Types of game developer
1st Party developers are developers which are owned by the platform makers they are making games for. An example of a 1st party developer would be Lionhead Games who are owned by Microsoft and make games for their Xbox 360 console and PC.
3rd Party developers are not owned by a console’s maker though they need a publishing partner to fund their development may also have a publishing deal with a console maker with them to make game exclusively for their console. An example of a third party developer would be Capcom.
Indie developers make their games without the need of financial aid from a publisher. An Example of an independent developer would be Valve Corporation.
Bioware
Bioware is a highly regarded game development studio founded in 1995 by Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk. They are best known for their high quality role-playing games like Baldur’s Gate and Star Wars: knights of the old republic, but recently the Mass Effect series. They now have two studios, one in Edmonton Canada and another studio in Austin Texas which specializes in creating MMOs. They currently have 5 games in production for multiple platforms. They are a third party studio who is owned by Electronic arts.
Departments of game development
Design
It is the designer’s jobs to come up with the fresh ideas for the mechanics and rules of the game and try to make them as fun as they possibly can for the player. All of the ideas that the designers of a game come up with are usually put into a game design document that will feature all the ideas for things the like the heads up display and how each level is going to play out, game design docs come complete with illustrations like concept art to help get across their ideas better.
Concept Art
The concept art department for a game is typically given some sort of guideline of what it is they need to create. It could be a Character, vehicle, weapon or environment. When the concept artist is told what it is he will need to create, then draw up step by his idea of what is wanted. Usually a concept artist will create many variants of his ideas so he can use different elements from each design and put them into one great piece of concept art. The concept artist will then pass the his work onto the likes of the 3d modellers so they can then use the piece of concept art as a reference making it easier for them to create whatever it is they’re creating.
Physics Programmer
It is the physics programmer’s responsibility to program the engine to typically replicate physics of what they are on the earth. Different games will require different amounts of physics engine work for example, Crysis a game which is heavily dependent on its physics engine will need a large team but other games like Mario are not as heavily dependent on physics so their physics team is likely to be much smaller.
Quality Assurance
There are two types of quality assurance. The first is Alpha testing which is followed by the second, Beta testing.
Alpha testing takes place in house while the different features and design of the game are still being put into the game. The tester plays the game, checking to see if all the features work properly in every sort of situation, if they find a bug they fill in a bug report which sent off and then later fixed.
Beta testing happens when all the features are in the game; it is not necessarily about finding bugs but playing with the game to see that everything is balanced correctly within the game so that tweaks can be made. Beta testing can take place in house on a small scale or a developer could do a private beta to a select a number of public testers to see if the game is working properly on a slightly larger scale or even a public beta so they can test the game on a very large scale.
AI programmer
It is an AI programmers job to code the games engine in such a way that the AI in the game will act the most logical, realistic and usually the most human as it can when trying to deal with a situation. Different types of AI will need to be programmed in different way depending on what their purpose in the game is. For example, if you shot at an enemy soldier he is logically more likely to shoot back at you rather than running away in terror, which is more how an innocent would react in a game.
