Game Development – Process

Game Development – Process • Alessandro Canossa • alec@itu.dk • Mark Nelson • mjas@itu.dk Spring 2010 www.itu.dk

Game development is primarily an act of communication, the limits of your language are the limits of your world. Ludvig Wittengstein

Game development • Game development is a process by which a video game is produced. Development of games is undertaken by a developer, which may range from a single person to a large business. Typically, large-scale commercial games are created by development teams within a company specializing in computer or console games. Development is normally funded by a publisher. In the early era of home computers and video game consoles in the early 1980s, a single programmer could handle almost all the tasks of developing a game. However, the requirements of modern commercial games far exceed the capabilities of a single developer and require the splitting of responsibilities.

conceptualization • If you have with your game some goals (e.g. Make the best selling iPhone game), you should know about your competitors, know the market, trends etc. In this phase you should analyse and plan everything. This phase is really important if you want to success! There's nothing worse than developing X years a game and then get to know that there's practically nobody to play it.

Pre-production • Create a game design concept, then the game design document where you can define all game mechanisms and principles. In this phase the only tool for many developers is paper and pencil - don't hesitate to make sketches along with your concept and try to prove as early as possible whether your concept is really working as a game. You can save a lot of time here!

Production 1: design and development • With a game design document in your hand you can start with the real game development, involving programmers, graphic artists and all other members of the team. In this phase you have to stick to your game design document although small changes are still in order.

Production 2: development and testing • Testing is the link that closes the circle between Design and Development - you should test every piece of code you made on your game. Not just bug testing but also experience testing. Phenomenological debugging.

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User Research and QA Determine workflow, schedules, deliverables Perform research Set up participant recruitment pipeline Track findings Determine research methodology needs Ongoing implementation process Get feedback from dev/management stakeholders Determine staffing needs Understand dev team/franchise needs and wants

Developmentmethods: waterfall and iteration

Vision document • The game's title (and subtitle) with an appropriate cover image • Company contact information • The game's High Concept, Hook, and One-Sentence Marketing Description • A bullet-point listing of the game's key features • A brief description of the game's Setup • A succinct narrative description of actual gameplay • A brief description of the game's Victory Conditions • Plenty of good concept art and screen shots (or at least screen mock-ups) • A controller diagram (if one is used) • All set in a unique binding (to set it apart from other Vision Documents) that itself helps convey the essence of the game.

Design Parameters Media: Digital or Analog Genre: Category (ontology) Epoch: Setting (fiction, non fiction) Scope: how much time / space are covered by the game? (battle or campaign) Scale: level of closeness to objects (soldier or army) Perspective: point of view

Treatment (10/30 pages) • 1 Title Page (and a short tagline to indicate what it’s about) • 2 Executive Summary (bulletpoints) • 3 Game Overview • High Concept • Genre • Hooks (USPs) • License (if any) • Gameplay Highlights • Technology Highlights • Art and Audio Highlights • Hardware • 4 Production Details • Current Status • Development Team • Budget • Schedule • Competition • 5 Game World • Backstory • Objective • Characters • Mission or Story Progression

Maintain a developer’s diary Diary will make up 50% of the exam Documentation of your tasks in developement You should be able to give talks and presentations (as your guests will) • Daily tasks • Challenges • Rewards • Workflow • People you report to • People that report to you • Role changing during development • What you neet to start your work • What you deliver when you are finished • Tools, pipeline and processes

Questions?

Game Development – Process