The development game

They helped game development to be a lot faster and easier, providing lots of pre-made functions and features. However, it was still hard to enter the industry or understand a framework for someone coming from a non-programmer background, a common case in the game development scene. Generally, an engine has everything that a framework had, but with a more friendly approach by using a graphic user interface GUI and helping with the graphic development of the game.

In some cases, like Game Maker and Construct, the amount of pre-made functions are so big that people with no previous programming skills could build a game from scratch, really expanding the scene and making game development accessible for almost anyone. Game Engines can make the process of creating a game much easier and enable developers to reuse lots of functionality. It also takes care of rendering for 2D and 3D Graphics, physics and collision detection, sound, scripting and much more.

Involving them early during design is a step in the right direction. But the project team should refrain from telling suppliers what to do. As Xerox found out, suppliers produce better results when they have the problem explained to them and are allowed to decide how to furnish the parts. The drive to accumulate knowledge across levels and functions is only one aspect of learning. We observed an equally strong drive on the part of the project members to transfer their learning to others outside the group.

Transfer of learning to subsequent new product development projects or to other divisions in the organization takes place regularly. Since we have only a limited number of unusually able people, we turn them loose on another key project immediately.

Knowledge is also transmitted in the organization by converting project activities to standard practice. At Canon, for example, the Auto Boy project produced a format for conducting reviews that was used in later projects. This pattern later became institutionalized into the monthly and quarterly progress reviews adopted from the PC minicopier project. Naturally, companies try to institutionalize the lessons derived from their successes. IBM is trying to emulate the personal computer development project—which was completed in 13 months with outside help—throughout the company.

At Hewlett-Packard, the personal computer group is reprogramming the way the entire company develops and sells new products. In the past, the company was famous for designing a machine for a particular customer and charging a premium price. But it recently engineered its ThinkJet—a quiet inkjet printer—for low-cost mass production and priced it low.

Hewlett-Packard began to apply what it had learned from designing and pricing ThinkJet to its minicomputer line. Within months of putting ThinkJet on the market, the company introduced a minicomputer system for a broad corporate audience at a modest price.

But institutionalization, when carried too far, can create its own danger. Passing down words of wisdom from the past or establishing standard practices based on success stories works well when the external environment is stable. Changes in the environment, however, can quickly make such lessons impractical. Several companies have tried to unlearn old lessons.

Unlearning helps keep the development team in tune with the realities of the outside environment. It also acts as a springboard for making more incremental improvements.

Much of the unlearning is triggered by changes in the environment. But some companies consciously pursue unlearning.

Consider these examples:. Some words of caution are in order. The holistic approach to product development may not work in all situations. It has some built-in limitations:. Some limitations also stem from the scope of our research. Our sample size was limited to a handful of companies, and our findings were drawn, for the most part, from observing how the development process was managed in Japan.

General conclusions, therefore, must be made with some caution. But as new approaches to product development gain acceptance in the United States, the difference between the two countries may not be so much a difference of kind as a difference of degree. Changes in the environment—intensified competition, a splintered mass market, shortened product life cycles, and advanced technology and automation—are forcing managements to reconsider the traditional ways of creating products.

A product that arrives a few months late can easily lose several months of payback. One of the charms of the Rugby Union game is the infinite variety of its possible tactics. Whatever tactics a team aims to adopt, the first essential is a strong and skilful [ sic ] pack of forwards capable of winning initial possession from the set pieces. For, with the ball in its hands, a team is in a position to dictate tactics which will make the best use of its own particular talents, at the same time probing for and exposing weaknesses in the opposing team.

The ideal team has fast and clever half-backs and three-quarters who, with running, passing, and shrewd kicking, will make sure that the possession won by the forwards is employed to the maximum embarrassment of the opposing team.

To achieve speed and flexibility, companies must manage the product development process differently. Three kinds of changes should be considered. First, companies need to adopt a management style that can promote the process. Executives must recognize at the outset that product development seldom proceeds in a linear and static manner.

It involves an iterative and dynamic process of trial and error. To manage such a process, companies must maintain a highly adaptive style.

Because projects do not proceed in a totally rational and consistent manner, adaptability is particularly important. Consider, for example, situations where:. Because management exercises subtle forms of control throughout the development process, these seemingly contradictory goals do not create total confusion. Subtle control is also consistent with the self-organizing character of the project teams. Second, a different kind of learning is required. Under the traditional approach, a highly competent group of specialists undertakes new product development.

An elite group of technical experts does most of the learning. Knowledge is accumulated on an individual basis, within a narrow area of focus—what we call learning in depth. In contrast, under the new approach in its extreme form nonexperts undertake product development. After the final version of the game is released, it enters the final stage of the game development process — the post-production. The main purpose of this stage is game maintenance, which mainly includes:. Despite the efforts of testers, most games still contain minor bugs at the moment of their launch.

The first few months during the post-production stage are typically spent identifying and squashing these bugs. New content. Post-production also includes regular software updates for the game, ranging from game-balancing patches to new DLCs.

No two games are the same, and even seasoned game development studios with hundreds of games under their belts often struggle with last-minutes changes, tight deadlines, creative differences, and other challenges. This is the nature of the industry. Which is all the more reason to make sure you take care of the things that are. And having a structured game development process with clear deadlines and production goals is the most straightforwards way to do it.

Nuclino brings all your team's knowledge, docs, and projects together in one place. It's a modern, simple, and blazingly fast way to collaborate, without the chaos of files and folders, context switching, or silos. Try it now. What is video game development? Game design vs. Stages of the game development process The game development process can be broken down into three main stages.

Pre-production Pre-production is the planning phase. Game design document example Artwork credit: Stephane Wootha Richard Pre-production is the stage when the writers, artists, designers, and developers collaborate to determine the scope of the game.

The most basic questions that need to be answered are: What is the core idea behind the game? This is when the actual development begins. Team members polish the story, define game mechanics, its balance, pacing, and gameplay. Plus, they create all assets characters, creatures, props, and environments , set the rules of play, build levels and scenes, and write the code.

Each component of the game has to be designed thoughtfully, the fun and gameplay, and then characters, environment, objects, the level of difficulty, scenes, and more. In contrast, a larger studio with more team players who specialize in a particular aspect of production. Prototype: A video game prototype is a raw test that examines functionality, user experience, gameplay, mechanics, and art style. Prototyping happens as the first phase of production to test whether the game idea will work and is worth pursuing.

Many ideas fail at this stage. While it is still far from the final version, placeholders are starting to be replaced with higher quality elements, and art is added. Pre-alpha: Most of the content is designed in the pre-alpha stage. At this point in the game development process, some critical decisions take place.

The content may get cut, or new assets are incorporated to improve gameplay. Vertical slice optional : A vertical slice is a fully playable version that can be used to manifest your game to clients, studios, or investors. A vertical slice gives a first-hand experience of the game, ranging from a couple of minutes to half an hour.

Alpha: The game is packed with all features, meaning that it is entirely playable from start to end. Some elements, such as art details, may still need to be added, but controls and functions should be working accurately.

Beta: Here, all the content and assets are aligned, and the team should focus on improvement rather than adding new functions or features. The QA testers ensure everything is running seamlessly and report bugs back to the side. Release Candidate: The game is ready-to-use and can be sent to the publishing outlet and launched to the public. Producers typically handle the budget and develop marketing strategies to sell the product.

A project manager is often in the center of communication between the dev and design teams and executives. Game Developers build games by turning design concepts into fully playable games. Game developers have a solid programming background.