’re an aspiring developer, reflect on your desired role or roles.
When are you and your skills needed most?
What deliverables do you own and during which phase(s) are they needed? When can you have the most impact?
Where are your transitions?
When are you receiving work or information from other people? When are you handing off work or information to other people?
When are you in a support role?
At what points in the process are other disciplines taking the lead, and how should you stay informed and engaged to make sure your work is aligned and functioning as intended?
How does your work show up at critical stages?
How might you mitigate risk at key stages like production gates, alpha, beta, and release candidate with good communication, documentation, and process? What’s the worst consequence of failure if you drop the ball? If someone else drops the ball when passing it to you?
Bonus Level: Cross-discipline conversation starters
Process is also about people. You learned about specific roles in Chapter 3, but process is about how you all come together. It can be hard to know what to say when trying to build a relationship with other disciplines. I highly recommend you identify 1-2 disciplines that interest you from the book and look to build a partnership or shared understanding with someone from that role on your team. If you don’t know where to start, here are some prompts – they won’t always apply, but they may get you thinking in the right direction.
Questions you can ask anyone:
- When do you like to be involved in the design process?
- How do you like to be involved in the implementation process?
- What tools do you use, and are they serving your needs?
- What information do you need to do your job, and do you have access to it?
- Is there anything I can do to make your work easier?
Prompts by Role Category:
[ Production | Design | Art | Engineering | Publishing ]
Production Roles
| Role | Prompt |
|---|---|
| Producer | Are we building the right things? How is the team allocation looking – is anyone at risk of burnout? How long is it going to take to build this? |
| Product Manager | What do players want to accomplish? Where do we fit in the market? What’s the best use of our limited resources? |
| Live Operations | How are our tools helping or hindering the release process? How can we help you keep up with the demands of our game’s content calendar? How are we going to keep players interested in the game over time? What tools are you missing to minimize risk? |
Design Roles
| Role | Prompts |
|---|---|
| Game Designer | What is/are the core game loop(s) in our game, and how are they doing? What motivates players to keep playing our game? How should core game mechanics like combat and movement feel? What is our event calendar like for players, and how far in advance do we plan? What will drive players to keep playing our game, and is it working? |
| Systems Designer | How do players progress or grow while they play our game? How do players purchase, earn, and spend resources in our game? Do competitive systems feel fair and balanced? |
| Level/Quest Designer | What are the individual challenges our players will face? Do you have the right tools in place to create your work? |
| Narrative Designer | What makes the world and characters of this game unique, and how do they change over time? How do we want players to feel and when? What do players need to do and how do we ask them to do it? Do you have the right tools in place to deliver your work? |
| Monetization Designer | How do players spend money on this game, and what does it get them? What does the spending lifecycle look like? What store offers are available, and how often are they changed? How are resources consumed and hoarded across the player base |
| Technical Designer | Is the game efficient and scalable? Does it run on low spec devices? What could artists be doing better to improve efficiency? What tools does the build game design team need to build this game at scale? |
| User Experience Designer | How do we maximize the time players spend doing the fun parts? What confuses or frustrates players about our game? What behaviors do we want to encourage or discourage, and how are we doing so with UI? How do we onboard new players? How do we mitigate the boring or confusing parts? |
| User Interface Designer | What does it look like when a player is interacting with data or objects in the game? How does the interface convey meaning with color, movement, size, and grouping? Do you work directly in-engine, or hand off to engineers for implementation? |
| Audio Designer | What does the game sound like, at what times? How does the sound correspond to meaning for players? |
| Insights / Usability Research | Is this actually fun for players? Are there ways we can improve the gameplay experience? |
Art Roles
| Role | Prompts |
|---|---|
| 3D Artist | Are you a generalist, or do you specialize (people, environments, props, etc?) How do you cope with the constraints of our chosen platforms? How do you use cameras, lighting, renderers, shaders to bring the world to life? How can we build a rich 3D world without slowing the game down? |
| 2D Artist | Are you a generalist, or do you specialize (texture art, illustration, visual effects, etc.) What are the textures and illustrations that fill out this world? How are you managing compression and file size concerns? How might we use sprites and backgrounds that can emulate a 3D world convincingly? |
| Animator | How does the world respond to a player’s actions? How do characters move through the world? What choices take make our UI and gameplay feel effortless and powerful? |
| Technical Artist | What tools does the art team need to make this game at scale? How do we ensure our art and UI assets perform well? How can we turn delivered designs into engine-ready content? |
| Concept Artist / Illustrator | What techniques can you use to help us bring a new concept to life for an entire team and game? |
Engineering Roles
| Role | Prompt |
|---|---|
| Gameplay Engineer | How do we interpret player input and turn it into game actions? How do we track player data and change it over time? |
| Client Engineer | What do we know about the player’s device and how do we adapt to different devices? How do we maintain local state and manage memory? How do we handle authentication and player identity? What systems are stored locally, like player inventory or game state cache? |
| Network or Server Engineer | How does this game interface with cloud storage? How do chat and multiplayer systems function? How do we deploy new data to players? |
| Database Engineer | How do we organize and scale player data without crashing our servers all the time? |
| Platform Engineer | How do we get the most from this particular piece of hardware or development environment? What components can we build that are reusable across modes or games? |
| Data Scientist | How do we take large amounts of player data and learn from them or train machine learning algorithms to deploy generative or agentive artificial intelligence in our games? |
| QA Tester / Engineer | Where are the high risk parts of this game, and are they working as intended? What would players do that the game team doesn’t expect them to do, and what effect will that have? What information do you need from other teams to put together test plans? |
Publishing Roles
| Role | Prompt |
|---|---|
| Publishing Production | How do we make sure our game launches successfully? What is the biggest risk to our game’s success? In what territories and markets are we focusing our efforts? What is our go to market plan? What are the biggest risks to our certification timeline? |
| Localization | Do we have a shared glossary of terms that all writers can reference? Do our localizers have enough context to do their jobs well? How do we make this gameplay experience comprehensible and engaging in multiple countries? |
| Marketing | What assets could the game team create proactively to help support marketing efforts? What kinds of player gift and promotional requests should we expect from Marketing? Do you have a good understanding of our lead times for requests? How are we going to get as many players as possible excited about our game? |
| Analytics | What does the data tell us about how our players play the game? What has changed about retention and engagement in the last week or month? Do we have the right telemetry for you to give us useful insights? How can we best set up new features for analytics success? |
| Player Support | What problems are players having and how do we fix them? Are you missing context or documentation on any of our features? When do you want to be included on new feature discussions? |
| Community Manager | Are our community interactions safe and constructive? What is the community sentiment trend about our recent releases? What is the right tone to hit when we get things wrong? |
| Social Media Manager | Do our player communications resonate with players in real time? What are players saying about our game? How might we partner to use social media promotions to improve engagement in slow periods? |
| Influencer / VIP Relations | How do specific players feel about the roadmap of our game? What do influencers need from us to feel like a part of our ecosystem? |
