Category Archives: Career Advice
The Many Meanings Behind The Term “Game Developer”
When I first started in the game industry over thirty-five years ago, I was kind of embarrassed to admit to people that I was a game developer; it sounded like a job that a real grown-up shouldn’t have. Or, when I did admit it, people would look confused at first and then say, “Oh, you’re a programmer.” That was true for my first couple of years in the game industry, until I became a game producer, and then it was hard to explain to people what I do for a living.
These days, it’s kind of cool to be a game developer — especially if you’re an indie game developer. But a lot of people are confused about what a game developer is, even the people who say they want to be one. Many think that a game developer is a game programmer, but that’s not necessarily so.
A game developer is a person or company that makes games. It’s a broad term that covers actually a lot of territory.
A company that makes games is also called a game studio. An example is Insomniac Games, the game developer that created Spyro the Dragon and Ratchet & Clank.
A game studio is not the same as a game publisher, which is a company that finances, markets and sells games. Electronic Arts is an example of a game publisher. Many game publishers also are game developers or own game studios to make some of the games they publish. However, an independent game studio, like Insomniac, is not owned or controlled by a game publisher and is free enter into publishing agreements with different companies.
Now, an indie game developer is not necessarily the same as an independent game studio. Indie developers are small teams or individuals who usually work without significant financial support of a video game publisher or other outside source. But a large and successful independent game studio might be comprised of multiple development teams and their projects are usually funded by a publisher with whom they have a publishing agreement.
Confused? It gets worse. As I said above, a game developer can either be a company or an individual.
When talking about game developers as individuals, most people assume that a game developer is the same as a game programmer. It is true that game programmers are indeed often called “developers”, as well as “coders” and “engineers”, but actually the term “game developer” can apply to any person on a game development team: a designer, an artist, an audio specialist, a producer, or a tester.
Then there are those people who say they want to be a game developer, thinking that they will be doing the design AND programming AND art AND audio on a game. Everything. And not just a casual browser game — they mean a AAA game like Call of Duty or League of Legends. These are the people who don’t realize that AAA games are made by teams numbering in the hundreds, with each person doing a very specialized task.
So, the next time you hear someone say they want to be a “game developer”, ask them for specifics about what they want to do. That alone will tell you how much they really understand the game industry.
How Do Game Developers Make Money?
Whenever I get an incoming class of new game students, I ask them, “How many of you are enrolled here just because you like playing video games and want to learn more about their hobby?” No hands raised. Then I follow up with, “How many of you want to actually make money at game development?” Every hand goes up.
So, exactly how do you make money by making games?
Well, the first thing you should know, I tell my students, is that most computer games do not “make money”, and by “make money” I mean “earn a profit”. The estimates for the percentage of games that break even (earn the amount of money that they cost to make) is 5-30%, and that figure certainly doesn’t count all the games made by indie developers released through the App Store or on a web portal.
Most games earn money by being bought in a “brick & mortar” store (such as GameStop) or downloaded from a virtual store, like App Store, and the developer receives a percentage of the sales.
In recent years, many game developers have adopted a “free-to-play” model, allowing gamers to download their games and play them for free. So how do they make money? There are three basic techniques:
- Sell additional levels, assets or features.
- Sell virtual goods (such as power-ups and decorative items) as micro transactions.
- Sell eyeballs (incorporate advertising).
- Work for hire. The publisher pays the developer a negotiated fee for developing the game, and then they part ways. The developer gets no money from sales or other revenues, and has no other rights to the game, including to its characters.
- Publishing license agreement. The publisher pays the developer an advance against royalties for developing the game; that is, the publisher pays the developers costs for making the game — but not all at once; the publisher pays the money out in increments when the developer completes pre-negotiated deliverables, called milestones. Then when the game is sold at retail, the developer gets a royalty; that is, a percentage of the sales — but not until after the advances have been earned out.
Let’s say the publisher advanced the developer $5M for developing the game. The developer will not receive one penny of royalties until the game has sold enough that the developer’s percentage of the sales would have been $5M. (Note that in all my years in the game industry, have I have never known a developer who worked on a project for me to have earned any royalties). In a publishing license agreement, the developer may also be granted certain rights, such as right of first refusal to make a sequel, or a percentage of character merchandise rights.
Of course, that’s if the developer is publishing its own game.
If a developer works for a publisher, then there are two main models.
Of course, the way most of us in the game industry is by working for someone else who is taking these risks. But even then, there is some risk involved. As an employee, there is a risk of getting laid off, which happens far too frequently in the game industry. As a contractor, there is a risk that your client won’t pay you for your work, which has happened a couple of times to me, too.
So, as I tell my students, don’t make games merely because you hope to get rich. Instead, do it because you can’t imaging doing anything else, despite the risks.
David Mullich 