Roles and Specializations
The videos included in this lesson is to give you a brief understanding of game development and related aspects. This should help you decide what role you would like to take on for your team while also giving you a basic understanding of what others on your team will be doing.
You may choose a role that you know you want to eventually become expert in, or you may choose to gain some experience in an area outside of your desired specialization.
As you explore your options, select a few different specializations that interest you. Depending on your team dynamics, you may need to fill a role other than your most prefered role. Also, depending on your team size, you may need to take on multiple roles.
As you explore, pay attention to who created the included videos. Many are created on popular channels that regularly generate new content for current and aspiring game developers. Consider subsribing to the channels you find most useful.
You may choose a role that you know you want to eventually become expert in, or you may choose to gain some experience in an area outside of your desired specialization.
As you explore your options, select a few different specializations that interest you. Depending on your team dynamics, you may need to fill a role other than your most prefered role. Also, depending on your team size, you may need to take on multiple roles.
As you explore, pay attention to who created the included videos. Many are created on popular channels that regularly generate new content for current and aspiring game developers. Consider subsribing to the channels you find most useful.
The Big Picture
Before jumping into specific roles, consider how games can be defined through Scenes & Cameras, Assets, Code, and Systems.Art
Learn about how a game artist provides clarity, satisfaction, and style; and how a visual hierarchy is created through manipulating contrast.Game Art is a broad area. Unless you end up working for a very small studio, likely you will eventually specialize in a specific discipline. Some of the more common areas of specialization are described at https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/games-artist
Animation and Sound Design, which could also be included as art, are discussed below.
Animation
Learn some of the basic concepts of animation, including squash and stretch, anticipation, follow through, timing, staging, and more.Sound Design
Learn how sound is used in games to give gameplay cues, provide feedback, and drive emotion.Game Design
Game design is crucial. With thousands upon thousands of games being created, only the best games will make a profit or even reach an audience. Ensuring that your game is fun is all about the Game Design.Avoid some of the common mistakes that game designers make.
Do not confuse game design with game level design, also known as environmental design or game mapping. The role of a game level designer is important, but focuses more narrowly on the creation of levels, missions, or stages in the game.
For this course, having a game level designer on your team will be better than having a game designer. This is because you will not have time to design or implement a unique gaming experience.
Producing
Are you good at scheduling, guiding the production of a project, managing a team, helping others be more productive, and being ultimately responsible for getting a game shipped? You might want to be a game producer.Programming
Last but not least is game programming. Game programmers, or game developers, make it possibly for players to interact with the game world.What is programming? Simon Allardice breaks it down nicely.
Programming can be tough. Besides learning core concepts of computer programming, you must also learn the syntax of at least one computer language. More importantly, you have to learn to solve problems, some of which have never been solved before!
Fortunately, there is a wealth of instructional resources (such as online videos or tutorials) to help you learn to program. If you are completely new to programming, a great place to get started is the hour of code activities.
Hour of code activities provide opportunities to begin learning basic programming concepts in an engaging way. The activities are generally quick to complete (about an hour).
Challenge
Lightbot is a fun way to learn some basic programming concepts (such as statements, functions, and loops) without having to write any code. Download the game from lightbot.com or search for the app on your mobile device (recommended).