When people talk about game development careers, what’s usually mentioned are designers, artists, and programmers. That’s it. That's game development in a nutshell.
Well, for most people, anyway.
That’s far off the whole picture.
Video games, especially modern ones, require much more than just those three to be fully developed.
After they're launched, they become actual worlds, and those worlds need to be cared for. These games could have millions of players and an online community, so in order to stay fun and safe, someone has to look after it. That 'someone' is a team of specialists that don't get nearly the amount of credit they deserve.
Read on to see what happens behind the scenes.
The Roles That Keep Games Running After Launch
Nowadays, you don't just build a game and move on. There’s A LOT to be done once the game goes live. This mostly has to do with how the consumers react to the game and how they play it (behave).
Think about it – you’ve developed the game, you’ve playtested it a lot, and you've marketed the entire thing, built up hype and all that.
Once the game goes live, only then will you start finding out whether the actual players like the game. These same players will surely discover lots of other bugs that were missed during playtesting. There are surely a few exploits that will be found by more adamant players and/or speedrunners.
You’ll see how players appreciate the content, and surely those same players will ask for more things that they would like to see in the game.
And after all that comes safety.
Is the game safe for players? How well is it moderated? Is the game age-restricted, or will it target kids? Players' communities can sometimes become very toxic; how will you tackle that issue? What if there’s a massive issue that happens in-game and it affects real people in a negative way? What if some players decide to use in-game mechanics to exploit other players? Who (and how) will handle that?
There are a lot of things that need to be continuously done AFTER launch. Let’s see which game development career paths specialize in these ‘after-launch’ issues and what they actually do.
Trust & Safety Operations Specialists
While most players play nicely, some wake up and choose violence. There’s not much we can do about it. It’s not like we know everything about everyone. We only get to know these ‘nasty’ players once they’re actually inside the game.
Who deals with them? Trust & safety operations specialists do.
Any in-game bullying needs to be detected and dealt with. Otherwise, the game creators seem as if bullying is allowed. And since there will likely be millions of interactions between players each and every day, there are a lot of chances where your expertise will be required.
T&S Operations Specialists sift through player reports against other players (using the in-game report ticket mechanic), and they have to check whether there’s any harassment/bullying (or worse) happening. T
The game rules need to be carefully written, and T&S Specialists need to know them by heart.
On top of all of this – even though the game Terms and Conditions might be clear – in this career path, you need to have sound judgement. This is because there will be plenty of situations where it's unclear who’s at fault, or whether there IS actual fault, but something still needs to be done about the situation. So you’ll have to rely on your knowledge AND your gut feeling to make a decision that might affect someone’s (in-game) life.
Also, these specialists review reports made by players to see if anyone is cheating or harassing others.
And when you think of incidents like Roblox child safety claims, you can understand just how important these experts are.
Without them, the entire game community would steer towards anarchy.
Moderation Tooling Analysts
These experts don't moderate anything themselves.
They focus on designing and improving internal tools that moderation teams use every day. Moderation Tooling Analysts have the task of making sure the ticket reporting system is easy to use.
There’s no point in having such a mechanic if a child can’t use it.
What they also do is gather and analyze data that the ticketing system provides, and they constantly check whether the entire system can be improved in some way. For example, if another issue category could be added to separate two similar issues that seem to gather massive volumes of tickets. This would make the ticketing system more precise, and it would allow for the actual tickets to be dealt with more easily.
If you have a data analyst background, then you’d fit into this role nicely. It’s not uncommon for UX designers to choose this career path.
The main goal of a Moderation Tooling Analyst is to make the safety team(s) more accurate and more efficient.
This also helps prevent reviewer burnout, which is a serious issue.
Naturally, it also helps protect the players better.
Player Behavior Researchers
These are the social scientists of the game world.
They dig deep into data to see not just what players do but why they do it. They use methods like telemetry analysis and behavioral clustering in order to see which systems might cause conflict or why certain groups of players quit.
As useful as numbers are, they're even more useful when you know why they are how they are, and these are the people who make that possible.
Thanks to Player Behavior Researchers, both game designers and community managers can make better decisions while working.
The goal here is simple – create a healthier game environment/experience for the players.
Policy and Ruleset Architects
It's one thing to write a rule that says you can't be mean. But to make it clear enough and enforce it? To make 10 million users adhere to it?
That's insanely hard.
That's why these architects exist. They translate broad values and legal requirements into specific guidelines that can be tested. They work between the legal, design, and community teams to ask the questions nobody wants to ask.
What exactly counts as bullying?
How do we prove it occurred? Because of what they do, there's no inconsistency and confusion that accompanies vague rules.
Live Operations Risk Coordinators
Live operations risk coordinators are like the game's radar system. As you well know, modern games aren't static, and there's always something happening. A big event, an update, an influencer saying they play this-and-this, which causes a spike in the number of players, etc.
All of these are reasons to check if everything works as it should, and the only reason this position even exists is that games have become actual live services.
They're always evolving, and somebody has to keep it all in check.
Conclusion
Maybe instead of just coding or designing a dragon, you could be the one who writes the rules for its kingdom, or the entire world?
It goes without saying that you have to love games in order to do any of these jobs and not hate every day of your life. But if you love the messy, chaotic humans who play them, then you're kinda perfect for a job that goes on behind the scenes.
Basically, you'd be the Living Tribunal of the game world – making sure everyone plays by the rules and making sure everyone is safe and has a voice.
No soul (player) is left forgotten.
