this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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Game Development
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Sorry, but you are wrong. Everyone on the team is a game developer. Game developer is a term for those who make games. They develop the game. You can't restrict the term "developer" to those who just write code. A developer in the classic term just someone who develops. Develops is a term to create or construct. Thus a game developer is anyone who creates or constructs a game. This can be an engineer, designer, artist, etc.
I've been in the games industry for a decade and can tell you that this isn't a debate or even up for question for those experienced in the field. It's simply how we give credit to the whole team. A game engineer is one who writes code for the game, a developer is anyone on the team who works toward creating the game. Also, you should learn to respect marketing. Done right and respectfully, it's a powerful way to connect to your audience. Just like a community manager.
Overall don't gatekeep titles. It's not great and would be like if someone came along and challenged you on calling yourself "indie". Overall it's not a good feel or look.
Idk man.. seems like that would make GameDev mean anything and nothing. Just for the record, I have no stakes in this discussion, I really don't care. I just find it weird to blur a word like that. Is the game company's canteen cook also a game dev? The person who plugged in the monitors? The CEO? The HR person? And so on..
I agree tho that this entire discussion feels a little like gatekeeping and would prefer everyone getting some credit for the game development over pedantic hairsplitting.
A game developer doesn't mean anything and nothing. It's someone who works on the game. So in a typical conversation with a player, a player would likely want to ask a game developer a question, that question could be best answered by a designer, artist, engineer, creative director, or even marketing. It really depends on the question but the player is just going to request a "game developer"