Practical Game Design

Development teams

In tiny independent teams, there can often be no space for designated product people (a term used to describe producers, game designers, and live operations managers). In such situations, game design responsibilities are distributed between the artists and programmers.

However, while a team with no designer may work well on a small indie scale (one to four people), the prospect of running a game team of more than five people without a designated designer is a very risky one. With the freedom of distributed design (colloquially called design by committee) often comes a lack of ownership and accountability. Making good design decision becomes increasingly difficult as the game is being pulled in different directions and lacks ...