#Memes
I'm a software developer and can do pretty much nothing without an artist
this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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I say "developer" is only for code, "designer" can be any system, level, or character designer (ooh they use spreadsheets!), "artist" is only for drawing things. Marketing douchebags are "marketing douchebags". And since I'm indie, I'm all of those.
But some studios just don't care and have stupid titles; as long as thy get paid it doesn't matter to them. WTF cares what some idiot screaming in a forum says?
Sorry, but you are wrong. Everyone on the team is a game developer. Game developer is a term for those who make games. They develop the game. You can't restrict the term "developer" to those who just write code. A developer in the classic term just someone who develops. Develops is a term to create or construct. Thus a game developer is anyone who creates or constructs a game. This can be an engineer, designer, artist, etc.
I've been in the games industry for a decade and can tell you that this isn't a debate or even up for question for those experienced in the field. It's simply how we give credit to the whole team. A game engineer is one who writes code for the game, a developer is anyone on the team who works toward creating the game. Also, you should learn to respect marketing. Done right and respectfully, it's a powerful way to connect to your audience. Just like a community manager.
Overall don't gatekeep titles. It's not great and would be like if someone came along and challenged you on calling yourself "indie". Overall it's not a good feel or look.
Idk man.. seems like that would make GameDev mean anything and nothing. Just for the record, I have no stakes in this discussion, I really don't care. I just find it weird to blur a word like that. Is the game company's canteen cook also a game dev? The person who plugged in the monitors? The CEO? The HR person? And so on..
I agree tho that this entire discussion feels a little like gatekeeping and would prefer everyone getting some credit for the game development over pedantic hairsplitting.
A game developer doesn't mean anything and nothing. It's someone who works on the game. So in a typical conversation with a player, a player would likely want to ask a game developer a question, that question could be best answered by a designer, artist, engineer, creative director, or even marketing. It really depends on the question but the player is just going to request a "game developer"
Ooh, a whole decade! I've been developing games ("developing") since the '80s. You are literally the guy I referred to, in a studio, with a stupid title. If you'd called yourself a developer without being able to write code at some companies I've worked at, you'd have a conversation with HR. As it is, people can get away with it but it's not true. Words have meanings, even when savages from a fallen age misuse them.
Actual customer service/community managers are fine, we need those; working indie that's the worst part, not having them. But I'm with Bill Hicks on marketing douchebags.
I write code and do so well. It doesn't matter, you seem like you are just lashing out and being very insulting. I was simply giving my insight and showing that I've been around enough to know. I am not trying to gatekeep the title of being a game builder from people and I don't think anyone in our industry should. To call people savages is pretty backward to me. What if I told you games have been developed without the use of code at all? How do you make a game with zero game developers creating it?
Also, I watched it and while Bill Hicks said he wasn't going to make it a joke, he immediately made it into a joke. Additionally, I'm not saying put a dollar sign on everything. I would say that's the type of marketing that doesn't need to exist, that is the marketing that isn't respectful. Respectable marketing is about telling people who might want to play your games, about your games. That's all it is. You shouldn't just release games into a void and hope for the best.
All I get from this is that the comic artist is definately a gamedev
Is this a real controversy?? Why
Because gatekeeping.
I didn't know job titles were gatekeeping. Do you think that a fry cook at your restaurant is also a gamedev because they happen to feed the person making the games? It has nothing to do with gatekeeping, it has to do with "words have meanings". You don't just get to decide you're a gamedev because you want to be, that doesn't make sense.
I don't even know how to answer you because your argument is so fucking stupid. No, I don't think a fry cook is a gamedev, and I have literally never in my life heard a fry cook identify as such.
It's your argument taken to its logical conclusion. If you can't figure out the logic there then that explains why you think job titles are gatekeeing.
A common complaint I see on gaming forums (especially after a new patch) is "Why is team working on X instead of Y?!" as though the people working on Y could switch to X or should be fired or sit around and do nothing until X is fixed. The people doing content creation stuff (e.g. artists, writers, scripting team, voice actors etc) are probably not going to be able to fix the netcode of the game.
(obviously, there is also mismanagement and failing to read your audience, but god damn gamers are the most entitled audience I've encountered in doing any art)(as a gamer etc etc)
I see it too, I tried explaining how it works a few times but the complainers don't give a shit, they want X and they want it yesterday! Even if X is a vague concept that we don't know yet. Frustrating.
It's one reason I prefer a community forum over a community Discord. The forum tends to keep the complaints to a few easy to ignore threads. Meanwhile in the Discord someone asks the same braindead question every 5 minutes.
All true points. There's also a point to be made about allocation of resources. Should you be spending millions marketing a broken game?
Short version: sometimes, yeah. CP2077 wouldn't have been able to pay their teams that worked on the game well beyond release date without a good initial turnout for buying the game. You can chalk that up to CDPR having good recognition from the witchers if you want, but it's pretty obvious they shelled out huge to put the game on the map initially. DLC alone could not have saved the game imo.
community managers are marketing not dev. some of them are devs who should demand extra pay for the extra work they're doing out of scope but the guy i know who is a CM and the guy i know who is a dev that gets saddled with the CM work because the company is small talk about that job very differently.
What a bunch of elitist horseshit.
As a senior engine developer at a games company, this is how I see it:
- Your shitty flappy bird clone is worth less than the cheeto stain on your t-shirt as a cultural artifact
- I have met countless programmers who have never finished a single game, because they can't design for shit
- I have met countless artists and level designers who have made commercially successful games after learning how to use 10% of a single scripting language
- The word "developer" predates software engineering and has nothing to with tech. We changed the meaning and now 14 year olds on reddit have changed it back. It doesn't matter.
- If you were really some hot shit solo developer you would not need to look for validation in your job title. Seeing thousands of people enjoy something you designed every day would be enough.
I get it! Me, developing a game, but it's just not interactive in any way
I mean sure anybody in a team can have input in what makes a 'game' in a basic sense. But I think there's a difference between I contribute to this process and I do the thing. If programming is muscle/nerves, level design is bones (especially with puzzles) and concept art is skin (or spine when it pertains to the story).
Also IMO solo-game-dev stuff should be elevated even for the simple stuff. It means you got all the keys, even if it takes you a while to find the right ones. (note I'm not even really comfortable with programming so I wouldn't call it a bias, though if I could I most likely would stay solo so maybe it is)
At some point, it become fashionable for programmers to be called "developers" and then everyone wanted the cool title, so it applies to anyone even remotely involved now. There's never a way to turn back the clock and make words more precise again after people have blown them up, so there's not a lot of point in trying to change public sentiment. I've seen this happen to a lot of technical words over the last 30+ years, and I've basically decided that there's no point in trying to fight it. It's not worth the cost, especially since I'm unlikely to win.
I should say that I could see someone who does a decent amount of in-engine work (nodes and their attributes, scenes, importing, handling some technical setup, basic layout/UI stuff, testing, particles/shaders etc) being called a developer/designer even if they aren't a programmer. Though I also think someone like that probably can at least do some very simple code, at least pasting enough together to get something like movement/projectiles/signals etc.
Again, said as someone who is closer to an artist (and hasn't made a game) who has tinkered with some stuff like that.
Yeah but “words evolve” and “language changes!” You can’t just go around asking whether they’re good changes!
Your analogy is a little weird.
I'd say that game dev is the organism and the rest is the clothing, or the shelter, or the food...
I learned this lesson 10 years ago at my first game dev job. The lead artist called himself a game developer and I said "Well I thought developer was a term reserved for engineering." They gave a long passionate explanation about how it devalues the rest of the industry and that game developer is "one who makes a game". To say that engineering is the only person to make the game is completely wrong. As I could not, as an engineer of 15+ years now, 10 of those in games, could not make a game entirely myself with just my engineering skills.
This comic hits home because anyone claiming that game developer is an engineering-only title has never worked on a team project. Anyone who goes in the credits is a game developer. Including random executives to backend developers on the game.
By that same logic, nobody can be a software developer because in order to develop a software project involving 100 people, one needs HR, managers, QA/testing, SREs, sysadmins, architects, finance, ...
Nobody can be a brick layer either because in order to build the Burj Khalifa one needed architects, engineers, glaziers, plumbers, managers, secretaries, fork-lift drivers, truck drivers, etc.
Every team project has is multi-disciplinary. To claim one discipline doesn't exist because in order to complete the project all disciplines are necessary, is willingful misrepresentation of facts.
some electricians who work on office buildings are ~~kaijus~~ gamedevs
(without them, your in-game lamps wouldn't work.)
No, you've reversed my logic. Everyone you named would be a software developer but there is only one team of software engineers. The entire point is that "game developer" isn't a discipline on the team. It's a member of the team. It'd be like arguing the term medical professional only means doctors.
It’d be like arguing the term medical professional only means doctors.
That makes more sense and I agree with it. The way you wrote it (or the way I interpreted it) was like "we're all doctors because a hospital can't run without the rest of its staff". I still disagree that a level designer can be call themselves a game developer. That'd be like a nurse calling themselves a doctor.
A game developer is anyone on the team which creates the game. A level designer is a game developer. A game engineer is the term you are confusing it with. This is common because of the term Software Developer but the developer part of game developer comes from the creation/construction side. Like a property developer or community developer.
This is common because of the term Software Developer but the developer part of game developer comes from the creation/construction side
since when? When did the software part of game developer stop being about actual code development and start being more like property or community? That makes literally no sense at all. Developer as it relates to any sort of code means the person actually writing the code. To say otherwise is just ignoring the meaning of words.
It's not ignoring the meaning and even the term software developer doesn't just mean "one who writes code." Software developer also includes software designers, testers, and other facets of creating computer software. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development#Workforce
You misread that.
is a person or company engaged in a software development process, including research, design, programming, testing, and other facets of creating computer software
does not mean software testers are developers, it means that software development includes testing, and a person that does software development might be involved in all of the above.
Notice how the next sentence includes no such title that would be confused with a person that isn't writing code.
Other job titles for people with similar meanings include programmer, software analyst, or software engineer.
I did not misread that. Someone or a company engaged in the software development process is a software developer. If the software development process includes these things then those taking part in the development process are called developers. The next line marks the confusion you see with the term developers. As in "Don't call your engineers developers, call them these things."
That said, the games industry is as such that everyone on the team is a game developer. GDC is a game developers conference yet they hold audio, art, design, and marketing talks. It's a conference for game developers which includes all disciplines of game development. Everyone who goes to GDC is typically a game developer regardless if they work in art, engineering, design, or elsewhere.
Anyways, you are simply wrong, there are tons of articles, twitter threads, reddit posts, and etc that show https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/f71cx4/artists_are_devs_according_to_cig/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedesign/comments/wz10zo/the_game_designer_is_not_a_developer/im00wcg/ https://twitter.com/mesetatron/status/1690867527864524800 https://twitter.com/freelancegames
Tons of people call anyone who works on a game a game developer, it's a definition of the term Game Developer. If you can't accept that then it's cool, you simply just move on. You aren't going to change my mind to attempt to alienate my fellow game developers from me.
Someone or a company engaged in the software development process is a software developer. If the software development process includes these things then those taking part in the development process are called developers. The next line marks the confusion you see with the term developers.
This is just absolutely false, and I'm sorry, I just don't want to continue to argue this. Good luck.