• College Work - Life Cycle of a Game.
    5 replies, posted
What do you think on my college work. Comments appreciated. Life Cycle of Game Development Overview I believe there are 4 main stages to make a successful and efficiently produced game. These 4 main stages are Design, Development, Sales and Review in that order. Design So we start at Design, This is the first main stage of production in the games life cycle. This will start off with initial concepts and visualization. Meaning that this is the period whereby you and your team think up the idea and make some rough plans, sketches or CAD to see how the game will turn out. Games can fail at this point and go back to the “Drawing Board”. Then in design you will then plot out a story hill or a timeline of events to plan out what will happen in the game, you will also plan out who is in the game, what you do in the game and why the game is being played (The Story). A timeline of events and story hills are chronological ways of showing what will happen in different parts of the game. For example; in my game on game maker called Wingman Sam, I plotted out that you started the game, chose the play option and then when you fought the enemies were predetermined and would come in a certain order. Of course this can be more complex for other, more entertaining games that have a story to them and need a way to explain things that are happening inside the game. After this is done you should go to a more advanced stage of visualization whereby you start doing better quality sketches and concept art to really get a good grip on the games emphasis and “vibe”. This could involve drawing out some concept art, using CAD software to make previews of levels or characters or even just writing a character profile about one of the main people in the story to get what kind of a person that they are inside the game itself. The next step would be taking the pilot idea to a group of non biased individuals and asking them about what they thought about the game, potential improvements and ways that the game has problems and what needs to be done to fix the “idea”. As I said earlier, many games fail at this point and never make it farther than this, some games do get past but need a lot of altering and rarely do you find that a game is designed whereby everyone is happy because then we would have a whole lot more games on the market today than we do now. Development Aside from what specific game you are making, you will obviously need a team of professional individuals who can cover all aspects of game development. From coders to art designers, animators to sound engineers. There are very many workplaces inside a games studio and each person has their own responsibility, no matter how small it is. Development will start with the visualization artists (CAD, animation, concept art) doing a visual full quality design of the game levels, when these are done the backbone game engine can be added into the game to add very basic testing facilities to the game. For instance if you were making an RPG game (Role-Playing Game) then you would make a few characters in 3D and animate them with maybe even visual cues and put them into the world to see how they looked. The coders could then code a very basic protagonist or whoever you are controlling and show a VERY basic view of how the game will look. When the design set is established, then the coders, designers and all the rest of the workforce can get into full swing, designing and creating everything on their To-Do list. This then allows the game to go into the “Alpha” phase, whereby allowing insiders to the company and trusted people to test out the game and make criticisms and comments on the games design and aspects. This then allows the studio to get the game good for these pundits and then the game is completely finished off for more testing. This brings us into the “Beta” phase which is commonly known among many gamers and companies where either the whole public (Public Beta) or a private few(Private Beta) get to test the game and play it to its full capacity, bug finding along the way for the coders and designers to perfect. This is known as Debugging. After this the game is ready for the PR agencies and financial and business sectors of the company to take it over for mass reproduction. Sales The game after the previous stage is now taken to the others sectors as described above where they first check for any legal issues, i.e. names in t he game that are under copyright or things that sound similar to originals like making a drink called “Ceke” that was basically “Coke” would get you into a lot of trouble. Then after that the game is sent to PEGI who age rate the game in order for the covers of the game to be printed with the right age rating on them, these being; 3+, 7+, 12+, 15+, 17+, 18+ and rarely 21+ or R-Rated . After the covers have been printed and the legalities sorted then the financers can take the games production costs and set the price of the game due to estimated sales figures. This normally works out around £39 to £59 in price. At this point the games will be mass produced and ready to shipped, release dates go out to websites and stores and they begin to take shipments of the games to get ready to sell. When the date comes around the floodgates open so to speak and the game starts selling. After about a month of sales the finance and business sector take a look at the statistics and see if the game is going well. If not then more advertising campaigns could be added to gain more purchases or going around giving out samples for people to try at conventions like Eurogamer. Review Review is the final phase of the games life cycle. This is where all the partying and celebrations begin and the game is reviewed by many boards of people and independent companies so that the game company what parts of the game were the best and which sectors of the design process had earned a pay rise or a promotion and who needed a talking to about their work not being up to standard. This whole process can take many, many years but it is a very worthwhile line of work as the end result is not only gratifying but also very good in the financial section of your life. Note that this is the typical kind of work through for a complete commercial game and probably would not apply if you were to learn to make smaller games by yourself and take maybe months or up to a year to complete the game. It would not be as successful as full blown games by an extremely long shot but if you manage to rack up sales it gives you very good experience and portfolio for applying for a job in the bigger industry. -- It looks nicer than this but its a .docx
Great. :downs:
More should be devoted to the links between the different stages and how much they rely on each other, also write more about the development, sales and review, the Design section outweighs them going down the list.. it's a classic schoolboy error
I was told min 1000 words.. i got bored :D
I read most of it, quite cool.
Thanks mate.
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