GAME PRODUCTION
OVERVIEW
CGDD 4603
Overview
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Based on Chapter 7.1 from Introduction to Game
Development by Steve Rabin et al. (you own this)
Concept Phase
Preproduction Phase (planning)
Production Phase (development)
Postproduction
Marketing
Note: each project you work on will be different…
Meet the Producer


A.k.a. “the Director” or “Project Manager”
Manage the development process
 Work
for the publisher
 Work for the game developers**

Typically, they are the first person hired
Concept Phase
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Game concepts:
 Are
typically not the idea of a game designer
 Are based on some previous IP (Intellectual Property)
 i.e. - it’s a business decision!!

Constraints are given by management
 Genre
 Look
and feel of characters
 Mechanics

At this point, the producer creates a concept design
document
Concept Document
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Communicates the vision of the game
 Story
& Character development
 Small market analysis (of competitors), citing research
 Must be short! Executive summary to pique interest

Written by the producer or a game designer
 If
external, use an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement)
 Includes feedback of previous team (wish list)

A working title must be chosen
 Super
important! This is marketing!
 Final title chosen later
Concept Document

A game concept should include the following
features:
 Introduction
 Background
(optional)
 Description
 Key
features
 Genre
 Platform(s)
 Concept art (optional)
Anatomy of a Design Document, by Tim Ryan, Gamasutra, October 19, 1999
What remains…

After a “greenlight” meeting…
 Preproduction:
planning and team building
 Production: the game is created
 Postproduction: Debugging**, optimization**, game
manual, packaging
** Technically, these should occur throughout all phases
Preproduction

The (full-blown) Game Design Document is created
 Usually
developed by a game designer
 Either internally or externally

Team selection
 Must
create a staffing plan
 Internally – decide which employees will work
 Externally – a bid package must be created
Preproduction

Internal Staffing
 Must
create a job description
 Duties
 Salary/pay
 Use
ranges
existing employees or hire new ones?
 Programmers
finish at different times
 Pull from other departments?
 Hiring new employees takes time
Preproduction

External staffing
 Use
your network to find developers
 Typically want the whole GDD to make a bid
 NDAs are signed

For the bid package, the developer needs:
 Genre,
platform, audience, competition
 Shipping date
 Number of levels, characters, assets
 Demo?
 Producer collects all questions and creates a common
bid package
Preproduction

The Development Agreement
A contract, usually developed by the publisher
 States the responsibilities of the developer

Create a game that adheres to the design doc
 Provide assets
 Provide source

States payment within a timeframe of delivery
 Intellectual Property (and lawsuits)

Publisher says it owns the IP
 Developer says they own patents on the technology


Circumstances of termination of contract
Preproduction

The Development Agreement
 Milestones
 Money
is typically dispensed periodically
 Neither party can just wait around
 Developers usually submit a clearly-defined deliverable
 Milestone
Approvals
 Developer
must pay the employees
 Payment not released until milestone is accepted (not
delivered)
 Publisher often has time limit on whether to accept or reject
Preproduction
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Technical Design Document (TDD)
 Usually
the first milestone
 How the work will be performed
 Which
technologies will be used
 Identify technical challenges
 What equipment is needed
 Personnel
 Task list
Preproduction
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Scheduling
 Milestones
 Visual
and audio assets (models, cinematics, sounds…)
 Demo version
 Market materials
 Package, manual, strategy guides
 License approvals, platform approvals
 Meetings
 Vacations, holidays, sick time
Preproduction
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
Critical path is in red
Slack is in black (amount of time that can be
delayed without causing delay to further tasks)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart
Preproduction

Scheduling
 Start
from target date and work backwards
 Shipping
takes time
 Producing the product takes time
 Publisher testing takes time
 The
“Golden Spike”
Preproduction

Reducing Time
 The
“Mythical Man-Month”
 Programming takes the longest
 Programmers shouldn’t make
placeholder assets
 Still problems? Cut features…

Note: asking for more time
is asking for more $$
Preproduction

Budgets
 Salary
of each employee (plus benefits)
 Equipment, rental
 Software/license
 Supplies
 Travel
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Have an “executive summary”
P&L (Profit and Loss analysis) – a.k.a. ROI
One last “Green Light” meeting…
Production
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
Milestones means payments
However, nothing to show for the first few months!
 Start
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with art. It’s fast.
Art lists
 Includes
every art asset
 Models, textures, cinematics, UI…
 Must describe
 File
name and descriptive name
 File type
 Where it’s used and a brief description
Production

Naming conventions
 The
poor programmer! Dashes? Underscores?
 Decide the convention up-front
 If the filename is incorrect, reject it!
 Helps during debugging (printing out filename)
 Date?
Production

Asset tracking
 Assets
must be approved
 If rejected, why?
 Need an entire
history/log of each asset
Courtesy Dassault Systémes
Production

Asset Delivery Formats

For animation, does your engine
support:
IKs?
 How many bones?
 Hierarchical meshes?
 Baked meshes?


What else?
Texture formats
 Audio formats
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My recommendation: create “stick man” assets and test
animation before serious modeling
Production
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Team Dynamics
Programmers are “cold”
 Artists are “warm”
 Each need to understand
what the others do
 Worsens with distance
(book says differently)
 Lots of jealousy within
groups
 This isn’t just in the game
industry…

Production

Other potential problems:
 Personnel
Issues (the slackers)
 Design Problems (game should be fun ASAP)
 Money Problems (publishers delay payments)
 Technical Glitches (especially in new technology)
 Change Requests (aka “feature creep”)
 Expect
this
 Usually causes delay in schedule and more $$
 Amend the contract
 Schedule
Delays (because of all of the above)
Production

Audio
 Usually
done in parallel with art
 Sound list of every sound in the game (for every action)
 Music (genre, mood, length, looping)
 Text (as separate files)
 Voice overs
 written
as a radio script
 Usually with the Screen
Actors Guild (a union)
 May have to audition
Production
SFX:
OUTDOOR SOUNDS, BIRDS,
INSECTS, ETC. UP AND UNDER
(03 SECONDS).
SFX:
OUTDOOR SOUNDS, BIRDS,
INSECTS, ETC. UP AND UNDER
(03 SECONDS).
ANNC
R:
(SOUNDS LIKE JOHN
CLEESE.) Reginald X. Tapworthy
here interviewing Thurgood J.
Moxom, spokes bunny for the
House Rabbit Society. Good
afternoon Mr. Moxom. How are
you today?
ANNC
R:
SFX:
OUTDOOR SOUNDS, BIRDS,
INSECTS, ETC. UP AND
UNDER (03 SECONDS).
ANNC
R:
Ahem. Yes, well. Can you tell us
about the House Rabbit Society,
the international non-profit
organization that rescues rabbits
and educates the public on rabbit
care and behavior?
Bunny got your tongue, eh?
(LAUGHS) Ha Ha. Yes, anyway, I
understand with an 18-dollar
membership you get a
subscription to the House Rabbit
Journal. And the dues go toward
rescuing poor, abused rabbits
everywhere. Plus you help to
maintain the organization's
outstanding web site at
www.rabbit.org. Care to tell us
anything else about the society,
Thurgood?
SFX:
CARTOON JUMPING SOUNDS,
FADING TO BG SOUNDS. BOING,
BOING, BOING... (03 SECONDS).
ANNC
R:
Uh. (CALLING OUT.) Wait a
minute! Thurgood? Mr.
Moxom? (FALSE CONFIDENCE)
Well, there you have it. Join the
House Rabbit Society by going to
www.rabbit.org. And keep those
bunnies bouncing happily along.
MUSIC:
THEME FROM "BORN FREE." UP
AND OUT.
ANNC
R:
(SHOUTING, AWAY FROM
MICROPHONE, GRADUALLY
FADING OUT.) Here bunny
bunny! Here little Mr. bunnykins...
Bunny wanna carrot? Yoo hoo!
SFX:
SOUNDS OF SCRATCHING.
PAUSE. MORE SCRATCHING (03
SECONDS).
ANNC
R:
(UNCOMFORTABLE.) Yes, er,
well, I understand the House
Rabbit Society is trying to get
1200 online memberships this
year. Tell us, Mr. Moxom, what
does one get with membership in
the House Rabbit Society?
http://web.utk.edu/~rhovland/adv350radiosample.html
Production
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Audio
 Sound
Effects
 Original
or sound effects library
 Must be approved and in the correct format
 Music
 Low
budget? Hire a freelance musician
 Hire an established popular artist (royalties)
 Hire an entire orchestra!
Production
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First playable demo:
 Must
have the major “hype” elements
 Show to each executive individually
 Show to the licensor of the IP
 Show to the platform holders (Nintendo, Microsoft)
 Show to the entire team and get feedback
 This is not the time to take it easy…

Alternatively, iterate on a prototype
Production
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Production can be broken down into:
 Early
production: the phase up to the demo
 Mid-production:
 assets
and levels being added
 Delays here are hard to recover from
 New ideas/features begin to emerge
 Late
 All
production:
assets completed, but not coding
 QA is testing
 Marketing is ramping up – title change!
Production
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In late production:
 Marketing
needs screenshots
 Hi-res
 Shots
that aren’t possible in-game (several assets)
 “Pretty” developers
 E3
demo (whether you like it or not)
 Hard
deadline (make sure it’s in the schedule)
 Demos take time and will likely never ship
 Magazines
with demos (submit early)
 Red flags at this point? Uh oh…
Post-production
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Post-production: all features and assets have been
implemented
 Artists
long gone
 QA is in full swing
 Developers still working
 Audio engineer still working
 People begin to transition to the next project
 Performance
reviews happen here
Postproduction
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Localization
 It
is not just the translation of language (“bring it!”)
 It’s more the translation of a culture
 Animated
blood not allowed in some countries
 Swastikas frowned upon in Germany
 Need an artful writer for each
culture
 Different languages use different
space
 Try
for a “sim-ship”
Postproduction
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Other things:
 ESRB
rating – may have to downgrade violence
 Box & Docs
 ESRB
rating, developer logo?, in-game snapshot(s),
platforms, description, features, hardware reqs
 Have multiple comps and let team/focus group decide
 Critical! Bad box == no $$
 Instruction manual: paper, or plastic?
 Strategy
 Done
guide is extra revenue
by game designer
Cover/Manual from EverQuest
Postproduction

QA
 Testers
clearly describe how to recreate the bug and
why it’s a problem
 Submit a ticket using bug-tracking software
 DevTrack,
TRAC, Mantis, TestTrack
 Bugs can be new, open, and closed
 Bugs have priority
 Test
against the GDD and TDD
Postproduction

QA folks are people too!
 Usually
an entry level job (less $$)
 Test the same level, over and over and over…
 Viewed as an adversarial?
 Frustration from bug reports:
 WNF
– Will Not Fix
 CNR – Cannot Replicate
 WAD – Works As Designed
 NAB – Not A Bug
Postproduction
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Operations
 Console
games are produced by the platform
 PC games by the publisher
 How many should you produce?
 Printed materials take longer than DVDs
 Registration
card
 Poster
 Insert
 DVD

manufactures crunch to hit Christmas sales as well!
OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturer)
Postproduction

The Post-Mortem
 Finally!
 What
went right
 What went wrong
 What we can learn
from the experience
http://gamasutra.com/category/production/