Jobs In The Game Industry: Management

Posted November 2nd 2011

Making a working game truly is a team-effort; if you don’t have the right people with the right variety of skills, you’ll never make a great game!  We all know that the game industry knows quite a variety of disciplines; there are artists, programmers, managers, etc. Disciplines often come with their own software specializations and especially in the smaller companies people are often required to be responsible for multiple disciplines at once; the CEO might very well be the Lead Artist.

This article trilogy will show you some jobs within the three big branches of the game development ‘company-tree’; Management, Art and Programming. In part 1 we will look at some jobs within the management layer of a game company.

1. CEO

• A chief executive officer (CEO), is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of the company. He/she’s ‘The Boss’ and generally decides (often with a development director) what projects his development team(s) take on.
• Game Industry CEOs often have a background in one of the more lower disciplines in the digital media/game industry rather than a purely economic background.

2. Development Director

• A development director is the highest ranking person responsible for managing the game projects and overseeing the R&D for future platforms. He/she has a more direct say in what ways the projects are developed. A development director might very well be CEO of the company as well (especially with smaller companies).
• Like Game Industry CEOs development directors often have a background in one of the lower disciplines in the digital media/game industry.

3.  Project Manager/Producer

• A senior project manager/producer is a project-team’s coach, he/she is responsible for making the game projects run as smoothly and efficiently as possible.
• This position is usually filled by experienced people who often perform this function together with another discipline like for example ‘Programming Director’.

4.  Art Producer/Art Director/Lead Artist

• While having three (or more?) names for it, a senior art producer/art director/lead artist generally means one thing: person responsible for the production and the timely delivery of the various graphical components that go into the projects. See him/her as the coach of all the differently specialized game artists working at a company.
• Without exception these are experienced artists in at least one and usually multiple game art disciplines.

5. Programming Director

• A programming director has a similar job to the senior art producer/art director/Lead Artist, except that he/she is responsible for all programming-related production instead of art.
• Experienced programmer in at least one and usually multiple programming disciplines.

In the next part of this series we take a look at some cool game art disciplines, so stick around!!!

~Jasper

About Jasper Vick

Jasper is an enthusiastic aspiring game artist interested in everything on games! At the moment -through working with Games Of Experience- he is working on expanding his knowledge about the different disciplines, workflows and possibilities in game development and the industry itself. In his spare time he is also trying to work as much as possible on his game art portfolio.

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