It’s not wrong if you use the word developer to mean someone who gets something “developed”, and that etymology goes way further back than computers. The people who write code are then both programmers and developers.
According to etymonline.com, “the modern uses are figurative and emerged in English 18c. and after: Transitive meaning “unfold more fully, bring out the potential in” is by 1750;”
In the context of video games, developer has a specific meaning. Even if you do something that can be considered literally development of some kind, in the context of video games you are not a developer. You develop an opinion about a game and tell it? That is called reviewer. You develop a funny voice for a game character? That is called voice acting. You develop a marketing strategy to sell the game? That is marketing and advertising and such. But not developer.
I asked you where and you cited a descriptive meaning from a dictionary.An entry that does not even deal with the usage of the word after 1960. The modern usage is maybe 30 years old.
I ask again: where? "is used". By whom? What context?
Would you call a Software Engineer an Engineer? I would not. Context matters. If you call a Game Developer an Engineer, it is as wrong as the usage of Developer for Voice Actors. The usage of developer emerged for people that create software in the broadest sense, like web, games, and of course, apps, as programms are called nowadays.
If you can cite a meaningful usage, be sure to update wikipedia disambiguation page for developer , so more people can know about the usage of that word. Because they only know software, land and photo for developer (and that is the chemical and not the person).
The term "Game Developer" is quite abstract and have different meanings for referring to a single person or a team.
If the context is a team or a studio, then yes, everybody working in a Game development studio can be considered a game developer.
If the context is within that studio, then when we say developer we refer to an engineer, and yes, in a professional game company it's very common to refer programmers as engineers or developers, so this is wrong: "Would you call a Software Engineer an Engineer? I would not" in that context. We do that quite often in the company.
You can call the studio itself a developer, that is correct. But parts of the whole are not automatically named the same as the whole.
I want to give you an analogy. A car manufacturer. The company is a car manufacturer. The janitor working there is not. The people assembling cars there are on a trivial hair splitting level "car manufaturers", but they would go by their job description.
Or would you call the janitor in a big game studio a game developer? Where do you draw the line? You said, everybody working there... ;-)
And calling a software engineer only by the term engineer sounds wrong, because engineer alone refers to other activities. This is like air taxi and taxi. Both are taxis on a trivial level. But if you say taxi, people understand ground vehicle, not an airplane. If you are talking in established context, you could get away with dropping the qualifier software or air.
Even though it's not accurate (after all that's why we have terms like Game designer, artist, developer and so on), but I don't find it wrong when someone working in a game development (not as a programmer) call him/herself a Game Developer, as I said it can be associated as a broader term as well.
Edit: These are just semantics, and they tend to change over time
Well, the guy making this thread tried to include reviewers of games...
English might not be my native language, but the internet is english and developer has a meaning in this context. Since maybe 20-30 years. And that meaning is writing code. If you do html, you are a web developer, if you write software, you are software developer, if your software is games, you are game developer. I would guess it started with some coders looking for a fancy word.
Do creators of board games and table top games call themselves game developers? I think they tend to go by game designers.At least wikipedia calls the inventors of such games designers. But board games are a lot older then the computer stuff. And that is the thing , in computer context lots of words are repurposed. Like mouse. Or developer.
What kinda was tried here, is to step back and reenter with descriptive meaning of the repurposed word, to include additional meaning. Just look at that citings of 18th century meaning of the word developer.
I could also try to rename developers as writers. They write code, do they not. So they are just like journalists, book authors and other writers ;-)
You're taking semantics far too seriously, the main point of the thread is not the semantics itself, as you noticed it's just a boy trying say a reviewer also takes participation on the development of a game (which, you guessed, is BS). Whether the term developer applies or not is just detail.
And yes your last example is a good example on how semantics can be deceiving, there's a job called "Tech Writer" in which is usually the one responsible for developing documentation and user experience related stuff, most of them also code.
This is what I said " I agree with the part that you seem to try to claim that everybody involved in the creation of the game deserves similar recognition."
If that was not clear enough, I was giving you a chance to make your point, but all you had was just offensive trash talk, you failed.
I could go edit that to make it clear what I think about you now kid.
I'm done with you, you need to learn how to respect and talk like an adult before talking to me or anyone, I'm not even going to read your answer anymore.
They can't handle the truth. Even opinions and publications, forums, feedback, all develop games, how? they open debates and dialogue about mechanics, a games direction and or theme and tone, opinions, etc. All mental factors that can effect as far as to if a game even GETS made.
Modern society has just went crazy on confusing compartmentalizing and segregation as the same thing.
