Hi, my name's Enric Martí, I'm professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and coordinator of the master in Video Games Creation. Inside our "Video Games" course, we will introduce the Module 4: video games components and their roles. The contents will be the following: First, an introduction on the contents of this module, after that we will talk on the different components of a video game, the current roles in the video games industry, we will also talk on the different milestones that have to be done during a video game production, and we will talk about the 3C's in video games development, which are three important characteristics we must take into account during the production of a video game. As an introduction, to know what's behind, what exists in a video game we must know two main things: On one hand, what are the components of a video game, what are the different modules that compose it, and on the other hand, the different roles we can find in the industry, which are the professional profiles of the people who works with and produces video games Inside the first part, the components of a video game, we have three main parts. On one side, game design and levels, which is the conceptual design of the game, the different levels it should have, marking the objectives, the kind of game, their structure or the logics. From this design, there are two main parts: one is the art, the characters design and creation, their animation and their modeling in the 3D scene, and the other one is the programming part, in which the graphic mode is put along with the gameplay, which would be the so-called video game. Concerning to arts, they use different tools to produce those characters, such as 3D Studio Max, Maya, Blender, etc. Talking on programming, it is very important to know programming languages and being able to program those modules with both graphics engine and gameplay. Languages such as C, C++ and Shades are important, as well as graphic libraries such as XNA are important to make this programming module. The three phases continuously interact between them. To sum up: first we have a video game design, which defines the video game, and parting from it we either get the art part or the programming part, but while those parts are being made the game designers will check if the produced parts from both arts and programming are what the designers expected. So, in the production phase, the three modules continuously feed each other back. Inside a video games modules, we can tell apart two main parts: the gameplay, which is the blue part on the left side, and the graphic engine, which is the red right side. Parting from the graphic engine, we see there are different modules, such as the Artificial Intelligence, the physics module, the camera module, the lights module, the cinematics module, etc. The graphic mode has components which can be used in one or many games. This means they are generic codes and subroutines. On the left side we have the gameplay, which is the programming made for a concrete game. On one side we have the game states. Each character has a mode, a state, in which it is defined, and so its behavior depends on this state. Once we know this state we render it, we visualize it on the screen through the characters' 3D models and textures we have. How do we modify this character? Well, we do it through the user's graphic interface, which will do it through different devices such as a mouse, a keyboard, a joystick, etc. and by this he will influence on the game characters' stats, so that they change their behavior and are able to do different things. We can also take into account database modules which are on the top side, if there are different users, players, many scores, when we need to save alphanumeric or textual information on the different hits that have happened through the game. Online games have the internet connection, which allows different players to play in the same scene or the same game environment. Now we have this generic description of those two modules, we will explain each of them more accurately. As we said before, the graphic engine is a group of programming subroutines already made. Big video games producers have an extra value for their business on their graphic engine, as it allows them to have a certain technological advantage on the competition. They can contain many subroutines, basically all that includes 3D visualization functions, geometric transformations, movement, rotation, etc. as well as all the parts of textures, lights, light effects, Artificial Inteligence... so that we can calculate the characters' behavior based on their environment and physical simulation and the managing of collisions when talking on ball drops, objects falling down, water and particle effects, etc. There is a wide motor graphics offer. Some of them are free code software, some are free to use and some need a license. As examples we have Ogre 3D, Unreal Engine and Unity, which is being established as the standard one lately. About the gameplay, it is the video game itself, which can be both on DVD support or downloadable. The platform in which we are playing is very important, as the platform's operating system conditions the gameplay and it has the user's interface, which is how we present the game's information to the user such as data, and provides immersion, real-time game control, characters' and scenes models that have been previously made in the artistic part and will be embedded on the gameplay. The cinematics and gameplay use all the graphic engine subroutines that have been previously designed.