Game Pre-Production Techinques | Unit 1 | Assignment

Nathan Bolton

BTEC Extended Diploma in Computer Games Design

Unit 1: Pre-Production Techniques for the Creative Media Industries

Pre-Production and Planning for a Computer Game

In the pre-production of video games development, you must consider all the things you will need, like equipment, staff, financing etc.

Finance

Most important things in pre-production are finance and deadlines. You can finance you game in many different ways, such as funding the game yourself, and you can produce your game and put it on Steam Greenlight,  and publishers might want to sign it, but it does cost quite a bit to put on consoles and around £70 to get Steam Greenlight.

Indie funding is a popular way to fund a game, a company called “The Indie Fund,” helps independent game developers fund their games, and if the game sells, you can spend time making another game and earning more money. But if the game doesn’t do well, then you will have to try and make another game and fix the already sold game in your free time.

Crowd-funding is one of the most popular ways to fund a game. Crowd-funding is where you suggest an idea for anything, and then people all over the world provide a donation for it to be done. If the world likes the idea and goes over the amount of money you have set for them to reach, then you have to do the idea or else you could face a lawsuit. “Kickstarter” is a site that does this.

Using grants loaned to you can also help fund your game, it has advantages like being able to publish a game whenever and you can use funds without any restrictions. But if the game doesn’t sell, you might have wasted money and if the company who loaned you money has given you more money than they would often give to somebody, then they will ask for their money back.

Using a publisher to fund your game is very good for you, as the take financial risks, and they might sign you if you have a good enough demo for people to play. But if you do use a publisher, then that means that they will own your game and they might own a part of your company. Also, if you don’t have any experience with the industry, then the chances of them signing you are reduced.

Deadlines

Meeting deadlines is one of the most important things in games development as people aren’t going to just sit there waiting to play your game. Also, the more time that you spend making a game, the more money you will have to spend for production. To make sure that you don’t spend any more money on production, then the best thing to do is make a timetable, and set a deadline. You will have to pick days and times for you to do work, and decide what you are going to work on before you start working on it so it doesn’t start to delay you. Using this method with every game you make will help you make more money and will let people know that you’re a reliable company.

Personnel

There are several different roles in the production of video games.

Roles include:

·         Assistant producer – work with staff to ensure a high quality and punctual release.

·         Animator – Responsible for the movement and behaviour of characters and objects within a game, taking advantage of the games engine.

·         Assistant producer – work with staff to ensure a high quality and punctual release.

·         Audio Engineer – responsible for the soundtrack, music, sound effects, voices etc.

·         Creative Director – Responsible for overall look and feeling of the game, making big decisions.

·         External Producer – Ensures delivery of the game and gives publishers the important information for them to advertise.

·         Game Designer – works out what a game will consist of and how it plays.

·         Game programmer – Designs and writes the coding for a game.

·         Games Artist – Creates visual elements in games, such as backgrounds, characters, objects, surface texture and vehicles etc. and drawing concept art.

·         Lead Artist – Responsible for the look of the game, directing the production put into making the game. They also manage the art and animation team.

·         Lead Programmer – Leads the team which codes the game and manages the entire coding process.

·         Level Editor – Creates the architecture for the buildings in a game.

·         Product Manager – Makes marketing campaigns to try and maximise the sales of a game.

·         Project Manager – Makes sure that the game will be released on time and within the budget.

·         QA Tester – Tests, tuning and debugging a game and suggest improvements.

·         Technical Artist – A bridge between artists and programmers. Investigates new techniques and commuting and training the team.

Facilities

The equipment you will need are software such as GameMaker to create the game. When thinking about all of this, you must consider the costs, how much is the game going to cost you? And if all the equipment you need is available at the time of development. For my game it to be sold, Gamemaker costs around £100 and it costs around £70 to publish it on SteamGreenlight, other publishing services might cost considerably more and it might depend if the game sounds good or not.

Before starting the game you must have some idea about how the game will actually look, so it might be good for you to do some concept art, sketching the characters, backgrounds or objects, and a mood-board, putting a bunch of photos together to give yourself an idea or to tell the story in a different way.