Hello,

I am a programmer from an indie game created in the Unreal Engine 3, the full engine, not just UDK. And we are releasing our game very soon, and it is as good as done.

Now my question is about job titles, I am not native English. So already because of that, I do not know the exact rules of job titles in English. And I tried to find out which job title fits me most (For the credits in the game) But I don't really know what fits me and my colleagues best.

Basically we are 2 programmers who did all the work for 2 years almost 24/7, and some programmers who helped us out (or tried to help) in their spare time a couple hours in the week for a couple of weeks.

Now as you probably understand, calling us all equal programmers in the credits, doesn't seem fair to me and the other programmer that put this much work in. But I don't know what would be the right way of doing this.

Example: We could call ourselves Senior programmer, and the others programmers

But I read somewhere, a senior programmer would at least have 10 years of experience in programming. Now I have more then 10 years of experience in all sorts off game development practices, and so does my colleague, including 3D moddeling, level, game design and all sorts of different game engines. But for this project we are mainly the programmers, and we both have just 5-6 years of experience in this.

Is there something between senior programmer and programmer? Or would you suggest another way of approaching this matter?

Thanks for any advice in advance!

Unless you have a contractual obligation (verbal or otherwise) to identity someone, you needn't mention anyone specifically.

Alternatively, avoiding any specific terms like "Senior" or other type of programmer, you could give credit as follows, if appropriate:

"Created by:

Me

The-Other-Fulltime-Person

With the help of:

Helper1

Helper2

..."

You could use 'additional programming' to describe the people who only did a little bit.

I'd say that you could get away with calling yourselves senior programmers with 5-6 years. It is a little bit of a stretch but hardly a complete piss-take. After all, you could be technical directors, heads of programming, CTOs or lead programmers, so describing yourselves just as senior programmers is showing some restraint.

Ah thanks for the replies! Both good ideas how to approach this, I will discuss with the other programmer what we will do with it! :)

Is there something between senior programmer and programmer? Or would you suggest another way of approaching this matter?

You might call yourselves 'lead programmers', and the others just 'programmers' or 'additional programming by'.

The phrase 'lead programmer' implies that you shouldered the bulk of the responsibility, but doesn't necessarily make any claims about your prior experience.

Alternately the people who assisted could be listed as "contributors". Lead developer sounds acceptable as a title for the main guys to me...

But I read somewhere, a senior programmer would at least have 10 years of experience in programming

Also worth mentioning that this would typically be defined in terms of years employed in industry, not just programming in general.

Years spent in college, learning on your own, or working on personal projects don't count. And years spent on indie projects only count if you publish and the title is at least moderately successful.

I remember old SNES games had lead programmers, object programmers, sound programmers etc although some of these might sound odd now. (Eg: sound is usually an mp3/ogg vorbis, not a tracker that actively plays waves of piano,drum or violin sounds as on an Amiga or SNES)

Yeah in my experience, non-full-time staff get the "additional" prexix.
e.g. programming / additional programming.

Thanks for all the replies, at least we have some valueble ideas how to approach this :)