Key Terms in Game Development

Animator

The role in a game development team responsible for creating the animations for a game. This role often split into further specializations, such as character animator or effects animator.

Area of Effect

Denotes an attack or spell that occurs within a defined area and inflicts damage on all enemies within that area.

Art Director

The role in a game development team in charge of maintaining consistency over the look and visual style of the game.

Black Box

Used to refer to a stage in a production pipeline or product where the inner workings are not readily visible. While developers may have control over the input to and output from this stage, the process inside the stage is not accessible.

Bounding Box

The cage volume of a 3D object. It is defined by the farthest vertex of the mesh on all axes.

Buff

A mechanism that imbues greater powers on a character or an object in a game for a length of time. For example, a power up that adds strength to a character.

Concept Art

Any manner of sketch, painting, drawing, or illustration that defines the look of a character, prop, or environment. This is often produced in an iterative process, involving multiple stages of critique and revision.

Concept Artist

The role in a game development team that creates art to represent the look and feel of future game assets.

Debuff

An attack or similar damage-causing mechanism that adversely affects the usefulness of a prop, or health of a character. This may inflict damage, or simply make a character more vulnerable to damage from other attacks.

Environment

The rooms, terrain, buildings or other area in which the game takes place.

Freemium

A monetization strategy for a game, where players are allowed to play a basic game at no cost. In order to unlock additional levels or content, the player must then purchase the game, or purchase additional content that integrates with the free version.

Game Designer

The role in a game development team responsible for designing and often implementing the game play and game mechanics of a game. This role may range from conceptual design during pre-production, to scripting for and implementing of GameObjects into the game editor or engine.

Game Mechanic

Define how the game will be played, and processes by which a player can win, lose, score, survive, die, and so forth.

Gray Box or White Box

A prototype phase, which is defines by the creation of simple primitives to mock up aspects of a game, such as a level. It is called this because it is generally composed of cubes and other primitive objects without any materials. The purpose of this type of prototype is to test and iterate quickly on an aspect of the game, often a level, to assess whether it is entertaining, well-balanced, well-defined and so forth.

Level

Constitutes the total accessible area of a game for a player at a certain stage, often with a discrete objective that must be attained to move on. This can also refer to the advancement in skill or powers of a character during game play.

Level Designer

The role in a game development team in charge of designing the level by defining the paths the player will have to navigate, where the enemies will be placed and in general setting up how the level is going to look. Their tasks will also be significantly variable depending on the genre of the game.

Microtransaction

A business model allowing users or players to purchase virtual goods or services in a game, conducted in small payments.

Model Sheet

An illustration of a character that is composed of several paintings. These represent different poses and actions that may also include some facial expressions and color palette.

Modeler

The role in a game development team that creates digital models for implementation in a game. This may be done with a variety of tools, such as Autodesk 3ds Max, Autodesk Maya, or Blender, and also may incorporate digital sculpting tools such as Pixelogic ZBrush or Autodesk Mudbox.

Pathfinding

The ability for Non-Player Characters (NPCs) to be able to understand the environment and move through it without colliding with obstacles, the player, or other NPCs.

Platform

Refers to the specific hardware a game will be deployed to, such as PC, mobile, console, web, and VR.

Power Up

A special feature or collectable that the Player can use in order to perform special actions.

Rigger

The role in a game development team that creates the skeleton and controls for a character or object that will be featured in a game.

Simple Ad

An advertisement that plays between levels or scenes in a game and may be skipped by the player by default.

Skybox

Surrounds the scene in a game and represents the infinitely far horizon.

Spawn

The instancing of a player or NPC into a level. This may occur at random or fixed points, depending on the game design.

Targeted Attack

A strike from a character to a pre-selected target, such as another character.

Technical Artist

The role in a game development team that communicates between the programming and the design teams.

Texturing

The process of creating bitmaps that will be applied to the shaders of the 3D objects.

UV Coordinates

Projections of a 3D mesh converted to 2D space.