Dream development team
How many times have you come across a blog post in which the author reveals their dream is to make a video game? It’s a noble ambition but sadly not one easily achieved: ever-increasing technical requirements and high consumer-expectations make it difficult for a single person to create a mainstream title. The average cost to produce a game is slowly rising, along with player demands alongside it.
But what if money were no object? NekoJonez from NekoJonez’s Gaming Blog very kindly nominated Later Levels for the Unique Blog award recently and one of his questions to nominees stood out: if you were allowed to help in the production of a game, which role would you take on and why? The following post is dedicated to him – and ropes some other amazing bloggers into my dream development team.
Creative Director
The Creative Director is the key person during the game development process, overseeing any high-level decisions that affect how the game plays, looks or sounds.
Who better to organise and keep our motley crew in check than NekoJonez himself? He fits more into a day than I could in a year, coordinating a day-job, blogging, acting and other activities in his busy schedule. His credentials were proven last year when he arranged The Legend of Zelda retrospective; despite some obstacles and a delay, he overcame the challenges to create a collaboration project which was a lot of fun to participate in.
Producer
The Producer is responsible for ensuring the successful delivery of a game, on time and within budget.
Teri Mae from Sheikah Plate is one of the loveliest bloggers I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. She’s always there with a kind word, a positive comment or sound advice – which makes her the perfect person to be our Producer. She’d cheer us up when project deadlines or budgets were tight; we wouldn’t be able to say no to her if she needed to throw a bit of extra work our way; and this excellent chef could always bribe us to stay late with the promise of baked goods.
Writers
Due to the extreme focus on game design during development, it’s a Writers’ job to make sure that story elements work within the design choices.
Who better to form our writing team than three talented ladies? The Shameful Narcissist is an excellent fanfiction writer who creates hard-hitting stories such as The Broken Rose (please heed the content warning). Athena from AmbiGaming is an expert at analysing characters and their motivations, and would be able to create a great backstory for our protagonist. And LightningEllen from LightningEllen’s Release went all out to win the Blogger Blitz challenge last year; how could we fail?
Designer
The Designer devises what a game consists of and how it plays. They plan and define all the elements of a game.
As I’ve said before, I don’t tend to read reviews because their analysis misses what makes a video game special. But I do enjoy those written by Rob from I Played The Game! because they’re a great balance of fair and personal. He manages to get across both the positive and negative points of a title, and does it in a way that shows a bit of personality and makes me laugh. Who better than someone with that knowledge of games to oversee our project’s design?
Lead Programmer
The Lead Programmer leads the team responsible for creating all the computer code which runs and controls a game.
Luke from Hundstrasse isn’t only a blogger: he’s also made several games for the Arduboy, a miniature game system the size of a credit card. This experience has taught him that sometimes an easy idea can be difficult to implement; so hopefully he’ll be able to turn his hand to learning the programming skills we need for our project as quickly as possible. In addition, he deserves to be a member of our team for the awesomeness of his puns.
Level Engineer
The Level Editor defines interactive architecture for a segment of a game, including the landscape, buildings and objects.
I’ve known Nathan from Hurricane thought process for several years now and if there’s one thing I’ve learnt about him, it’s that he’s absolutely bonkers. In a loveable, larger-than-life, creative kind of way – so if there’s anyone who’d be able to take the levels for our video game and engineer them into something that provides both challenge and sheer amazement for the player, it would be him. I’d fully expect to see chickens, dragons and magical swords incorporated into his plans.
Lead Artist
The Lead Artist is responsible for the overall look of the game.
Every awesome video game deserves a distinct visual style, and who better than to create one of those for us than Ian from Adventure Rules? He very kindly drew a character for each Blogger Blitz competitor and Guybrush Threepwood’s portrait may even look better than the pirate himself himself. The humour displayed in his drawings would be a great quality for our project, and we could also get him to do the box art for its physical release.
Audio Engineer
The Audio Engineer creates the soundtrack for a game, including music, sound effects, character voices, spoken instructions and ambient effects.
I first met Chris from OverThinker Y early last year after listening to one of his tracks and he’s continued to impress with his creative skills since. He has interviewed a number of bloggers for his Musical Mayhem series and produced some excellent music for them afterwards. The piece he wrote for me, If It’s Not Alright Now, It Will Be Soon, is genius – it cleverly manages to combine an 80s vibe with the feeling of Everything’s Alright from To The Moon.
Community Managers
Community Managers define the voice of a brand and make sure the tools are in place to support players
Here are two people I really admire for the way they get involved in and inspire the community. Luna from GamersUnitedGG Blog is always so friendly in her blog comments and leaves everyone with positive words; and The Well-Red Mage knows exactly how to get conversations started on social media. They’re the perfect duo for spreading the word about our game and hopefully getting some streamers to champion an early version (I’m looking at you, Joey from AlunaRL).
QA Testers
QA Testers test, tune, debug and suggest the detailed refinements that ensure the quality and playability of the finished game.
Pete and Ethan are my world but damn: they know how to cause chaos. Leave them alone together for a couple of minutes and there’ll be an explosion, mass destruction or a whole lot of mess. If anyone is going to be able to find ways to break our video game and highlight any unknown bugs it’s these two; plus I know my stepson would be so excited to get the chance to work on a title before it’s release. Happy employees make for better workers.
So there you have it: my dream development team. And of course I’d be there to document our project’s progress on our blog! Now all we need is an idea for a game – plus the budget, technology and skills to actually make one – and we’ll be on our way to fame and fortune.
Job descriptions taken from Creative Skillset.
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Kim View All
Video game lover, Later Levels blogger and SpecialEffect volunteer. Big fan of wannabe pirates and fine leather jackets.
Love it and there would definitely be stoats wielding swords riding woodpeckers
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Now that’s a game I’d definitely play.
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The only thing I’d add is that developing a game is such a vast, broad subject that only really the bigger titles are nearly impossible to make cheaply these days.
With engines such as Unreal Engine 4 and Unity 2017.3 (latest version), it’s so easy to make a free, but hugely compelling game…
… However, these are all things I’ve told you before, Kim 😉 You know my views on making something for free! Haha 🙂
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I think the money aspect is the least of our worries at the moment… we’ll worry about that once we’ve got the skills! Ha ha ha 😉
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😉 Touché!
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What a dream team!! I’m pretty flattered that you think I’ could head up programming… I think you’re vastly overestimating my programming ability! :-P… but I’d give it a darn good go!!
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That’s what we like, a bit of enthusiasm! And obviously a good pun or two.
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Programming puns?.. hmmm… let me think about it over a nice cup of JAVA and I’ll C if I can come up with some BASIC PEARL’s of wisdom FOR(tran) you
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See? And that’s why we hired you.
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Why thank you! I look forward to designing something that involves a few tedious open world elements as possible!
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That can be our design philosophy: ‘We make games that don’t piss you off.’
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Oh deary me. Me as creative director? And with a team like this… Tell me, when I start and what game are we making?
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It would be so interesting to see what we’d come up with… if anyone reading this has an idea for a game we can make, let us know! 😀
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Oh oh, me. I have tons of ideas I could pitch for interesting games : )
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Jonez… you should do a follow-up post about a game for our development team!
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What a fantastic team you would all make. I’m sure that project would work out well 🙂
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I’m sure we could come up with a few extra vacancies, if you’re interested? 😉
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Well I’d always be interested to be a part of this team.
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YOU’RE HIRED!
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Best interview I have ever had! With the nicest interviewer too.
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Perfect employee right there! Ha ha ha
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Why thank you! Haha
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This is so cool! What a range of talent you have here! Let me know when you need a 3D modeler for this amazing game; I may know a gal. 😉
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Ooh yes, I’m sure we can find a spot – when can you start? 😀
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Today! Haha!
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Excellent, I’ll get the contract ready. 😉
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I see you’ve done quite a bit of research, huh? Sadly for us, video games take time, coordination, money and a ton of ambition to create and let’s be real, most of us don’t have the time to make a decent one. Yet alone a great one.
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Yeah, I agree with you there: the reality of making a video game is a very long way off. But we can dream… and I’d love to see what a group like this would come up with. 😉
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Hey! I think this could be a great community-building project…. 😉
But seriously, this is a fantastic team and I do think that if we all got together the game we could make would be amazing!
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I DEFINITELY THINK WE SHOULD DO IT.
Or at least some sort of community… game design stuff without actually making a game, if that’s too much. Collaborative efforts in story writing, art and design, music, all that stuff!
(Thinking about it, why have we not already done some kind of joint fiction? Loads of us do it!)
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Surely we can come up with an idea for a project…
I kind of have one, but need to think a bit more about how it would actually work in practice because it could potentially be a difficult to coordinate… 🤔
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Still puzzling over this. I have a few ideas, so maybe I’ll float a few around to get some feedback…
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Well, Bennett Foddy created a masterpiece himself! Heck, if he can do it, so can we. But then again, no one here knows the first thing about coding or graphic designs.
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Wow this is a great post Kim and thank you for thinking of me! When I was reading the initial question to this post I was thinking that I can be a social media manager or something and you pegged me right on! Making a video game would be great and having a team of people as passionate and skilled as our friends in the blogging community. Have a great day!
-Luna 🙂
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Great minds ha ha ha! You’d be so good in a role like that Luna!!
Have a great day too. 🙂
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Thank you very much! This week has been unexpectedly busy, but I will email you back this weekend 🙂
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No problem, take your time – you know where I am! 😉
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Whatever this is, I’d play it! Hahaha! 😀
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Hopefully it’d get a good review! Ha ha ha
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Thank you kindly! I’d love to be a writer on a team like this! And I’d analyze the heck out of the characters, you know it 😉 Except with such talent folks like The Shameful Narcissist and LightningEllen, I’d have to make sure my game was *on* so as to not be the weak link!
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The three of you would make the perfect writing team – you’re all so good at it! I’d love to read the story if you got together to create one, no doubt it would be amazing. 😀
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That would be fun!
…and a potential community project, that’s all I’m saying… haha
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Hmm… maybe we could tie this into the Year of the RPG somehow… 🤔
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Hm… You haven’t heard the last from me on this!! Just need a bit of time to ponder…. hm….
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Ooh exciting – let me know if there’s anything I can do!
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Reblogged this on DDOCentral.
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This is amazing! You really nailed every position and tailored it to everyone’s exact skill set (though, as always, you were overly-kind to me!). The way you’re able to pull things together and use incredible logic to focus in are astounding. And your talent for bringing together so many amazing people obviously makes you the director. I’d be proud to start a game up with you at the helm!
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That might not be a good idea… with me as director, we’d all just sit around playing video games rather than making them ha ha ha! You’d be a great Producer though, you know exactly what to say to make everyone feel positive and get them inspired. 🙂
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Omg I’m beyond flattered that you think of me as a writer for your gaming development dream team ♥ If I’m not being too narcissistic (belying my name) that’s one of my pipe dreams, specifically to write dialogue for a Square Enix game, though in my ridiculous head it’s a part that’s never going to happen mores the pity D: But I can dream and definitely appreciate such a high accolade from so marvelous blogger as yourself ♥♥♥
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You’re much too kind… thank you! 😊
I read the first part of The Broken Rose last week and damn – it’s incredibly hard-hitting (I can understand why you issued the warning) but it’s so well written. Square Enix would be very lucky to have you and they’re missing out by not giving you a job straight away!
It looks like a community project could possibly be on the cards after Athena’s comments above… 😉
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Aw, now you’re being too kind ♥ TBH that story was supposed to be a trial for an original one I plan to start working on. My ultimate pipe dream is them somehow discovering Northern Lights, my other novel length fanfiction and contacting me about that. Ah if only 😉
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Hey, it could happen – I’m keeping my fingers crossed for you!!
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Dream team is right!! Cool idea. Thanks for including me but I would only drag down the writing team… perhaps I can supervise or just go play Final Fantasy XIII 😛
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Surely that’s ‘research’? 🤔
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Very cool idea, and Im one of those folk you discussed that wants to make a game. Ive always had Ideas and would say my God given talent is my imagination and creativity. I would definitely be a fit for a Creative Director or Writer. I have more Ideas than time at this point!
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Have you published any of your work on your site? I’m sure everyone would love to read it! 🙂
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