In this excerpt, Cara Ellison connects games to live theater, which I think is quite interesting. Having been involved with theater in the past, I began to think back to the times when I was dead in the middle of tech week and there was a lot of work and collaboration happening. When I do work on a show, I usually am in charge of the lights. This position, in particular, requires collaboration with many other “departments” within a production. You have to coordinate with the director so you can understand his/her vision and make it happen and so that you understand the blocking and where the actors will be on stage, you have to coordinate with the set designer/carpenter to make sure you’ll have enough light to cover the whole set, you have to coordinate with the stage manager to make sure there is a clear understanding with the number of cues and where they should be called, the list goes on.
After reading this excerpt, this is what I imagine what it is like to make video games. The illustrators collaborating with the 3D modeling team and the 3D modeling team collaborating with the animation team and the lighting team and the sound team, and so on. For me, this was a very strong analogy and I now have a better understanding of the amount of work and collaboration that goes into making a video game.