Game Development and Production by Devon

@agatestudio
Game
Development and
Production
Devon
Clerics
Agate Studio

@agatestudio@agatestudio@agatestudio
BOOK REVIEW BY ERIK BETHKE
PART I

INTRODUCTION TO GAME
DEVELOPMENT
PART I

WHAT DOES THIS BOOK COVER?
Chapter I

How to Make a Game
• Not Covered :
– Technical thing (introductions to C++, discuss the
construction of an RTS)
– Which development methodologies or how to be smart
about outsourcing portions
• Covered:
– Discusses failed and successful project management
techniques from writers own experience as well as the
experience of a multitude of other development studios

First Have a Plan
• Games that have a poor development methodology
(or none) take much longer than they should, run
over budget, and tend to be unreasonably buggy
• This book show how to use formalized methods such
as the UML’s use case diagram, etc.
• Even if working on a solo project.

Organize Your Team Effectively
• This book discusses how to create task visibility so
everyone knows what needs to do and how far along the
rest are in their tasks
• Controlling feature creep, reaching alpha, freezing new
features are critical to finishing your game.
• All of the mega-hits kept their feature sets narrow and
the polish deep. (Their feature set is small but polished to
a superior degree)
• All the methods of creating achievable task, measuring
progress, and controlling features are even more critical
for very small teams

Game Development is Software Development
• Games are certainly special, however, game
development is software development.
• Too often game developers hold apart from formal
software development and production methods with
the false rationalization.
• Game developers need to master their production
methods so that can produce their games in
organized repeatable manner.

How to Ship a Game
• When it is ready to ship? Track bugs, prioritize your
bugs effectively, task your bugs, and review your final
candidates for readiness.
• Beta testers are project stakeholder too.

Post-release
• After a game ships, support your game:
– Patch bugs
– Fine tune the balance
– New features or content (free download/expansion)
– Mod accommodation (user-extensibility)
– Fan communication

Success and the Long Race
• Successful game making is a long race rather than a
sprint to fast cash.
• Discover why make the game
– What is the vision?
– What are your true profit goals?
– Are they reasonable?
– What should accomplish in the game?
• Any attempt to take a shortcut for poor motives will
manifest in failed game project

How to Use The Book
• Skim the entire book
– Part I and II discuss challenges of game development
thoroughly
– Early Part III should be read thoroughly at the beginning of
your game project to create a detailed project plan
– Part IV is a resource guide to getting outside help on your
project (read at prepro phase)
– Part III should remain handy during production to help
with organizing your team
– Review the later chapters of Part III as reaches alpha

WHY MAKE GAMES?
Chapter 2

To Share a Dream
• Creative people love to share their dreams, thoughts,
and worlds
• Games are deeply rewarding because they appeal on
so many different levels, with special quality : it
makes the player the most important part of the
story.
• Games are very special, only in game can a player try
different actions, experience different outcomes, and
explore a model of a world.

Games Teach
• Games have held an intimate role in our intellectual
growth from the earliest ages.
– Peek-a-boo, teach hunting prey and evading predators
– Royal game of Ur, Summerian game 2500BC
– Wei-Ch’I or Go, 2200 BC China, supposedly to train his son
for assuming leadership of the state.
– Chess, the most celebrated game of strategic thinking,
throughout the Middle Ages, and modern times
• We modern game makers are carrying on an
honorable, historic role.

Game Genres Satisfy Different Appetites
• Some genre: strategy, adventure, role-
playing, action, and simulation.
• Gambling, Puzzle, and Parlor Games
• Military and Sports Simulations
– [Insert Pic]
• Role-Playing Games
– Sitting around a fire and spinning a tale is
one of the oldest forms of entertainment
– Reading a novel is wonderful, but would it
not be better to slay the dragon yourself
and take the loot home to your castle?

Youth Making Games
• You have to have the bug to make games, the talent
usually begins at a young age.

On Money
• How to get maximum for your development money
by doing various things (outsourcing, decide which
features to cut, how to track tasks).
• Realize the true goals of the game project and to
reach these goals as efficiently as possible
• Great games sell just fine, and the money will come
naturally enough; focus on making a great game

Why Make Games?
• “You should make games because you love to”
• As a creative release, love to see people enthralled
by your game, playing it over and over.
• You should make games if there is something fun you
can visualize in your mind, something fun you would
like to experience, and you want to share that
experience with others.

WHAT MAKES GAME
DEVELOPMENT HARD?
Chapter 2

The Importance of Planning
• What does it take to make great games?
– However, behind the scenes we need a trail guide and a
map to get there
• We might be working alone or working with others.
The size of our project or our role does not matter;
we still need a plan to create our game.
• Why must you have a plan? To hold accountability
financially.

Very Few Titles Are Profitable
In 2001 3000 PC games
release, only 100 turned a
profit, only top 50 made
significant money for the
developers and publishers

What Are the Financial Expectations for Our
Game?
• Managing expectations of all project stakeholder through high
quality communication that is clear and honest.
• We must be clear about why we are creating our game, know
financial expectations (not hopes and dreams) is critical.
• Establishing these expectations will determine the project
scope.
• Figure out what is the “best” game we can make within
budget.
• Blizzard once worked as a developer for Interplay. There are
stepping stones on the way to greatness; too many
developers try to take the gaming world by storm in one
ambitious step.

Why Our Game Should Profit
• Beyond just running a single game project, how our game
project should fit into a greater plan of growth for
ourselves, our company, and our team.
– Respond more gracefully to project slippage
– More tactical and strategic maneuvering room
– Make more ambitious game in the future, retain employees,
hire new talent, and capital improvement to workplace for
greater efficiency.
• Unprofitable attitudes
– Creating bunch of open expectations that will not be able to
fulfill.
– Ignores the strong wisdom that says if something is worth
doing, it is worth doing well.

What makes game development hard?
• Game Making is a Long Race of Many
Game Projects
• Overly Long Game Projects Are
Disastrous
– The Sims, filling a vastly underserved
market of woman who are consumers
waiting for games, and with right title
and marketing and sales strength, EA can
make tons of money.
– Baldur’s Gate, 4M units worldwide,
came at the right time for RPG, quality
title with a strong license behind
(Advanced DnD)
– For the rest simply too-little too-late
titles that had to compete against
stronger games that produced faster and
for less money.

The Tension between Preproduction and
Production
• Preproduction, vision or design phase.
• True prepro would be :
– the distillation of all the game’s requirement,
– an analysis stage to determine the implications of these
requirements,
– a culling stage to meet the business parameters, and
– a detailed game, art, audio, and technical design to detail the
requirements.
– any risky areas of the project need to uncover
– Alternative plans need to be formulated
– Plan needs to be presented to all stakeholders
• Industry responds to the intense competition by
compressing preproduction

HOW TO MAKE A GAME
PART II

WHAT IS A GAME MADE OF?
Chapter 4

Design Parts
• Lead
Designers/Visi
onary
• Game
Mechanics
• Level/Mission
Designers
• Story and
Dialogue
Writers

Coding Parts
• Lead Programmers and Technical Directors
• Game Mechanics Programmer
• 3D Graphics Programmer
• AI Programmer
• UI Programmer
• Audio Programmer
• Tools Programmer
• Mission/Level Editor Programmer
• Network Programmer?

Art Parts
• Art Director
• Concept Artist
• 2D Artist/ Interface Designer
• 3D Modeler
• Character Modeler
• Animator/Mocap
• Storyboarder

Audio Parts
• Voice-Overs
• Sound Effects
• Music
• Audio Director

Management Parts
• Line Producer
• Associate Producer
• Studio Head/Executive Producer
• Producer

Quality Assurance Parts
• Publisher QA Parts
– QA lead
– Main Team
– Multiplayer Team
– Fresh Team
– Compatibility Team
– Localization Team
• Beta Testing
– Beta Testers
– Beta Testing Program Manager

Business Parts
• Business Development Parts
– Business Development Executive
– Publisher CEO and President
– Studio Heads
– Lawyers
• Licensing Parts
• Promoting, Buying, and Selling Parts
– Sales Executive
– Sales Force and Retail Purchasing Agents
– Press Relations Manager
– Trade Shows and Events
– Hardcore Fans
• Manuals and Strategy Guides
– Manual
– Strategy Guide
• Manufacturing Parts
• Hardware Manufacturer Parts

Post-Release Parts
• Patches
• Customer Service
• Game Masters
• Fan Management
• etc

BUSINESS CONTEXT FIRST
Chapter 5

Getting your business goals and parameters
settled for your project before start formal design
and development of game.

Project Triangle
• Useful device for analyzing the goals of project
• We can achieve 2 of 3.

Various Games and the Project Triangle

Question for Us to Answer
• What are we trying to accomplished with this
game?
• When must we complete this game?
• How much money do we have to produce it?
• Who do you have to get the job done?

What to Do with Our Answer
• Ultra-low budget projects should be simple games
polished to a high degree or perhaps a port of an existing
game
• Fixed budget, fixed deadline projects should organize
features into primary, secondary, tertiary piles and create
project plan that most supports the completion of
primary feature.
• High-profile/high-quality projects concentrate their best
dev team on a clean, tight set of features that they will
execute to a quality level everyone else will then struggle
to match.

KEY DESIGN ELEMENTS
Chapter 7

How to use the structure your business context
and your game ideas provide and how to turn
them into a game concept worthy of fleshing out
into a game design document

Business Context Shapes Design or vice versa?

Game Development and Production by Devon

Game Development and Production by Devon

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