Game Testing All in One (Game Development Series)

Organizing the Teams

It's not enough to have someone around to fill the various roles described in the previous sections. Each person knows their relationship to one another in their company. Likewise, they should know and understand their relationship to the other team members of the specific game they are working on.

One way to organize teams is to appoint a single person in charge of the game, which could be the project manager or the designer, for example, and let them form a team that will stay together from one project to another. This is a good way to maintain continuity and efficiency between multiple releases or patches in the same series. Although this may create problems for people who don't feel their role or contributions are sufficiently appreciated by their boss, it does make it easy to resolve conflicts and make decisions within the team since everyone is accountable to the same person.

Another way to create game teams is to have a matrix organization, where the team members have a person who they work for ‚ usually one of the senior or lead people in their discipline, but when they are on a game project, they are also accountable to the person in charge of that game. Staffing each game is like choosing sides for a softball game. Once the team roster is filled, the remaining people go back to their current assignments or stand ready to be picked for the next team that gets formed . At any given time the choices may be limited by who is already committed to working on a different game, and any people who are designated as "off-limits" for one reason or another.

In this matrixed organization, the roles assigned to each contributor can be shown in a table or matrix, as in Figure 4.4. It is also possible to have people who are not assigned to any one specific project, but who act as " floaters " in order to assist any of the active projects on an as-needed basis.

Figure 4.4: Job role/project assignment matrix.

In small game companies, there may only be enough people for one game at a time, so the same person may have different roles. The team from Digital Eel that created the game Dr. Blob's Organism includes one person who contributed to code, design, and art, and another who worked on the design, art, and sound. A simple chart or email can let everyone know who is doing what.