‘Gaining an understanding of how the
industry is structured, what the roles and responsibilities are
and how future developments will affect future employment prospects is
essential. If you are to get the best from your studies,
you have to
understand how
they fit into the 'bigger picture' and how they relate to the industry.’
Within the games industry the key
businesses within the industry are publishing, development, distribution and
hardware manufacturers (console makers Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft). The main issue
to be aware of when looking at the industry is the complex interactions of the
various companies. A company focused on one of these areas may also be active
in others. Publishers often own all or part of a development or distribution
company and the hardware manufacturers
all
act as publishers for their own 1st party products. This means that an
independent development company seeking to do business with a publisher may
actually be approaching the owner of one of their main competitors.
Different types of companies that play
active roles in this include: Computer Game Publishers, The
companies responsible for bringing the games to market. They effectively
control what type of product reach the market as the majority of commercial
software is commissioned, funded and published.
Computer Game Developers.
These
are the programmers, artists, designers, sound engineers, musicians, producers,
writers and others; who develop the games. Development companies can be
independent, part owned or wholly owned by a Publisher, distributor or hardware
manufacturer.
Distributors.
These
are the companies that are responsible for getting the finished (manufactured)
games from the publisher to the shops.
Hardware manufacturers.
From a
gaming perspective there are two main types of hardware, personal computers
(PC/Mac) and consoles. The key difference is that personal computers are
generally open access,
while
the consoles created by Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are closed systems.
Now the hierarchy will vary slightly from
circumstance to circumstance, but usually with a publisher at the top and
obviously a distributer as the final, or bottom.
Company structure is much the same with a
publisher –as shown in this diagram- at the top, followed by owners and or the
senior management team, which is constantly back and forth with the Admin and
development support teams. The next would be the project
director/manager/producer depending on the circumstances, followed by the
technical manager, creative manager and design manager, who in turn are
responsible for the programmers artists and designers.
Points to note would be that: Each team
will also have several Managers, whose main function is to ensure that
communication flows easily through the team.
Surrounding and
supporting the dev
teams are the different support roles.
As well as this there are the
non-development support teams such as IT, HR and recruitment, administration,
finance, legal, PR and marketing.
And finally me, where would I fit into
this. Well right in the blue section at the bottom with the position being a
junior –in my case- environment artist, I would be part of a large interlinking
organisation with numerous managers and management staff.
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