Friday 14 August 2015

Game Developers

To me Game Developers are 3 things artists, creators of products and entertainers.

They all have these 3 elements within them but they are not always reasonably balanced and can unhealthy for the games they make if unbalanced enough.

The three elements:

Artist element:
The artist element is about experimenting and creating a certain experience for the player in emotion, new gameplay or story.

Game developers that are more artists may create games that focus on trying to get the player to feel a certain emotion, use unconventional mechanics or create something bizzare which sometimes end up making the game not engaging or frustrating.

Creator of products element:
The creator of products element is about seeing players as consumers or seeing the game as making money and changing accordingly. (This can take certain forms such adding microtransactions to make more money or making the game moddable to make the game last longer for the community)

Game developers that are more creators of products may create games around making money, coming up with business strategies that may harm the game such as day one DLC or exclusive preorder content.

Entertainer element:
The entertainer element is about creating an engaging experience for the player and focusing on making the player want to play the game.

Game developers that are more entertainers may create games that are about fun and less about the meaning behind the elements within the game sometimes using known mechanics or be based off other games but with a twist. 


Interaction with each other

Now that you understand the 3 elements lets talk about how they interact with each other.

Creators of products and artists can have conflict with each other on design (for example the artists may want a multiplayer game where players in the game are anonymous but the creators of products want players to invite their friends creating conflict).
 Entertainers though can be much more lenient to Creators of products or Artists ideas and thoughts. 

Problems can occur though if the Creator of products element or Artist element is too valued in a developer it can make it difficult for entertainers to work with them because there ideas or work won't help sales or hinders the true meaning of the game.


In the industry

Lets talk about where you are most likely to find elements in the industry.

AAA dev’s tend to have more of a Creator of products element in them then an Artist element. 
This is because AAA can have quite large teams which requires a lot of money. This leads to the creation of games that are safe (games based off of mechanics that are known to bring in a lot of sales) and games created to get micro-transactions and sell DLC.

Indie dev’s tend to have more of an Artist element in them then a Creator of products element.
This is because Indie's usually work in small teams or independently so they don't need a huge amount of money to keep making games with some even making games for free. This leads to the creation of games that are different and quirky to different from other games or try something to new.

Final thoughts

To me game developers should be reasonably balanced between all 3 elements but to me the value of each is different with the highest valued being the Entertainer element followed by the Artist element and with the Creator of products element last.
This is why I would like to refer to game dev's as 'Entertainers' more then 'Artists'. 

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