Video game development and authorship, much like any other form of entertainment is frequently a cross disciplinary field. Video game developers, as employees within this industry are commonly referred, primarily include programmers and graphic designers. Although, over the years this has expanded to include almost every type of skill that you might see prevalent in any movie or television program including sound designers, musicians, and other technicians; all of which are managed by producers.
In the early days of the industry, it was more common for a single person to manage all of the roles needed to create a video game. As platforms have become more complex and powerful in the type of material they can present, larger teams have been needed to generate all of the art, programming, cinematography, and more. This is not to say that the age of the "one-man shop" is gone as this still occurs in the casual gaming and handheld markets where single screen games are more prevalent due to technical limitations of the target platform (such as cellphones and PDAs).
With the growth of the size of development teams in the industry the problem of cost has become more critical then ever. Development studios need to be able to pay their staff a competitive wage in order to attract and retain the best talent, while publishers are constantly on the look to keep costs down in order to maintain profitability on their investment. Typically, a video game console development team can range in sizes of anywhere from 5 to 50 people, with some teams exceeding 100.[citation needed] The growth of team size combined with greater pressures to get completed projects into the market to begin recouping production costs has led to a greater occurrence of missed deadlines and unfinished products;[citation needed] Duke Nukem Forever is the quintessential example of these problems.[citation needed]
- See also: Video game industry practices
Modifications
Games running on a PC are often designed with end-user modifications in mind,[citation needed] and this consequently allows modern computer games to be modified by gamers without much difficulty. These mods can add an extra dimension of replayability and interest. The Internet provides an inexpensive medium to promote and distribute mods, and they have become an increasingly important factor in the commercial success of some games.[citation needed] Developers such as id Software, Valve Software, Crytek, Epic Games and Blizzard Entertainment ship their games with the very development tools used to make the game in the first place, along with documentation to assist mod developers, which allows for the kind of success seen by popular mods such as the (previously) Half-Life mod Counter-Strike.
Cheats
Cheating in computer games may involve cheat codes implemented by the game developers,[11][12] modification of game code by third parties,[13][14] or players exploiting a software glitch. Modifications are facilitated by either cheat cartridge hardware or a software trainer.[13] Cheats usually make the game easier by providing an unlimited amount of some resource; for example lives, health, and/or ammunition.[12][13] Other cheats might provide an unusual or amusing feature, like altered game colors or graphical appearances.
Glitches
Software errors not detected by software testers during development can find their way into released versions of computer and video games. This may happen because the glitch only occurs under unusual circumstances in the game, was deemed too minor to correct, or because the game development was hurried to meet a publication deadline. Glitches can range from minor graphical errors to serious bugs that can delete saved data or cause the game to malfunction. Glitches in games for home computers, and now in consoles like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, may be later corrected if the developers release a patch.
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