10 Biggest Misconceptions You Have About Video Game Developers
3. We All Follow A Single Genius Dev Into Battle
Not in my nearly decade-and-a-half of industry time have I ever come into contact with Auteur Genius Person, a mythical figure that apparently directs and controls the themes, imagery, flow and construction of every game.
Yet this belief pervades into so many situations in the game industry - how often have you seen a journalist writing about a game in development, and instead of mentioning the developers working on it, they exclusively credit a Miyamoto or Kojima for all that work instead?
After Metal Gear Solid 5 was released, I read articles which credited Hideo Kojima alone for level design, artistic direction, character designs, control choices, UI, and even editing on the trailers. Now, I’m not saying a single person couldn’t have some kind of involvement in each area, but no one person has Borg-levels of hivemind control over fifty, eighty, even three-hundred talented developers with complete, faultless authority.
When it comes to game creation, the game largely unfolds as it’s made. Design documents aren’t iron-clad contracts - when a feature turns out to not work in practice as well as it did in theory, those documents tend to alter to better befit the new circumstances. This means that each developer has to think on the fly, try out some new things, then perhaps pitch those “fixed” elements to their team leaders as and when necessary.
Whether it’s in AAA or the independent space, the “auteur genius” thing is something of a myth, and if past experience is anything to go by, the only teams where one person has complete creative control over a project are... well, the teams where only one person’s on it.