I often had folks in leadership roles in game development act like certain specialties were the kind of thing "anyone can do." As in, we won't spend money to hire for that role--"just have [insert other discipline] do it."
For a long time, the "anyone can do it" expertise was design. There were many years where "designer" existed as a discipline but studios insisted game design was "just common sense" and "anyone on the team could do it."
That vibe still permeates game development as an undercurrent, but that's partly because there are many misunderstandings about what designers actually DO. It's true that anyone on the team can have the next great idea. That's how it should work!
Designers add more ideas to the pool, assimilate, interpret, combine, and create to craft the player's experience. People who think "anyone can do it" don't really understand the process of execution.
I've seen the same "anyone can do it" approach being tossed around about audio engineers, QA and writers. Those are all specialties, with hard-earned experience and a lot to add to development processes.
What triggered my mini-rant tonight was hearing that yet another game dev company exec has decided not to hire writers because "the designers can do it." A) The designers have enough to do already, and B) Writing fiction, dialogue and narrative is a specific, expert discipline.
Can designers write documentation, UI strings, item names, and even marketing copy? Sure! I'd say those are specialties too but in a pinch, designers can often fill in. But dialogue? Characters? Narrative threads? That's expert-level writing, and a very specific skill.
At that point, saying "We won't hire writers. Designers can do it!" really is equivalent to saying, "We won't hire artists! Programmers can do it!" And even beyond how it affects your game's quality... how insulting is that attitude to professional writers?
