Art

Artists are responsible for creating everything you see in the game.

Characters, objects, buildings, the ground and sky, and even things like loading screens, menus, power-ups and so on. Artists define what the world will look like, then create it in a way that helps players to understand the game and the things that are happening as they play it.

Art is about communicating ideas to players, without good art you might not recognize where you are, what you should do next, or know the difference between a friendly character and an enemy.

Animation

Animation breathes life into a game by adding unique movement to its characters, objects and environments.

There are many different styles of animation, from 2D to 3D and motion capture. Animation is vital to any game that makes use of art and visuals. The way a character moves can really bring it to life, looking at the way they walk for example, do they stand up straight? or do they slouch? this type of detail can tell the player a lot about what kind of character they are playing.

Audio

Games need great sound to help create a rounded sensory experience for the player.

There are sound-recordists who capture the sounds, composers responsible for writing and recording the music, and voice actors (like me!) who perform the words the characters are saying. Finally, there are people who take all of those sounds, layer them, and tell the game where and when they want them to be played.

The final result will be a game populated with sound effects, music and dialogue, creating an immersive world that surrounds the player, and giving context to the things that they see and do on-screen.

Design

Game design comprises of a variety of specialized roles, taking ingredients such as character abilities, objectives, puzzles, artwork and story, and putting them together so that they make sense, in order to make gameplay as fun and engaging as possible.

Level Design often begins with creating a series of empty white boxes that the character can run around in. The challenge then becomes to make all levels sufficiently different from one another, but each equally fun and demanding to play in. It’s also important to ‘script’ each level, meaning adding detail like controlling when levers will unlock something, when and where enemies appear, and when dialogue plays.

Programming

The Games Programmer writes the code that brings a game to life.

Without programming there would be no game to play, it’s the glue that holds everything together and allows a game to be truly interactive. It’s where the rules of the game world meet the vision of the game and needs to be seamless, the less you are aware of it, the more successfully it’s been implemented.

Programming will dictate how fast your character runs, or how high they can jump. A well-programmed game should provide you with much more intelligent, challenging enemies, who you’ll really need to be at your best to beat. It also ‘maps’ the player’s input, so that what’s happening on the screen is an accurate reflection of their actions on the game’s controls.

There are other disciplines involved in creating video games, such as Production, HR, Technical Art, Narrative Design and more. Hear from our team members from other disciplines in these expert videos.