As roles in the video game industry, parting from the three phases we have previously defined- design, art and programming- we can define different kinds of documents in each of them which are generated or actions which must be made and different roles. At the left part of each one of the circles we can see the different roles. We are on the design part: we have the game designer and the level designer, and there are different kinds of documents such as the high concept, the pitch, the game concept or the game design which are the documents generated inside this design table. In the arts part - in red - we can see the action that has to be done or the work that must be finished, which are the characters, scene, movement definition, music, dialogs. sound effects, etc. that make all this arts part. There can be many roles and they can be very specialized. We have graphic designers, cinematics animators, background artist, 2D/3D animator, sound engineer, musicians, composers and sound effect designers. The programming part is composed mainly of the programmers' roles, either from Artificial Intelligence, engine, graphics or gameplay and what they produce is both the graphic engine and the game itself. The product we've placed between each one of the phases is the design, art and programmers teams coordinator, who during all the video game production phases manages all this video games production phases, timings, and organizes all the game's production. Tech artist are those who embed the art into the gameplay, so it is fundamental that they know both parts in aim to make this interaction as easy as they can, and once we have some game versions we will need the testers, which are the ones that will test if the programming part and the arts part are friendly and nice, and they will try to detect errors that can happen and propose possible solutions for them. Going out of the programming part, but still very important we have the publisher, which is the one who finances the project itself, and the distributor, which is the person who distributes, sends and sells the copy and the documents of the game, or takes care of the downloads part. Getting deep into the profiles we have mentioned before, we have the game designer, whose objective is designing the interactive elements of the game, generating different kinds of documents, and he takes care of implementing, evaluating and balancing the design. He is the one who tests the game during its development, and checks if its design is correct, incorrect or if it fits what had been previously designed. So he makes a big interaction between the artistic and the programming part. His main capacities are creativity, communication between the different professional profiles if there are artists or programmers, and the dominance of the game mechanics in aim to be able to design, create and define those game mechanics, as well as programming and arts knowledge in aim to be able to interact and understand those professional profiles. As a formation he basically needs a technical or artistic formation and having a great knowledge in video games, cinema comics, audiovisual arts, or showing or communicating the visual art intended in the game. The level designer takes part on the game levels design and he has to define the different spaces and setting we want for each level to provide a concrete experience to the game player. Designing the gameplay for each level, defining objects, objectives and actions the player has to do in each level and generating a levels design document in which he specifies all those parts that must be done, what objectives must be achieved in that level, and the game experience. His capacities are similar to the game designers' as he will get communication and dominance of game mechanics, as well as arts and programming knowledge, and the previous formation is technical and artistic, as well as video games, comics or literature knowledges like the game designer. The artistic part has both graphic artists and animators, which as we said before are the ones who will create the scenes, the characters and these characters' movements. They will first draw sketches of the visual elements, which is the conceptual artist's job, from sketches on the kind of character we want to design and what kind of feeling he gives, if he is friendly, an enemy, the main characters' antithesis, etc. From this basic concept in a sketch the character's visual elements are designed and modeled in 2D or 3D, and here comes the 2D and 3D artist's job: they have to make this design more realistic using computing techniques. The 2D artist will also put textures on those visual elements so that they have a body, a more realistic shape, and the animator will move this character based on the design using the bone structures that are linked to the character's design, being able to move those bones and so moving and giving mobility to the different components or different character's elements. As those artists' capacities, we have good drawing, knowledges on illumination, architecture and anatomy, as well as facial expressions, creativity and being very observant and documenting on the setting of the epoque in which we want the video game to happen. As formation he is basically a beaux arts graphic designer, he must know about illustration and 2D and 3D edition. Here we can see an example of a video game made by the students of the Video Games Master at the Autonomous University of Barcelona; the video game is called The Other Side and here we can see the main character's conceptual art, setting off different sketches made by pencil and colored, the shape we want our character - in this case, a warrior- to have. After that the 2d or 3D artist will give it the 2D or 3D shape through modeling. Our contextual design becomes a 3D design and at the right side we can see the designed modeling part of the character and the colors defined, and some texture parts that have already achieved a realist effect. And finally, from this design the different components are designed. Those components are like the character's bones, and moving those bones in a realistic way we can give the character its different animations and the movement of many meshes and textures to give it this motion effect. One of the animator's tasks is the lighting part, the definition of the scenes and characters' lights in aim to make them look more realistic. In the example we see in this slide, matching two video games made during our Video Games Master, the right side is an open scenario with a forest, in which there is a certain environment lighting, and on the right side we can see a more closed scene, with a darker environment, that gives a dangerous feeling, as if something is hidden in there. About the lighting, here we can see two examples of how it is very important when transmitting feelings during a video game. Keeping up with the roles in the industry, in the part between art and programming we have the tech artist. The tech artist's role is the interaction between the art produced in the artistic part in the video game and the gameplay, so he is an intermediary between the artists and the programmers, which are two professional profiles with a lot of differences. He defines all the tools and techniques used in the artistic design in aim to be able to embed it in the gameplay later. He must have the ability to solve technical problems that might appear during the design. Usually, one of the biggest problems in the design is the excessive meshing, the excessive number of vertices the characters and the scenes have, and which makes all those vertices and faces slow the game when this modeling is embedded in the video game because there is too many data and the video game needs haste, and if there is a lot of data the video game loses interactivity. So the tech artist must solve those excessive modeling problems, and he needs to have a great graphic techniques knowledge, such as rendering, lighting, etc. The formation behind them is graphic design or illustration, but with certain graphic programming techniques knowledge which allows him to make possible this mediation between both fields. Programmers are usually informatic engineers, and they design the technical specifications of the video game. Using programming languages they program, design and write the graphic engine's or the gameplay codes. They are usually specialized, as there are engine programmers, which are the ones that make the generic code as we said before, and the gameplay programmers, which are two different profiles inside the programmers. One of the important roles is testing this code and correcting the possible errors there might be. They need a high knowledge on the programming languages, there is a programming paradigm which is oriented to objects and which is very used in video games programming; and knowing the video games developing platform so that he can program a video game in different platforms. And also he needs to have the capacity of solving problems and being tidy. Another important point of the video game is the audio. Later we will see an example on how the audio, the music, the sound, the sound effects... are important to achieve a good immersion in the game. So audio engineers have this mission: composing the music, designing sound effects, recording the dialogs, synchronizing them with the actors and the video game characters' lips or faces movements. As abilities they need a certain music composing abilities, and knowledge on sound engineering. Music is very important, as it can confer certain feelings to the video game, so choosing the correct music in the video game is important for those feelings wanted depending on the video game established design. As important formation they need to have musical and sound engineering knowledges. Testers have the purpose of identifying problems inside the video game, documenting those problems in aim to suggest improvements and analyzing the video game's performance and its playability. They are persons who have to play during a lot of time, and they need to test the game in many ways in aim to test all the possible behaviors of the characters, exits, etc. in aim to confirm that everything is correct and that there aren't any bad surprises in the program and that it doesn't lose control of the game. As abilities they need to have a great knowledge of the video games market, as well as being careful, organized and alert, because they will check possible programming errors but also possible errors on the design of a character, the hidings - when a part of a character gets inside or through another character and it looks weird, the textures being correct when put over the characters' meshes, etc. As formation they don't have a specific degree or studies, but a wide game experience which allows them to test and know how to trick the video game so that they see if it is valid or not. The producer is the project manager, and he coordinates and controls all the economical and time resources as he tries to solve the different problems that might appear during the development stages. He is the responsible for meeting the established deadlines, he has to have leadership, a good organization capacity and ability to manage the time and resources given. He is also the one to contact with the clients, the ones who finance the projects, which are the publishers, to sell their product or to offer them a certain product in which they might be interested on financing. They don't need a specific formation, but they need to have experience in projects, and in managing all this kind of resources, and they usually are informatic programmers or arts programmers, which have a lot of experience and they can assume this role. Publishers are the ones who somehow finance the projects based on proposals given by different enterprises and prototypes. If there is a prototype they like, they can finance all the posterior process. once it is financed they launch it to the market, they publish the video game, either making the physical part if the video game has a DVD format or similar, either making all the online download infrastructure. They also design the publicity campaign and make the video games' monetization. As capacities they need communication, organization, marketing, etc. and certain programming and art knowledges to understand the possible success or the possible innovation the game might have. They don't need a specific formation but it is important that they have experience on marketing and project managing.
