The Game Developer's Dictionary: A Multidisciplinary Lexicon for Professionals and Students (Hardcover)

The video game industry has evolved. What was at first hobbyists working in their spare time in school labs or converted garages has grown into veteran specialists working in high-rise offices and multimillion-dollar studios. Some of these professionals came from those early days of video game development, but many emerged from other disciplines, including traditional game design, art, software programming, film animation, screenwriting, engineering, music production, and many more. Each of them brought along their own language--a collection of terms and definitions relevant to their field--which filtered in and out of the industry as they did. Games continued to change and so did the way we talked about them. Confusion inevitably arose as each discipline had, up until then, been largely independent and therefore had its own unique vocabulary. For example, what was known as "value" by an artist would have been called "brightness" by a programmer (to whom value meant something else entirely). "Theme" had a different meaning to a game designer than it did to a writer. A common language had not, and still has not, developed; yet in order for the members of any multidisciplinary venture to communicate efficiently, it must. THE GAME DEVELOPER'S DICTIONARY is the first attempt to collect the terms and phrases used within all avenues of game development, and define them, with hundreds of definitions covering game art, design, programming, production, writing, and sound. Terms are categorized alphabetically and by discipline so that entries can be accessed quickly and easily. The book emphasizes creating an understanding between the game development disciplines - great care has been exercised to define terms in ways that someone outside the related area of expertise can easily grasp. A survey of game industry job titles and their descriptions is also included.