If you’re going to Fan Faire this year, you’re probably going to meet a lot of people who work on the games you love.  However, everyone plays a bit of a different role.  As you may have noticed from forum posts, people have different Titles that indicate what they work on.  What do these titles really mean?  Who should I be talking to about my question?  And maybe we’ll find an answer to that age-old question: “What does a Producer really do?”

You can think of the different disciplines of game development as archetypes and classes.  As you grind work you level up your career.  And like any good Raid, working on a game takes a mix of disciplines, leadership and skills.  Occasionally, developers even earn DKP in the form of bonuses.

• Designers breathe the lifeblood into the game.  They write quests, set up NPCs, populate the world, create items and scribe spells.  Some designers focus on Mechanics (spells, balance, achievements, etc) while others focus on Content (NPCs, Quests, Lore).  Tradeskills are also an important part of our world and some designers work exclusively on Raid Encounters.  While most of designers’ work is done in tools written by Programmers, designers may learn skills such as scripting as they level up.  Higher-level designers often mentor lower-level designers to increase experience gain and may go on to become supervisors or even the elusive Lead Designer.
• Programmers define the physical nature of the world and help the rest of the team see their vision.  Logically minded, programmers don’t generally do any of the creative tasks that the designers do.  Programmers construct most of the systems of the world from the high-level user interface that lets you navigate the world and experience its pleasures to the low-level systems that store characters, allow you to travel and keep everything in sync.  While programmers may govern the rules and formulae of combat, the rules themselves are often determined by the designers.  Programmers generally begin at the Intern or Associate level but may reach Senior, Lead Programmer or even Technical Director as they gain experience.
• Artists set the look of the game and are responsible for nearly everything you see, from the building blocks of the UI, inventory icons, characters and vast landscapes you explore.  Rich and complex particles are also the responsibility of artists.  Most artists form everything you see out of a structure of thousands of triangles stretched with a textured skin to give it the appearance that you know and love, and then finally animate the form to make it seem real.  Artists work closely with the designers to build the world and characters that the designers envision.
• Community Representatives spend 100% of their time interfacing with you, the players.  They take note of important issues from the players and inform the development team of them.  They are jovial entertainers and adept conversationalists and can be instructed to dance on command.  Community represents different languages, so they can also function as translators to bring issues from different regions to the dev team.
• Producers are … well… Hmm.  What do they do?  Producers have the job of tying everything together.  They work with executives at the company to give them status reports.  They work with the team to set reasonable expectations and scheduling.  They provide the clear direction of the game and communicate with the players to share that direction.  And meetings… oh, do they love meetings!  They are the head of the game.  The buck stops with them.

 

Perhaps you now understand a little bit about the different roles of the people you’ll meet at Fan Faire.  Truly, there are many other teams that work to make SOE games great including Quality Assurance, Customer Service, Internationalization, Platform, Operations, and more!  We’re looking forward to seeing you at Fan Faire!

Joshua “Autenil” Kriegshauser

Technical Director, EverQuest II