I think the Programmers are uncooperative, constantly just typing things up that don't work even though its not supposed to work in that way. The poor computers just try to do what others tell them T_T /s if it wasn't obvious enough
@@gosucab944 mostly that's what happens, but there are time where computers just decide that your code won't work, only for you to copy and paste it in a new file and suddenly it works.
@@serafinw105r2f I had something like this happen on a programming assignment once, where it would work on my machine at home, but not the pc in class. And it turned out to be something dodgy with windows, where it doesn't work well with long doubles, and so it was breaking. (At home, i'd done it in linux)
and yet people bitch and complain SOOOO much when a game gets delayed or even when no date is announced (Metroid 4). People need to chill out and realize its not easy to make a (good) game.
I had the biggest smile on my face when I heard Sakurai mentioned riggers. Some may call it a crutch, but back when I was a beginner animator, rigs were a godsend.
When I was starting to put a team together for our indie game, I got lucky and found someone passionate who just finished a rigging course in college. He's been an valuable member of our team ever since. I don't know what we'd do without him. Indie development usually means not having the funds to hire industry professionals, so I'm really happy to work with him.
@@salvadorsanchez5057 I think some call it like that because at some point you could get overreliant on others' rigs, or be so used to rigs that you don't make the effort in learning how joints actually work. I think I see where these points come from, but I am not a professional animator; maybe pros could chime in on these points.
This channel mitigated my worries that Sakurai didn't have as much "passion" for his job as simply being very smart and logical in his problem-solving skills (this because of the way he talked about it in old interviews). But no, you can tell he really loves doing what he does here.
Watching the credits for a large game always astounds me at just how many people have to work together to create even a single game. There’s just so much that goes into every game even if you wouldn’t notice it on the surface
I like how all of the art of people doing their jobs are shown being in cool poses and with super powers and stuff and then the manager is just dead, it’s accurate
In the western industry, "Planners" are usually called "Game Designers". They do what we call "paper design", essentially a high level design of the game that programmers (aka "Engineers") or more hands-on designers (for example "Level Designers" and "System Designers") have to implement. Then, "Managers" are a mix of "Producers" who mainly help with time management, and possibly "Leads" as well who supervise specific disciplines (i.e. programming, design etc). The roles really depend on the project and company though.
It's crazy how Mr. Sakurai releases those bite sized, 5 minutes videos, and yet they are some of the highest quality content, most informative and usefull stuff you can find on TH-cam. I can't even express how happy I am that he started this channel this year, so many apiring Game devs are getting incredible insight from a veteran of the industry, and the general public can also learn so much about the behind the scene of Game making. Thank you as always Mr. Sakurai !
This is one of the coolest videos yet. I know so many people who love art, and who were discouraged at every step of the way because "you won't be able to find a job." And at the same time, I know many people who wonder what skills might help them break into the gaming industry. This video is so clear and simple, but it answers burning questions for tons of passionate young devs out there.
I started a game team back in August. While I have a background in animation and character rigging, my official industry jobs have been in bug tester and quality assurance. Which I’m feeling more pidgin held by the day. Thus why I started the game team with other people in similar roles. We have a team of 16, and me leading the project/being a director. I don’t know what I am doing. So I have been learning as I go. Same with the rest of my team. But watching this breakdown video from Mr. Sakurai has reassured me that this project my team is making will work. Because I didn’t know of the nuanced roles on a team. Yet have already assigned certain qualified members to these designations. Thank you for explaining this Mr. Sakurai, I can’t wait for others to see the vertical slice of Project: Mosaic from Team No Exp. Need.
How did you start such a team? I'm just curious, because 16 people is quite large for a first-time indie studio. I'm currently studying game development, and have been wondering about this a lot since I keep hearing about these types of small indie team success stories.
In the US "Play testers", "Focus Testers" and "QA Testers" are three different things. Thank you SOOOOOOO much for not lumping us all together as if our roles don't matter as much as other developers. ☺ This was an awesome video for showing off and explaining the different disciplines! Thank you! I'll be passing this along to our students.
An incredible insight, as usual! The planner and director sharing a difference was an interesting learn; basically Sakurai the director helms the designs, while the planner puts it into documents for the rest of the team to read.
If he didn't love or care for it, he wouldn't have done it. He made these games his children and while to different effects, raised them the best he could and he wouldn't have been able to do it alone. "It takes a village" as they say lol
just as much respect must go to all other people who work on games like these, most people wont even know about them yet without their efforts these games wont be as good as they are
It's really nice to see everything laid out like this. A lot of times, people really only focus on the director of the game, so it's good to remember that these things are made by some pretty big teams.
Remember in Kirby Super Star when Sakurai put little pictures of Kirby next to each job title in the ending credits? This video just reminded me of that.
Congrats on your 50th video Mr. Sakurai! I've learned so much about gaming so far through your lessons! I hope to be a director for a game one day too. Even if I don't achieve that role, any role in making a game would be an honor.
Notes for my own reference: ================ 0:00 Game Dev Roles 0:17 Roles can vary by game, and this video is a rough guide to roles from Sakurai's own game director experience ================ 0:30 Director 監督 0:57 Planner (Game Designer) 企画 1:29 Programmer プログラマー 1:53 Modeler (3D Modeling Artist) モデル 2:20 Artist アートワーク 2:39 Animator モーション 3:07 Effect Designer エフェクト 3:29 Sound Designer サウンド 4:00 UI Designer ＵＩ ================ 4:17 Technical Operations テクニカくサポーター 4:33 Manager マネージャー 4:53 Play Tester モニター 5:34 Footage Specialist 実機ムービー ================ 5:55 Non-"dev" roles: PR, Sales, Production jobs etc. 広報や営業やプロデュース業 6:02 Dev subteams ("characters", "stages" etc.) usually comprise a mix of devs from different roles, and almost always involve the director
This is definitely one of the most insightful videos that Mr. Sakurai has released. It's so fascinating to see the tremendous number of people that work together to create a single game.
what a "game designer" or "game dev" is has always been this almost impenetrable idea to me for the longest time. Searching google yields little results, so having an industry veteran like yourself explain it has been very illuminating!
We often like to credit Sakurai specifically for games like Smash, but it really is a large team of many people with many different skillsets that bring it all together to make the final product reality. It may be based on the director's vision of the game, but one man alone wouldn't get very far in a project like this, after all. It'd be hard to show appreciation to everyone individually, but let's keep the folks behind the scenes in mind too when we do. Though I suppose that's also what credits are for.
Do keep in mind Sakurai's type of company and cultural context (i.e. language) when he talks about these jobs. An indie company or a French Triple A might not have the same job name nor descriptions, so make sure to look into your country's usual lingo once you get a better idea of what you want to do!
i really appreciate these sections on how game development is actually organized within a team, im interested in project management and this is very helpful
UI is more than just menus; it's also HUD, dialogue, controls, settings, things like the icon that tells when you're in range to talk to an NPC, making players know their input was accepted (see previous video)... But it even goes beyond that, becoming a sort of meta-game-design field. There are some things you might not think of as UI, but they're important parts of how the player interacts with the game and knows what they can and can't do. For example: - in the Paper Mario series, the maps have clear edges, but loading zones have a small piece sticking out past the edge, making it clear where they are. - In Pokemon for Game Boy, loading zones are similarly marked - due to the perspective, you can't see the doors on the non-North walls, but they're marked by rugs and such. - FPS games let you choose whether tilting the stick up makes the camera look up or down. Halo does this in a very clever way by just asking the player to "look up" and setting that based on which direction you push. - NPCs or scripted events can act as subtle tutorials by just showing you how something works, or pointing out secrets. Eg an enemy falls into a pit, but you can see the top of their head still moving around, so there must be a place to stand. Luigi goes into a pipe, which tells you that going into pipes is something you can do. - Sound design is a huge part of UI, and goes far beyond just "play sound effect when thing happens". When your sword goes CLANG against a wall, you know that's a solid wall, but if it goes THUNK like wood, you know maybe that wall isn't permanent. You also know you didn't hit the enemy, because then it would go SQUISH and GROAN. If the sound design is good enough (and they're familiar enough with the game), people can play through the game blindfolded! - Sometimes games are frustrating because they don't clearly communicate which areas are part of the game and which are off limits. You find yourself trying to go somewhere only to hit an invisible wall, or getting stuck because you didn't see a path or didn't think you could actually go that way. - Camera control is very important! It should feel natural enough that you do it without thinking. I enjoyed the camera control so much in Ocarina of Time, that I find myself pressing the same button to move the camera behind me in other games even where that doesn't work. Contrast with games where you're frequently having to slowly rotate the camera using digital buttons, and it's always distracting you from the actual game. - How do you save? It depends on the game whether you let players save anywhere, only at certain places, or only when quitting the game; and whether they'll start back exactly where they were, a little ways back, or always at some special spot. But it's important that players know how saving works, that it doesn't take too long, and that (if you don't have auto saves) they're frequently reminded to save. The reminder need not be intrusive; just opening your menu and noticing there's a "save" option is usually enough. If you do have auto saves, it's important that they don't take too long, and don't leave you in an unwinnable state (or let you back out to previous saves just in case). Bad example: Donkey Kong Country, not letting you save in a new world until you reach the save point/revisit-previous-worlds point, which in some cases was at the end. - Make sure you're not giving wrong advice! Ocarina of Time 3D added a feature where it would remind you to take breaks every few hours - but it didn't account for time the system was in sleep mode, so if you never actually quit the game between sessions, it might be telling you it's break time after just five minutes! In the original, a red dot tells whether your hookshot can reach a target - but it's not always correct! In Star Fox Adventures, NPCs might tell you to visit the WarpStone Shop, but there is no shop there - it was moved, and they forgot to update the dialogue.
I think you're mixing some roles here, like the comment above me said, some of those are under UX role, and other goes straight to level designer role (like delimiting loading zones).
It continually amazes me how much about the general game development industry can be taught and demonstrated in just one Nintendo game that is, all in all, a somewhat niche genre (2d fighting games)
Thanks for the video! Many people use the word "Animator" to mean anyone who works in 3D art like modelers and lighters. They are very different jobs, like a carpenter, a building designer, or a construction worker.
I think the really cool thing about Directors is their flexibility, since they have to know a little bit about every field. Many game directors aren’t only designers, but come with some other skills; Sakurai and Kumazaki are not only directors and designers but also talented artists, for example. I myself think I’d be a “design-programming-composer” hybrid of director. Especially when it comes to smaller teams, a director needs to be able to at least help troubleshoot in all areas.
I don't know the rest, but, after studying 3D Production for a year, I think by far the most stressing part of 3D modelling is making a rig. You have to know how to program, how to code and you have to be incredibly patient. On the other hand, the most relaxing part to me about 3D is making 3D furnitures and paint them. However, despite the enjoyment, I wouldn't work with anything 3D related. I stick to 2D designs because at least I have experience in Photoshop and I apply fundamental aspects of art, such as appeal, clarity, composition, etc.
I'm not an artist, but in 3D you have to pay attention to all the possible angles that the thing you're making will be viewed, whereas in 2D you can be confident your art will always be seen in the best angle that you composed yourself
@@DragN_H3art Not always, if you absolutely know something isn't going to naturally be viewed from a certain angle, you can just not bother modeling it. Lots of things are only half modeled in games, which is also preferable because it saves on resources. Gotta have some real foresight with doing that though.
One thing I've also noted is how some people get promoted over their career. An example would be Yoshiaki Koizumi. At one point, he handled the manuals for early Legend of Zelda titles. He then moved onto handle writing in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Between 2002 and 2007, he was the director of 3D Super Mario titles. As of 2010, he's been the producer of Mario games like Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Super Mario 3D World. He also got to help design the Nintendo Switch!
You'd be surprised how much a lot of director&producer roles don't rely too much on technical knowledge. You need to know vaguely how each role is working, but beyond that it's not really necessary, workers just tell you if something you're planning isa bad idea. It relies a lot more on soft communication skills and being organized & proactive
This is one of my favorites so far; it’s really cool to learn more about the exact roles of different types of developers, and about the types I’d never heard about or considered. Keep up the great work, Mr. Sakurai!
Personally, I've been more in the realm of designer and sound, but lately I've been thinking of getting into planning and management. There are so many great creatives out there who want to make a game and every time I've watched them let their game's scope spiral out of control. A lot of them just need someone to sit there and tell them "No. Stay inside the project's limits." Problem is, after encountering artists, I can imagine the nightmare of keeping them on task. Also, after trying out game development on Gamemaker, I now cherish UI designers. I will shake the hand of anyone prepared to do that job.
Missing here are writers as well as level designers. Not every game needs those to be individual people (for example, writing could also be done by the director) but they're definitely common jobs too. One could also argue that tech-artists / tool creators who make shaders and tools that the artists work with are kind of their own group. Good overview over the most typical roles in game dev though!
@@darkiway Yep, very true. It makes sense that he's showing things from his perspective. Still, I wonder about it as level design (or stage design, if we're not talking about subspace emissary / kirby) would be something that people need to do. I wonder who gets these tasks in Sakurai's teams. Same goes for writing all the flavour texts that exist in the Smash games. I wonder who writes these if it's not someone with a dedicated writing position.
@@YaenGamedev Stages and levels were mentioned in "Modellers" section. People are seem to point out everything that lacks, but it was mentioned that's from his perspective. It's like saying "there's no right way to do that" without giving at least 3 examples - Yes, programming tutorials I'm pointing at you
It should be noted that Sakurai is very much speaking from his own experience, which is AAA and Japanese. A lot of these terms and responsibilities will vary per company and even per studio. For example, what he calls "planner" in my experience is often a blurry line between designers and producers. What he calls "managers" tend to be "producers" across the board in western game dev anyway. He mentions that planners can even balance gameplay, but in general that is usually done by designers, which in turn can also be producers at the same time. It also depends heavily on the company how your programmer and artist pipelines look. Sakurai speaks of "programmers" and many different kinds of artists. However, in AAA it is extremely common to have tools programmers, networking programmers, engine programmers, gameplay programmers (the line between technical artists/designers can be blurry), animation programmers, animation programmers and tbh pretty much anything else you could think of. Meanwhile any animator worth their salt will also be able to decently rig a 3D model (but you still very much have those different departments in AAA) and what Sakurai calls "artists" would usually probably be called a "concept artist" in western game dev. While any concept artist would probably be perfectly capable of making, say hit effects for smash, when the effects become more complicated you will probably have a "technical artist" on the job. These sit in between artists and programmers in the sense that they can create art using the usual software (maya/blender photoshop/paint) and manipulate it in engine using custom shader code of Houdini scripts. A lot of the more complicated effects seen in AAA games (e.g. fancy water effects) are usually the domain of a technical artist. Lastly you'll also have different kinds of designers. From game designers, to UI designers to more abstract concepts like experience designers. In practice, a good designer is multi-faceted and will know some basics of art and programming to quickly prototype ideas and turn it into a proper proposal. This is because design as a profession is highly subjective, and trust me, youre not the only one who has a great idea for the next smash game. You may character designers (blurry line with character artists) or level designers and literally anything in between. Literally ANYTHING in a video game has been designed by SOMEONE on the team before it made it into the game. Sakurai's info here is very good but also very specific to his own experience. Nothing wrong with that, I just though offering some external context might be useful.
It's tempting to see the "director" as a visionary, and the game being made as a product what what they had in mind. This might be a carry-over from our view of movie directors, or at least what we've come to expect out of movie directors thanks to auteur theory. Whether or not that's actually the case depends on the project, I suppose.
I'm really glad Sakurai made this video, it's surprising that so many people don't know how many skillsets you need to make a game. I've seen some western eggheads claim that play testers and bug testers "don't count" as real developers, but Sakurai knows that's not true!
I made sure to click on this video right away. I'm trying to get into a game development job for a long time now, and I've still yet to see someone reply to my applications with so much as a "maybe".
@@MrWolf-ls5fe It's the same when the director is also the person who came up with the game, but there could be a director who didn't and then is not the game designer.
Great video, and perhaps appropriately one that really made me appreciate the whole team behind it - Sakurai’s insights are great as usual, but the animators and sound designers who brought it to life along with the translators who had to take so many Japanese technical terms and make them understandable in English all deserve credit.
I would love to see more team management videos. My current dilemma making a game is that I have tons of experience programming games but cannot do art or music or asset creation. I need others to help, but I’m always worried about being a bad director or leader. So I hesitate reaching out.
learning art isn't too hard. I recommend jazza videos as a starter. And practice. If it's not for you, you may just give someone else the role, or maybe use assets and mix and match them as long as they look stylistically similar. AI exists too. Art isn't something to be too scared of. If you're good at programming, you can focus on program heavy games. Games that are technically really good. You could even make bad art and have it lifted with shaders and such. Shaders can make most games look good
"Computers can be highly uncooperative", too bloody right! Man, proper pro game dev teams are a lot bigger than I expected. Coming as I do from an indie background, I expect game teams to be a guy in front of his Commodore 64, just coding by hand for hours, days, weeks on end. Goes to show what I know about game development!
Correction: in English-speaking studios, the "Planner" role is what's usually called "Game Designer". If you apply as a Game Designer to a company, what you will be doing is mostly writing specs. The "Director" role may also exist separately. Sometimes there are multiple "directors", such as Gameplay Director, Narrative Director, Art Director, each with their own teams, and all coordinated by a Creative Director. The "Manager" role is often called a "Producer", but those also usually have a big say in the scope and direction of the game, and the lines may blur a little depending on the company. Take this with a grain of salt, however. Different companies organize themselves differently, and roles aren't 100% consistent. I may be right or wrong depending on who you ask
What's the point of the game director in the situation described above ? Are the leaders of each team just repeating what the game director says? I have some trouble to understand what's the difference between the overall leader and the leader of each team
@@squd322 Well if there's a creative director, they're usually just the idea guy, who then gets filtered through the more technically competent people who tell them what's feasible and then set the teams to work once the plan is hopefully solidified.
@@TeleportRush That's a good point! Aside from that, @Squirred dividing the team in small chunks makes things easier to manage. For a single person to talk with a 400+ people team every day would be unfeasible, but talking with maybe 12 leads, and them then talking with 20-30 people later on makes things manageable. Of course, the smaller the team, the less leaders you need!
@@squd322 On a big project if you only have the one director doing everything it can lead to workflow bottlenecks where development can't progress smoothly because the director doesn't have enough time to check and adjust everything. Or maybe the director doesn't have the skillset to really develop a particular aspect of the game to its fullest potential so they bring on someone to help with that. It's still the overall game director providing the overarching vision for the game and coordinating between all teams but they entrust a lot of the detail work to the "sub-directors" to keep everything running smoothly.
These roles seem somewhat different to the Western studio roles I'm familiar with. Planners seem to be a mishmash of designers and producers, for instance. Interesting!
@@macdee010 Don't speak for all gamers. "We" gamer are all different. Let's say you do not care, and I hope this will change. Otherwise why do you even watch this content...
When it's all broken doen like this, it really makes me appreciate the effort indie game devs put in. Without a lot of people on your team, individuals naturally have to fill in multiple of these roles at once. A lot of them seem to be jobs in of themselves for large studios.
@@Kriss_ch. It’s mentioned in an asterisk in the bottom right corner but planners are often referred to as game designers in the west. So there’s some degree of overlap between terms.
Great video to show how many diverse skills work together to develop a game. As a mostly solo gamedev, I have to take a lot of the positions shown in the video myself and it's very challenging. 😆
This was an incredibly comprehensive and detailed list, but I must say I’m a little surprised that UI and UX designers were not listed separately, since a lot of people regard those to be two different roles. Though personally I find these roles are best suited by one person with a high degree of understanding in both fields.
There’s a lot of competition for each dev role in the job market right now, but from what I heard, effects artists and especially effects programmers are sorely needed.
This list was so comprehensive the only role I can really say were skipped are the technical artist and technical sound designer roles, which exist as a middle man between the artist and programmer. Though they could exist with either title
I work for a Western studio and it's very interesting to see how a lot of the positions mentioned in this video just don't match the way we do things, especially directors and planners
This reminds me of a small easter egg in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. In the Game Freak office, there's an interactive book that shows many paths that can inspire a person into taking a job in game development - writer, sound designer, modeler...
I had vague ideas about what kind of roles would be present on a game development team beforehand but this goes a long way to clarifying things; for instance it wasn't obvious before that effects are a different role from animation, partly because in the case of anime the animators often make what would be an effect in the case of a typical game. I also didn't image there would actually be a role called "game designer."
Well this is show how team work need to be in the industry and what each job need to do and if work like parts of a healthy biological cell the results are more than great
I''m training in 3D modeling and texturing right now. I can also draw in 2D but my style is too cartoonish for the game I'm contributing to right now. I'm loving that Final Destination concept art.
I never realized game designers were called 'planners' in japan. Obviously Mr. Sakurai can't go in depth about a game designer's role (especially since they can have any number of different roles and responsibilities across the wide world of game development) but in many studios, even the junior designer can have a huge influence on the game they're making. It's really annoying when people think a designer is the same as a programmer, I think everyone in my family assumes I'm a programmer. Though there's often overlap in smaller studios, a designer usually won't have to do a ton of programming beyond some basic scripting, depending on what your role is (for instance, a technical designer will do way more programming than a level designer or narrative designer).
As a programmer, this sums up why I don't pursue jobs in the game industry. You have to follow the instructions of the game director, he gets to do all the fun decisions and can pursue his vision of a good game. If I want to implement whatever someone else says, I can join any industry and make more money + waaaaaay better working conditions.
We always joke in the animation industry how everyone outside it just calls everyone animators because they don’t know what the different roles are or what they do, creates the problem though of crazy people threatening animators for stuff that’s not even under their control.
I think being a game director is the dream, I think it would take a lot of work to make like an Ocean's 11 team to make a silly game like bug fables for M&L. But these roles make it clearer
It's weird to think of what I've written about as "game design" but many of the ideas I've discussed would technically apply to that part of the development process I.E the initial vision for the game that is to be realized. Come to think of it, that's the stuff that everyone -- the players -- are really talking about all the time, but everything that happens between that and a finished game is obscured. Part of the reason I have such thoughts is because I'm implicitly trying to fill in the gaps between the director having ideas and the finished game being published; I've run through many of the steps through my head not necessarily knowing what role pertained to that part of production. So for example, if I have an idea for a game and start writing it down or making drawings, I'm technically filling in the planner's job if I decided to try making that game myself just as a one-man team. Sometimes I even act parts of a game out or imagining what it would look like, which is things that would fall to the artists and animators. the only thing that wasn't covered is writing; if a game included things like narrations, cut-scenes, journal entries as collectibles in the world, lore, character profiles, story events, and so on, who would be responsible for writing these things, especially if it's something the game designer might not directly see to and delegate to someone else, like writing hundreds of segments of flavor text for a bestiary?
when it said "modeler's work may be drastically different" i thought he was going to talk about how they manage to keep the art style consistent. ive always wondered that about artistic media...
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"Computers can be highly uncooperative, so this job requires patience and flexibility." He hit the nail on the head with this statement.
I think the Programmers are uncooperative, constantly just typing things up that don't work even though its not supposed to work in that way. The poor computers just try to do what others tell them T_T
/s if it wasn't obvious enough
@@gosucab944 mostly that's what happens, but there are time where computers just decide that your code won't work, only for you to copy and paste it in a new file and suddenly it works.
Hits especially close to home after having spent hours hunting down a bug that turned out to be caused by the compiler over-optimizing.
I'm sorry but that job sounds awful
@@serafinw105r2f I had something like this happen on a programming assignment once, where it would work on my machine at home, but not the pc in class. And it turned out to be something dodgy with windows, where it doesn't work well with long doubles, and so it was breaking. (At home, i'd done it in linux)
Honestly feels like a miracle that games get made at all when there are so many wheels turning simultaneously…
Pray for that manager (future me) 🙏
@@RemisterReal I believe in you!
The majority of them don't!
and yet people bitch and complain SOOOO much when a game gets delayed or even when no date is announced (Metroid 4). People need to chill out and realize its not easy to make a (good) game.
@@lyianx *Metroid Prime 4. But yes.....I agree.
I had the biggest smile on my face when I heard Sakurai mentioned riggers. Some may call it a crutch, but back when I was a beginner animator, rigs were a godsend.
When I was starting to put a team together for our indie game, I got lucky and found someone passionate who just finished a rigging course in college. He's been an valuable member of our team ever since. I don't know what we'd do without him. Indie development usually means not having the funds to hire industry professionals, so I'm really happy to work with him.
how can rigging be a crutch when its impossible to animate at all without one (in 3D)
@@salvadorsanchez5057 I think some call it like that because at some point you could get overreliant on others' rigs, or be so used to rigs that you don't make the effort in learning how joints actually work. I think I see where these points come from, but I am not a professional animator; maybe pros could chime in on these points.
@@salvadorsanchez5057 Technically you can animate but don't try it.
Rigs are vital! After all, what's a puppet without its strings?
Solo devs be like:
"Hey that's my job!"
"Oh hey that's me!"
"I work there!"
"So cool! He mentioned my job!"
"That's me too!"
Solo devs are indispensible creators really, as long as their ego won't stand in their way.
🥲🥲
Haha! xD
Or anyone working salaried at a smaller company :P
Man, what is it about this series that just has me smiling with every episode, even when it's talking about work?
This channel mitigated my worries that Sakurai didn't have as much "passion" for his job as simply being very smart and logical in his problem-solving skills (this because of the way he talked about it in old interviews). But no, you can tell he really loves doing what he does here.
Watching the credits for a large game always astounds me at just how many people have to work together to create even a single game. There’s just so much that goes into every game even if you wouldn’t notice it on the surface
I like how all of the art of people doing their jobs are shown being in cool poses and with super powers and stuff and then the manager is just dead, it’s accurate
I love how he also adds server maintenance and the role of the manager since those are also very important. Love the characters of each role.
In the western industry, "Planners" are usually called "Game Designers". They do what we call "paper design", essentially a high level design of the game that programmers (aka "Engineers") or more hands-on designers (for example "Level Designers" and "System Designers") have to implement. Then, "Managers" are a mix of "Producers" who mainly help with time management, and possibly "Leads" as well who supervise specific disciplines (i.e. programming, design etc). The roles really depend on the project and company though.
It's crazy how Mr. Sakurai releases those bite sized, 5 minutes videos, and yet they are some of the highest quality content, most informative and usefull stuff you can find on TH-cam. I can't even express how happy I am that he started this channel this year, so many apiring Game devs are getting incredible insight from a veteran of the industry, and the general public can also learn so much about the behind the scene of Game making. Thank you as always Mr. Sakurai !
I am so grateful to him, all these videos are so helpful!
What’s also really amazing is that you can tell he’s having fun making these videos, too!
It's the no nonsense, no fluff approach we all yearn for in content.
This is one of the coolest videos yet. I know so many people who love art, and who were discouraged at every step of the way because "you won't be able to find a job." And at the same time, I know many people who wonder what skills might help them break into the gaming industry. This video is so clear and simple, but it answers burning questions for tons of passionate young devs out there.
I started a game team back in August.
While I have a background in animation and character rigging, my official industry jobs have been in bug tester and quality assurance. Which I’m feeling more pidgin held by the day.
Thus why I started the game team with other people in similar roles.
We have a team of 16, and me leading the project/being a director.
I don’t know what I am doing. So I have been learning as I go.
Same with the rest of my team.
But watching this breakdown video from Mr. Sakurai has reassured me that this project my team is making will work. Because I didn’t know of the nuanced roles on a team. Yet have already assigned certain qualified members to these designations.
Thank you for explaining this Mr. Sakurai, I can’t wait for others to see the vertical slice of Project: Mosaic from Team No Exp. Need.
How did you start such a team? I'm just curious, because 16 people is quite large for a first-time indie studio. I'm currently studying game development, and have been wondering about this a lot since I keep hearing about these types of small indie team success stories.
In the US "Play testers", "Focus Testers" and "QA Testers" are three different things. Thank you SOOOOOOO much for not lumping us all together as if our roles don't matter as much as other developers. ☺
This was an awesome video for showing off and explaining the different disciplines! Thank you! I'll be passing this along to our students.
An incredible insight, as usual! The planner and director sharing a difference was an interesting learn; basically Sakurai the director helms the designs, while the planner puts it into documents for the rest of the team to read.
Now I feel even worse for Sakurai. Man went through years of this, constantly overseeing ALL of that, without a break.
Mad respect.
If he didn't love or care for it, he wouldn't have done it. He made these games his children and while to different effects, raised them the best he could and he wouldn't have been able to do it alone. "It takes a village" as they say lol
Which is why he’s the Omegachad to us
just as much respect must go to all other people who work on games like these, most people wont even know about them yet without their efforts these games wont be as good as they are
I'm no games developer (Though it is the career path I'm pursuing), but I can safely say that the artistic interpretation of the manager was spot-on
It's really nice to see everything laid out like this. A lot of times, people really only focus on the director of the game, so it's good to remember that these things are made by some pretty big teams.
Biggest smile when he mentioned QA. It’s amazing to feel your role recognised by such professionals.
Remember in Kirby Super Star when Sakurai put little pictures of Kirby next to each job title in the ending credits? This video just reminded me of that.
Congrats on your 50th video Mr. Sakurai! I've learned so much about gaming so far through your lessons! I hope to be a director for a game one day too. Even if I don't achieve that role, any role in making a game would be an honor.
Holy fuck its been 50 vids already??
Notes for my own reference:
================
0:00 Game Dev Roles
0:17 Roles can vary by game, and this video is a rough guide to roles from Sakurai's own game director experience
================
0:30 Director 監督
0:57 Planner (Game Designer) 企画
1:29 Programmer プログラマー
1:53 Modeler (3D Modeling Artist) モデル
2:20 Artist アートワーク
2:39 Animator モーション
3:07 Effect Designer エフェクト
3:29 Sound Designer サウンド
4:00 UI Designer ＵＩ
================
4:17 Technical Operations テクニカくサポーター
4:33 Manager マネージャー
4:53 Play Tester モニター
5:34 Footage Specialist 実機ムービー
================
5:55 Non-"dev" roles: PR, Sales, Production jobs etc. 広報や営業やプロデュース業
6:02 Dev subteams ("characters", "stages" etc.) usually comprise a mix of devs from different roles, and almost always involve the director
I love how Masahiro Sakurai created this channel not from obligation under a company, but from pure passion and interest.
We don't deserve him.
It's so interesting knowing that the terms for the various roles differ between regions!
This is definitely one of the most insightful videos that Mr. Sakurai has released.
It's so fascinating to see the tremendous number of people that work together to create a single game.
what a "game designer" or "game dev" is has always been this almost impenetrable idea to me for the longest time. Searching google yields little results, so having an industry veteran like yourself explain it has been very illuminating!
We often like to credit Sakurai specifically for games like Smash, but it really is a large team of many people with many different skillsets that bring it all together to make the final product reality. It may be based on the director's vision of the game, but one man alone wouldn't get very far in a project like this, after all. It'd be hard to show appreciation to everyone individually, but let's keep the folks behind the scenes in mind too when we do. Though I suppose that's also what credits are for.
As a former QA tester, I really appreciated this video.
Petition to have sakurai's silver play button as a playable character in the next smash game
Signed
Signed
Signed
Signed
Signed
Do keep in mind Sakurai's type of company and cultural context (i.e. language) when he talks about these jobs.
An indie company or a French Triple A might not have the same job name nor descriptions, so make sure to look into your country's usual lingo once you get a better idea of what you want to do!
i really appreciate these sections on how game development is actually organized within a team, im interested in project management and this is very helpful
UI is more than just menus; it's also HUD, dialogue, controls, settings, things like the icon that tells when you're in range to talk to an NPC, making players know their input was accepted (see previous video)...
But it even goes beyond that, becoming a sort of meta-game-design field. There are some things you might not think of as UI, but they're important parts of how the player interacts with the game and knows what they can and can't do. For example:
- in the Paper Mario series, the maps have clear edges, but loading zones have a small piece sticking out past the edge, making it clear where they are.
- In Pokemon for Game Boy, loading zones are similarly marked - due to the perspective, you can't see the doors on the non-North walls, but they're marked by rugs and such.
- FPS games let you choose whether tilting the stick up makes the camera look up or down. Halo does this in a very clever way by just asking the player to "look up" and setting that based on which direction you push.
- NPCs or scripted events can act as subtle tutorials by just showing you how something works, or pointing out secrets. Eg an enemy falls into a pit, but you can see the top of their head still moving around, so there must be a place to stand. Luigi goes into a pipe, which tells you that going into pipes is something you can do.
- Sound design is a huge part of UI, and goes far beyond just "play sound effect when thing happens". When your sword goes CLANG against a wall, you know that's a solid wall, but if it goes THUNK like wood, you know maybe that wall isn't permanent. You also know you didn't hit the enemy, because then it would go SQUISH and GROAN. If the sound design is good enough (and they're familiar enough with the game), people can play through the game blindfolded!
- Sometimes games are frustrating because they don't clearly communicate which areas are part of the game and which are off limits. You find yourself trying to go somewhere only to hit an invisible wall, or getting stuck because you didn't see a path or didn't think you could actually go that way.
- Camera control is very important! It should feel natural enough that you do it without thinking. I enjoyed the camera control so much in Ocarina of Time, that I find myself pressing the same button to move the camera behind me in other games even where that doesn't work. Contrast with games where you're frequently having to slowly rotate the camera using digital buttons, and it's always distracting you from the actual game.
- How do you save? It depends on the game whether you let players save anywhere, only at certain places, or only when quitting the game; and whether they'll start back exactly where they were, a little ways back, or always at some special spot. But it's important that players know how saving works, that it doesn't take too long, and that (if you don't have auto saves) they're frequently reminded to save. The reminder need not be intrusive; just opening your menu and noticing there's a "save" option is usually enough. If you do have auto saves, it's important that they don't take too long, and don't leave you in an unwinnable state (or let you back out to previous saves just in case). Bad example: Donkey Kong Country, not letting you save in a new world until you reach the save point/revisit-previous-worlds point, which in some cases was at the end.
- Make sure you're not giving wrong advice! Ocarina of Time 3D added a feature where it would remind you to take breaks every few hours - but it didn't account for time the system was in sleep mode, so if you never actually quit the game between sessions, it might be telling you it's break time after just five minutes! In the original, a red dot tells whether your hookshot can reach a target - but it's not always correct! In Star Fox Adventures, NPCs might tell you to visit the WarpStone Shop, but there is no shop there - it was moved, and they forgot to update the dialogue.
the latter part of the comment is more UX than UI
I think you're mixing some roles here, like the comment above me said, some of those are under UX role, and other goes straight to level designer role (like delimiting loading zones).
It continually amazes me how much about the general game development industry can be taught and demonstrated in just one Nintendo game that is, all in all, a somewhat niche genre (2d fighting games)
1. Director/Game Designer
2. Planner
3. Programmer/Developer
4. Modeler
5. Artist
6. Animator
7. Effect Designer
8. Sound Designer
9. UI Designer
10. Technical Operations
11. Manager
12. Play Tester
13. Bug Tester
14. Footage Specialist
I actually love these videos. Very professional and informative with that special Sakurai twang
That was the shortest 7 minutes of my life and I feel like I learned more than in a semester of school.
A incredible insight from one of the best TH-cam channels.
I appreciate Sakurai and other developers more and more with videos exactly like this one explaining the development of games
There's something that just feels right when seeing the Director role depicted with 6 hands
This man’s advice could of saved SO many game projects
Thanks for the video! Many people use the word "Animator" to mean anyone who works in 3D art like modelers and lighters. They are very different jobs, like a carpenter, a building designer, or a construction worker.
The variety of skill and level of hard work to make a game is what makes them so beautiful!
I think the really cool thing about Directors is their flexibility, since they have to know a little bit about every field. Many game directors aren’t only designers, but come with some other skills; Sakurai and Kumazaki are not only directors and designers but also talented artists, for example. I myself think I’d be a “design-programming-composer” hybrid of director. Especially when it comes to smaller teams, a director needs to be able to at least help troubleshoot in all areas.
I don't know the rest, but, after studying 3D Production for a year, I think by far the most stressing part of 3D modelling is making a rig. You have to know how to program, how to code and you have to be incredibly patient.
On the other hand, the most relaxing part to me about 3D is making 3D furnitures and paint them. However, despite the enjoyment, I wouldn't work with anything 3D related. I stick to 2D designs because at least I have experience in Photoshop and I apply fundamental aspects of art, such as appeal, clarity, composition, etc.
I'm not an artist, but in 3D you have to pay attention to all the possible angles that the thing you're making will be viewed, whereas in 2D you can be confident your art will always be seen in the best angle that you composed yourself
@@DragN_H3art Not always, if you absolutely know something isn't going to naturally be viewed from a certain angle, you can just not bother modeling it. Lots of things are only half modeled in games, which is also preferable because it saves on resources. Gotta have some real foresight with doing that though.
@@111cvb111 that is true, but even the half made assets still have more angles than a 2d plane
One thing I've also noted is how some people get promoted over their career. An example would be Yoshiaki Koizumi.
At one point, he handled the manuals for early Legend of Zelda titles. He then moved onto handle writing in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Between 2002 and 2007, he was the director of 3D Super Mario titles. As of 2010, he's been the producer of Mario games like Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Super Mario 3D World.
He also got to help design the Nintendo Switch!
You'd be surprised how much a lot of director&producer roles don't rely too much on technical knowledge. You need to know vaguely how each role is working, but beyond that it's not really necessary, workers just tell you if something you're planning isa bad idea. It relies a lot more on soft communication skills and being organized & proactive
This is one of my favorites so far; it’s really cool to learn more about the exact roles of different types of developers, and about the types I’d never heard about or considered. Keep up the great work, Mr. Sakurai!
Another fantastic video by Sakurai! Thank you for giving us a peek behind the scenes of all these different roles required to make a video game!
So many people involved, each an integral element.
Personally, I've been more in the realm of designer and sound, but lately I've been thinking of getting into planning and management. There are so many great creatives out there who want to make a game and every time I've watched them let their game's scope spiral out of control. A lot of them just need someone to sit there and tell them "No. Stay inside the project's limits." Problem is, after encountering artists, I can imagine the nightmare of keeping them on task.
Also, after trying out game development on Gamemaker, I now cherish UI designers. I will shake the hand of anyone prepared to do that job.
Missing here are writers as well as level designers. Not every game needs those to be individual people (for example, writing could also be done by the director) but they're definitely common jobs too. One could also argue that tech-artists / tool creators who make shaders and tools that the artists work with are kind of their own group.
Good overview over the most typical roles in game dev though!
Yeah I also found the absence of writers strange. Even in Smash they still needed scenario writers
To be fair Sakurai did preface this by stating these are the types of jobs most common in his projects.
Level design can be broken down into subteams just as the "Fighter Team" is.
@@darkiway Yep, very true. It makes sense that he's showing things from his perspective. Still, I wonder about it as level design (or stage design, if we're not talking about subspace emissary / kirby) would be something that people need to do. I wonder who gets these tasks in Sakurai's teams.
Same goes for writing all the flavour texts that exist in the Smash games. I wonder who writes these if it's not someone with a dedicated writing position.
@@YaenGamedev Stages and levels were mentioned in "Modellers" section.
People are seem to point out everything that lacks, but it was mentioned that's from his perspective.
It's like saying "there's no right way to do that" without giving at least 3 examples - Yes, programming tutorials I'm pointing at you
It should be noted that Sakurai is very much speaking from his own experience, which is AAA and Japanese. A lot of these terms and responsibilities will vary per company and even per studio.
For example, what he calls "planner" in my experience is often a blurry line between designers and producers. What he calls "managers" tend to be "producers" across the board in western game dev anyway. He mentions that planners can even balance gameplay, but in general that is usually done by designers, which in turn can also be producers at the same time.
It also depends heavily on the company how your programmer and artist pipelines look. Sakurai speaks of "programmers" and many different kinds of artists. However, in AAA it is extremely common to have tools programmers, networking programmers, engine programmers, gameplay programmers (the line between technical artists/designers can be blurry), animation programmers, animation programmers and tbh pretty much anything else you could think of. Meanwhile any animator worth their salt will also be able to decently rig a 3D model (but you still very much have those different departments in AAA) and what Sakurai calls "artists" would usually probably be called a "concept artist" in western game dev. While any concept artist would probably be perfectly capable of making, say hit effects for smash, when the effects become more complicated you will probably have a "technical artist" on the job. These sit in between artists and programmers in the sense that they can create art using the usual software (maya/blender photoshop/paint) and manipulate it in engine using custom shader code of Houdini scripts. A lot of the more complicated effects seen in AAA games (e.g. fancy water effects) are usually the domain of a technical artist.
Lastly you'll also have different kinds of designers. From game designers, to UI designers to more abstract concepts like experience designers. In practice, a good designer is multi-faceted and will know some basics of art and programming to quickly prototype ideas and turn it into a proper proposal. This is because design as a profession is highly subjective, and trust me, youre not the only one who has a great idea for the next smash game. You may character designers (blurry line with character artists) or level designers and literally anything in between. Literally ANYTHING in a video game has been designed by SOMEONE on the team before it made it into the game.
Sakurai's info here is very good but also very specific to his own experience. Nothing wrong with that, I just though offering some external context might be useful.
Its incredible how much work goes into a game!
Yeah true!
It's tempting to see the "director" as a visionary, and the game being made as a product what what they had in mind. This might be a carry-over from our view of movie directors, or at least what we've come to expect out of movie directors thanks to auteur theory. Whether or not that's actually the case depends on the project, I suppose.
I'm really glad Sakurai made this video, it's surprising that so many people don't know how many skillsets you need to make a game. I've seen some western eggheads claim that play testers and bug testers "don't count" as real developers, but Sakurai knows that's not true!
I made sure to click on this video right away. I'm trying to get into a game development job for a long time now, and I've still yet to see someone reply to my applications with so much as a "maybe".
This just gives me more respect for the mad-lads who can build a running game almost solo. So many gears and cooperation.
Finally, thanks Mr sakurai we really needed that! I had a lot of time to understand the deffrence between game designer and director.
What's the difference?
@@MrWolf-ls5fe It's the same when the director is also the person who came up with the game, but there could be a director who didn't and then is not the game designer.
Great video, and perhaps appropriately one that really made me appreciate the whole team behind it - Sakurai’s insights are great as usual, but the animators and sound designers who brought it to life along with the translators who had to take so many Japanese technical terms and make them understandable in English all deserve credit.
He is the best for advice in video game development.
I love waking up to these videos. They're the best breakfast for me 😊
I would love to see more team management videos. My current dilemma making a game is that I have tons of experience programming games but cannot do art or music or asset creation. I need others to help, but I’m always worried about being a bad director or leader. So I hesitate reaching out.
learning art isn't too hard. I recommend jazza videos as a starter. And practice. If it's not for you, you may just give someone else the role, or maybe use assets and mix and match them as long as they look stylistically similar. AI exists too. Art isn't something to be too scared of. If you're good at programming, you can focus on program heavy games. Games that are technically really good. You could even make bad art and have it lifted with shaders and such. Shaders can make most games look good
7 minutes to explain that much informations. Thanks a lot ♥
so amazing. thanks for the very in-depth detailing of the teams behind game development, sakurai!
"Computers can be highly uncooperative", too bloody right!
Man, proper pro game dev teams are a lot bigger than I expected.
Coming as I do from an indie background, I expect game teams to be a guy in front of his Commodore 64, just coding by hand for hours, days, weeks on end.
Goes to show what I know about game development!
Making a game requires so many people working together that's is a miracle some games were done by only one person, like Touhou and Cave Story.
If I'd seen this when I was in high school, it would have got me dreaming big about all these roles...
Correction: in English-speaking studios, the "Planner" role is what's usually called "Game Designer". If you apply as a Game Designer to a company, what you will be doing is mostly writing specs. The "Director" role may also exist separately. Sometimes there are multiple "directors", such as Gameplay Director, Narrative Director, Art Director, each with their own teams, and all coordinated by a Creative Director. The "Manager" role is often called a "Producer", but those also usually have a big say in the scope and direction of the game, and the lines may blur a little depending on the company.
Take this with a grain of salt, however. Different companies organize themselves differently, and roles aren't 100% consistent. I may be right or wrong depending on who you ask
Maybe this is the difference between japanese and western game studios
What's the point of the game director in the situation described above ? Are the leaders of each team just repeating what the game director says? I have some trouble to understand what's the difference between the overall leader and the leader of each team
@@squd322 Well if there's a creative director, they're usually just the idea guy, who then gets filtered through the more technically competent people who tell them what's feasible and then set the teams to work once the plan is hopefully solidified.
@@TeleportRush That's a good point! Aside from that, @Squirred dividing the team in small chunks makes things easier to manage. For a single person to talk with a 400+ people team every day would be unfeasible, but talking with maybe 12 leads, and them then talking with 20-30 people later on makes things manageable. Of course, the smaller the team, the less leaders you need!
@@squd322 On a big project if you only have the one director doing everything it can lead to workflow bottlenecks where development can't progress smoothly because the director doesn't have enough time to check and adjust everything. Or maybe the director doesn't have the skillset to really develop a particular aspect of the game to its fullest potential so they bring on someone to help with that. It's still the overall game director providing the overarching vision for the game and coordinating between all teams but they entrust a lot of the detail work to the "sub-directors" to keep everything running smoothly.
Funny how the illustration used for the manager - the one responsible for keeping the team stable - looks the most unstable of all
These roles seem somewhat different to the Western studio roles I'm familiar with. Planners seem to be a mishmash of designers and producers, for instance. Interesting!
Hopefully more people will understand how difficult game development is.
Nah, We don't care about that because as gamer what we need only results of games smoothly.
@@macdee010 Don't speak for all gamers. "We" gamer are all different. Let's say you do not care, and I hope this will change. Otherwise why do you even watch this content...
People only care about the results
“Game development isn’t a game.”
When it's all broken doen like this, it really makes me appreciate the effort indie game devs put in. Without a lot of people on your team, individuals naturally have to fill in multiple of these roles at once. A lot of them seem to be jobs in of themselves for large studios.
Important to note how little the term "Planner" is used in western studios, as in more common in Japanese studios
Is there an equivalent title in western studios?
@@Kriss_ch. It’s mentioned in an asterisk in the bottom right corner but planners are often referred to as game designers in the west. So there’s some degree of overlap between terms.
Planner and manager seemed pretty similar.
Great video to show how many diverse skills work together to develop a game.
As a mostly solo gamedev, I have to take a lot of the positions shown in the video myself and it's very challenging. 😆
This was an incredibly comprehensive and detailed list, but I must say I’m a little surprised that UI and UX designers were not listed separately, since a lot of people regard those to be two different roles. Though personally I find these roles are best suited by one person with a high degree of understanding in both fields.
There’s a lot of competition for each dev role in the job market right now, but from what I heard, effects artists and especially effects programmers are sorely needed.
This list was so comprehensive the only role I can really say were skipped are the technical artist and technical sound designer roles, which exist as a middle man between the artist and programmer. Though they could exist with either title
Thank you for putting the spotlight on all the jobs that go into such huge projects!
The animated characters recommending each job were very cute and fun-
A very good video.
I work for a Western studio and it's very interesting to see how a lot of the positions mentioned in this video just don't match the way we do things, especially directors and planners
He seems to really enjoy making these. You love to see it
"computers can be highly uncooperative" understatement of the year!
This reminds me of a small easter egg in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. In the Game Freak office, there's an interactive book that shows many paths that can inspire a person into taking a job in game development - writer, sound designer, modeler...
I had vague ideas about what kind of roles would be present on a game development team beforehand but this goes a long way to clarifying things; for instance it wasn't obvious before that effects are a different role from animation, partly because in the case of anime the animators often make what would be an effect in the case of a typical game. I also didn't image there would actually be a role called "game designer."
Well this is show how team work need to be in the industry and what each job need to do and if work like parts of a healthy biological cell the results are more than great
I''m training in 3D modeling and texturing right now. I can also draw in 2D but my style is too cartoonish for the game I'm contributing to right now.
I'm loving that Final Destination concept art.
I never realized game designers were called 'planners' in japan. Obviously Mr. Sakurai can't go in depth about a game designer's role (especially since they can have any number of different roles and responsibilities across the wide world of game development) but in many studios, even the junior designer can have a huge influence on the game they're making.
It's really annoying when people think a designer is the same as a programmer, I think everyone in my family assumes I'm a programmer. Though there's often overlap in smaller studios, a designer usually won't have to do a ton of programming beyond some basic scripting, depending on what your role is (for instance, a technical designer will do way more programming than a level designer or narrative designer).
I can tell that this video especially had a lot of work into it!
As a programmer, this sums up why I don't pursue jobs in the game industry. You have to follow the instructions of the game director, he gets to do all the fun decisions and can pursue his vision of a good game.
If I want to implement whatever someone else says, I can join any industry and make more money + waaaaaay better working conditions.
What an incredibly complete and informative video
6:00
It's okay, Sakurai, some people don't consider bug testers and QA testers to be 'dev' roles either..
Props to the people who do 4 of these jobs.
I haven’t seen anyone mention the 2d designs of stages that he showed, those were incredible
I feel like I'm almost ready to take on some of these roles, after watching Mr. Sakurai's videos
We always joke in the animation industry how everyone outside it just calls everyone animators because they don’t know what the different roles are or what they do, creates the problem though of crazy people threatening animators for stuff that’s not even under their control.
I think being a game director is the dream, I think it would take a lot of work to make like an Ocean's 11 team to make a silly game like bug fables for M&L. But these roles make it clearer
I love this videos! Thank u so much Mr Sakurai!
All excellent informations about Game Development Jobs! As always, Smash Ultimate is a PERFECT example for these different jobs.😄
Mr Sakurai, please do talk about PR, Sales, Marketing tips if you have any.
I love sakurai OST
It's weird to think of what I've written about as "game design" but many of the ideas I've discussed would technically apply to that part of the development process I.E the initial vision for the game that is to be realized.
Come to think of it, that's the stuff that everyone -- the players -- are really talking about all the time, but everything that happens between that and a finished game is obscured. Part of the reason I have such thoughts is because I'm implicitly trying to fill in the gaps between the director having ideas and the finished game being published; I've run through many of the steps through my head not necessarily knowing what role pertained to that part of production.
So for example, if I have an idea for a game and start writing it down or making drawings, I'm technically filling in the planner's job if I decided to try making that game myself just as a one-man team. Sometimes I even act parts of a game out or imagining what it would look like, which is things that would fall to the artists and animators.
the only thing that wasn't covered is writing; if a game included things like narrations, cut-scenes, journal entries as collectibles in the world, lore, character profiles, story events, and so on, who would be responsible for writing these things, especially if it's something the game designer might not directly see to and delegate to someone else, like writing hundreds of segments of flavor text for a bestiary?
Writers are part of the game designers.
when it said "modeler's work may be drastically different" i thought he was going to talk about how they manage to keep the art style consistent. ive always wondered that about artistic media...
That's what art directors are for.
@@roskiart8750 do they will all of the artists to have the exact same art style?