16/9/20
The Production pipeline
phase 1 (ideas): The ideas are sort of what you want the game to be such as what type of game it is, 2D or 3D, storyline, etc. Along side this would be things such as your game pitch in which you want to get whole point of your game across to who ever you pitching your game to.
Phase 2 (pre-production): This is the part of development where overall ideas of the game start bouncing around as to what they want in their game and using the initial Game Design Documents (GDD) to pull all the ideas together while leaving room for changes and developments should things in the plan don’t work or just need slight adjustment.
This gives the team developing the product all the tasks, schedules and estimates that they need to begin on the first prototypes of the game. This is ultimately the most important phase as the more as the more questions answered in the GDD the quicker and smoother these ideas can be implemented into the game.
Phase 3 (production): This is the longest stage of development and is overall the main segment of developing the product and its got the most people working at the same time AAA studios can have hundreds of people all working on this at once. however if things don’t go well the production phase can loop with the pre-production phase. The reason you would want to frequently revisit the pre-production phase is to ensure that what your putting into the game is actually able to be accomplished. The production phase can last from around 1-4 years as this is the moment the game really starts to take form such as character design, world development, etc. With the main production under way the game will eventually (hopefully) look the way it was planned to look.
Phase 4 (post-development) when the production phase has finished and the game has been launch this phase is all about maintaining the game as few people remain behind for maintenance (fixing bugs/creating patches) or creating bonus content and Downloadable content (DLC). Every one else will most likely be moved to making the sequel or to the next project. Sometimes a post-mortem/debrief may be held to discuss what worked and what didn’t work and how to improve next time around, with all the game documents, assets and code finalized, gathered and stored if they need to use them in the future.
Review: Questions
Why does pre-production help us make a better game/product?
pre-production allows for a better product as you have initial ideas of the game and the earliest playable version meaning that if any changes need making then they are much simpler especially since this will be the core parts of the game that will be getting adapted to make the game more fun.
Job roles and hierarchies
There is an absolutely enormous amount of job roles in the games, animation and VFX industry. Here are a few below.
Games: Gameplay programmer, general programmer, animators, environment artists, gamer designers, concept artists, level artists, sound designer, 3D modelers, gameplay managers, riggers, etc…
Animation: Narrative director, animations, environment designers, actors, concept artists, 3D modelers, 2D modelers, riggers, voice actors, sound designers, etc…
VFX: CG producer, matte painter, lighting TD, concept artist, modeler, texture artist, compositor, VFX producer, pipeline TD, rigging TD, etc…
The industry that i am more interested in overall is the game design industry because as much as i like to play games i also really like the idea of making them and and what happens in the way these games are made. the job role that i happen to be the most interested in in 3D modeling as i really enjoy making 3D models and would love to make them for a game. the responsibilities of this role are that i would have to design the characters, or assets that would be in the game and i have to make them depending on the theme of the game.
23/9/20
Post production: this is the point of the game which is all about polishing the game so that its as stable and as bug free as possible. This is the time in which most of the development team begin to move on to either the sequel or the next project. The Alpha and beta tests begin with the Alpha being shown when all the game mechanics are locked down and the public get their first proper looks into the game as the engineers begin to actively hunt down bugs within the game and this can be backed up by the response from the players about certain parts of the game. Once all the game features are locked down the game enters Beta testing.
In the Beta testing the development team can only fix bugs, optimise assists and code performance and the QA decide whether the game is ready to be shipped or not.
Game bugs are categorised into classes A,B,C with class A being game crashes, Class B being any noticeable graphical or gameplay errors and Class C being everything else.
Master: In this stage of development where the game is sent off to various games platforms for certification
Certification: this is where the developer sends the game of to the console manufacturer to be extensively tested to see if it runs well with the consoles hardware. the game can be resubmitted if the game doesn’t pass the test but this is an extremely expensive process such to the point that big development studios will specifically have people to do precertification so that the can get the launch of this game approved.
Localisation: This is changing certain parts of a game for it to be release in a certain country to meet the requirement of the governments laws with one of the biggest game changes being involved around china with them having pretty strict regulations with things such as symbols in games, this isn’t always sometimes to bad but some games are just not able to be launched in certain countries just because the game goes against the laws the government have about certain things in the game and this will greatly differ between countries, localisation also involves language changes for things to be readable in different countries.
Post production will mostly continue throughout the games life time such as DLC’s and bug fixing to ensure that the game remains playable and that their is a steady stream of new content to keep a game running. if the game has a planned sequel then the game would most likely continue to receive support over the next few years.
Review: I already understood why games take such a long time to make but now a fully understand how much actually goes on within the development of a game and how much still goes on after the game has actually be made.
QA: Quality Assurance is how games guarantee that the game is up to scratch and they actively search out bugs and glitches within a game however since its impossible for them to eliminate every single bug/glitch they priorities them with the categories mentioned above (ABC) and the tiny little bugs in the game tend to be big parts of the community, (especially to speed runners) which is why they only really try to fix the bugs that actually effect the game and once they find a bug the process is that they need to determine how often said bug happens or whether it is just a one off. This is mostly with play testing and allows them so properly and consecutively hunt down any bugs that may be recurring. after this the issue would be passed on to what ever team the issue happens to be involved with (graphic, animation, code, etc). If we didn’t have quality assurance then games would probably be released as a buggy mess and wouldn’t pass certification.
Producers: These are the people that have to guarantee that a game is progressing as planned so that they meet deadlines and don’t go over budget, you could see that these are the people to take the fun out of the room but ultimately ensure that the game can actually be finish because if it is taking to long for something to be designed or implemented then the may have to decide to just cut it out of the game entirely. The producers are overall one of the head developers of the game as unlike a creative director who has the idea of the game, the producer is the person who makes sure this game can actually be made and taken into the further state of production. In the end the producer is the most important role in designing a game because without them a game cannot happen and its up to them to make sure everyone is doing their part which is why AAA studios have so many people working on their games as they can almost guarantee that nearly everything will get done. Without producers nothing would happen and new video games wouldn’t happen (at least not huge games and if there was they would take an extremely long time to make) but because we have them games can m=be made and the team can directly know what to focus on and what to leave aside.
The Role Hierarchies: game development studios have these hierarchies to organise people into what their roles is and what level they are. Juniors are the entry level position and are kept under close watch from the senior designer who will be mentors to get you more acquainted with the role your and the systems that you may be using. You then have your standard roles which are those who work with their respective part of the hierarchy as these are the people who no longer need to be kept closer eyes on and are trusted to get in with what they are doing. the seniors are those who follow through on the ideas of the creative director and the producer to actually make the game take form with its design and systems being mainly tasked with them. Managers and Directors are the people who have the ideas of the game and who say what direction the game takes.
30/9/20
Target Audience: Every game will have a target audience as you need to be aware of who you want to by your game. If you want to sell your game to the younger age range but have proper violence then your game will suffer for it as you end up alienating the target audience. this is why when n making a game you must always be aware of who you want to buy your game and ensure that the game wont end up going into problems. The Target audience is much more varied than simply age, as it extends all the way from culture and race to political ideology and world views. certain games can’t be sold is certain countries because of what is in that games such as with how the Wolfenstein games cant be sold in Germany and games in Korea can’t have anything major to do with religion. The whole reason it is important to define who your target audience is because then you can know what is and isn’t able to be put in the game as some games even have some things removed from them just so they can be sold in other countries and be defining your target audience you can more suitably make changes to certain versions of the game for it to match the demographic of that country of age. when you take into consideration what I said above the target audience can directly be responsible for the amount of money that your game makes because if your game doesn’t match its target audience then your game will most lily make no money.
Regulatory body: These include PEGI and ESRB. They are what determine what age group your game actually appeals more to and what sort of people will play the game. This does however contain more than just the 3,7,12,16,18 recommended age ratings as those just say who the game is more suited to. The content markers on the back of the game cover is more of what can tell you if the game is for you, These include the fear, bad language, gambling, violence, etc symbols and this is what tells someone if the game is for them. PEGI and ESRB have different age rate symbols as PEGI uses numbers ESRB uses letters such as E for everyone, T for teen, etc, only PEGI has the descriptors.
World building: world building is where you develop the feeling of the world around your character and it helps to build that connection of the character and the world around them, such as through its design or its characters. it scan impact a product because the world the game take space in can either make it very boring or very intriguing and sometimes if you only show design of a world but the player knows something’s up then they can make they own little reason for why possibly all this is happening, a good example would be in games like little nightmares or inside in which we aren’t told anything about the world but we know something is happening in it. The history of a games world can impact the current state of the world as it can explain just how the world ended up in the state it is in such as with the game ‘The last of Us’ in which the world has been over run with a zombie infection caused by a type of fungus and as a result of this the world has been retaken by nature with city areas having been covered in vines and vegetation. World building has 4 dimension of setting, Period, location, level of conflict and duration, basically when it takes place, where it takes place, what’s happening and how much impact it has, and how long it has or is going on for. They help us to build a world because it gives a foundation for what is happening in the world and possibly its impact on the story as with the time and location give us a setting the conflict is what gives significance to the world and its duration is who long its effect has been going on for as something could have only just happened or they are events from possibly hundreds of years ago that are still effecting the world now. its important to think about the world even if the world is only simple is because it can inspired certain aspects of what the game is and the gameplay mechanics could revolve entirely around what the world is and this knowledge of world building can allow gameplay to fully effect the world that the player is in and use it to their advantage such as in the just cause games most of the environment in the game can be destroyed and even used against the enemies.
Our microgame world: The world of our microgame is set in the catacombs of a long dead king who was buried with his whole army but the catacombs are cursed and even in death the soldiers of his kingdom are sworn to protect their king.
7/10/20
Market research: The market research is different from the target audience and is more towards game trends and understanding what parts of the market are best to go to rather than making a game in an area of the market that is stale such as with battle royales there are so many of them now that making a new one just isn’t very interesting anymore and is a good example of where the industry has become stale but so many people play them that the area won’t die out just yet its just making new ones just aren’t interesting anymore. For games to really be a good seller it needs to not necessarily be completely original. The whole reason its important to consider this at the beginning of the development phase is because you cant just make the game you need to consider what area of the industry your making the game in and whether its becoming stale and which platform your launching it on cause your game may not be able to be played on other platforms due to the controller layout of the game such as if your game has a lot of button inputs then it cant be launched on a platform that doesn’t have a lot of buttons on it. Market research links help with the success of a game as it gives you a good idea of what sort of people are going to play your game and with this your game can either appeal to a wide audience or a very small one. if you hit a large audience then a great number of people will want to play your game and because of this you have a very high chance of success compared to if you hit a very small audience then your not gonna have enough people playing your game and it won’t gain the income you want for it.
World Building- Design and practice:
Tribune, a world swelling with magic populated by a plethora of life in all shapes and sizes, or at least it was. War was almost the natural state of our world Clans and kingdoms across the globe warring over power, land, hate and many more. No matter how much damage a war did to the world it was always able to recover and within a year desolate lands could once more be a blooming land scape teeming with life. This continued for millions of years, but nobody considered what if the planet couldn’t recover everyone believed it to be impossible, Th Stygian Lords warned the world that if they continue to push the boundaries of magic warfare it could be to much for the Tribune to handle… They ignored them only when it was to late did they ever try to stop it. The sages of a once wealthy kingdom wished to open a portal to the underworld and leech the power of the realm for their own purposes, When you mess with another realm it tends to fight back. By opening a portal to the underworld they gave the demons of the realm a free trip to an entire world of souls to consume and within a month the world was engulfed by demon kind, some thrived, most perished others just trying to survive, The world became a dark place where the only monsters now roamed and in the past 1000 years the world has barely been able to stay alive and now we are survivors just trying to stay alive against the hordes of demons that lurk in the night hunting us as if we were nothing more than prey.
Grand Cities reduced to life less remnants crawling with demons or nothing more than a few old stones marking the graves of hundreds culled as if nothing more than cattle.
Still there is a faint glimmer of hope the portal to the underworld will cease it corruption if closed, but the world would still be infested with the remaining demon hordes and the damage done to our world may still never recover, hope is slim even i am beginning to think there is no hope for our people. If we were to have any chance of reclaiming our world the demon lords that command the hordes need to be removed from their throne and sent screaming back into the abyssal realm from which they came.
14/10/20
Monetisation Models: These would include any DLC or micro transactions that games have and any methods of extra payment that games have. this can b good such as cheap little cosmetics like what monster hunter has or game such as quite a few of EA’s games in which you get game effecting upgrades from loot crates, Battlefront 2 to be specific (when it first came out).
advantages: Having these models such as having ads is massive, especially in the mobile game industry as they get paid for each download and the ads that they have also get money per viewing and more if people click on them as people are way more inclined to play a free game than to play an expensive pay to play and having these ads in a free to play mean that the game itself gets monetised by the companies that have their ads in these games. Free to play games with micro transactions rely on about 4% of their player base to fund their game through micro-transactions and these get played more as people can just check out the game and if they like it then they will probably stay and later spend some money on it. you could also have subscription models which go more into mobile game sand animation/film industry as they can get money from you by having you pay every now and then to get access to content such as with the ‘Xbox game pass’ you pay every now and again and as a result you get games and other services cheaper or even for free.
Disadvantages: Sometimes these models can me slightly over priced and especially with subscription models some of them are £10 a month. the problem is that once the publisher has received their revenue then the monetisation stops and with people getting discouraged from up front charges developers will tend to find new means of getting monetised.
AGILE: ‘AGILE is a project management ideology which are used in short bursts called ‘sprints’ to have continuous improvements in the development of a product/service’. It is a set of values and principles that people will uses to be more ‘Agile’ in making their product and is more to do with the people and interactions rather than the software and processes that are used as being agile won’t work just by copying the method used by another group, instead its about finding what make your group more agile and being flexible in the way that your group accomplish things rather that just following a specific path and that you need to be open to changes instead of following a specific plan. it helps us to develop products because by having and agile group you can much more effectively manage what is being worked on and what has/hasn’t been done alongside with being agile your group can do this in the most effective way possible. The whole reason as to why being ‘AGILE’ helps us to work as efficiently as possible is because and organised and an understanding team know how to best manage what they are doing and what they need to consider then most it also means that people don’t have to rely purely on others having to finish what they are doing before others can continue and instead the y continue with their task because it is an important part and adapt to it later instead of waiting for others which is the whole point of being agile with its values and principles through this your group will remain on track and be adaptable if changes should occur.
The way that our group is using AGILE is through our Trello board which contains all the tasks we have being split up into needs doing/being worked on/finished, however our needs doing segment is split into what each part of the game it is involved with such as music, coding, art, etc. By using discussion we can also pick which part needs t be worked on the most.
21/10/20
Finance/Funding: There are a few ways to fund a project. If your an indie developer this could be through Kickstarter which by having people get on board with the idea you can have them put funds into the game and with those funds you can make your game or if your making a AAA game then you could go with a publisher who can handle both the finance and the social side of the game such as any questions people have (having a publisher can also go extremely poorly as they can take anywhere from around 10% to 80% of the income from your project). An advantage of Kickstarter is that you can get funding simply through getting people on board with the idea of the game. A Disadvantage of this would be that if the game isn’t very good then you get a lot of angry people who spent their money on a game that ended up being terrible.
An advantage having a publisher is that you can have large funds towards your project that will allow you to make a game of very high quality. The disadvantages on the other hand are big and there are quite a few such as the publisher gets final say on what goes into the game and as mentioned before they can take almost all of the profits of the game from you.
Publishers help to fund projects because the bigger the publisher and the more they are invested into your project the more likely they are to show the project to the world and the more attention it will most likely receive. publishers can also help on the media side of the project as they can handle any questions people have about the game and the developers can actually focus on making the game better.
Independent studios may have difficulties when it comes to the financial side of development and in cases of trying to answer people questions about the game they normally won’t have the man power to do so. Their funds tend to be a struggle as they need to make sure they aren’t pushing their budget and not to go past it as they simply can’t afford.
Scrum: Scrum meetings are daily meetings of the group to see who is present and who is absent. Through this they discuss everyone’s thoughts on the groups progress and what should also be focused especially if certain people are absent so that if said person if absent for quite a while then instead of just waiting for them to get back you can spread out your team to try an cover for their work so that the rest of the group don’t have to wait for those who are absent to do their task before they themselves can continue.
Sprints: Sprints are periods of time in which everyone is working on the project to get a Minimum Viable Product. these sprints will last around 1 to 3 weeks and everyday during these weeks the group will have their scrum meetings.
These methods help us to develop products because everybody can work on their tasks and they can also see what perhaps needs more work put into it and if something requires extra support so that the project can actually remain playable through every part of its lifecycle. by back logging you can also see how progress over time has been going and you can review which parts of the project are moving slower or faster then the others.
This has massive advantages over the waterfall method as the waterfall method is as simple as plan-build-test-review-deploy and you only build what you plan, only test what you build and only review what you have tested. this can often lead to a project having to completely start over again. Scrum and sprints allow the project to flow through each stage for development and can adapt if necessary to fix something that is effecting to game and to deal with the issues that are in the game.
Our group has been using scrum meetings to see what everyone is working and and what everybody thinks of the current progress.
3/11/20
Post-Mortem: A video game post mortem can be a number of different things but is most commonly a simple text document that keeps track of a games development progress and is the history of the game. Its designed to help you remember what initially motivated you to actually make your game and it can be a great way to prevent certain mistakes in the future as its sort of a what went right and wrong document which helps you learn from your mistakes to not cause them in the future. It isn’t a marketing tool and isn’t meant to be seen by people who aren’t part of the development team as its specifically to make your team stronger.
4/11/20
Immersion: Immersion can be achieved through a number means and it can all depend on the target audience. some people me be immersed in something that others aren’t such as some people like development of a character through grinding and becoming stronger that way while others (including myself) feel more immersed when the world has a deep lore that connects the world around the player to what has happened in the past. some games use your senses to engage you into a game such as the recent Phasmophobia in which you play the game through game chat and the ghost in the game always hears you so its almost as if your there directly interacting with the world.
11/11/20:
Sound in Games: Sound is used for a number of things such as Anticipation, Atmosphere, Reward, Feedback/Recognition and informative audio.
An example of anticipation could be a sound that slowly gets louder over time as something gets closer such as the heartbeat in Dead by Daylight which will beat faster the closer the killer is to your character. For atmosphere this could be set by a number of things such as ambiance or a theme, For example the Fatalis fight from monster hunter, the theme changes per stage and overall sets a slight tone for each phase possibly being, Phase 1: presence, Phase 2: Direct fight, Phase 3: battle of legend. i say this because the first phase starts with roaring vocals as soon as the fight begins but Fatalis is mostly just swatting the character away rather than reacting to what the hunter does, the transition to phase 2 lowers the vocals and Fatalis actually acknowledges the hunters presence and properly begins to fight back. Phase 3 starts the same but Fatalis powers up further until you hit the ‘Dragonator’ (Big extendable siege spear) The music changes to the original Monster Hunter 1 ‘Proof of a hero’ in which the mood goes from fighting a god to a pure battle of legend.
Feed back/recognition is sounds that react and respond to an action the the player has done and through these the game shows it understand what the player has done, a good example of this would be parrying in most games that involve combat with Melee weapons are often times followed up with a loud clashing noise to in either a uplifting clash or a deep scratching to show whether you have parried your opponent or if they have parried you.
Rewarding the player through sound is often used in an uplifting or cheery way to show that the player has received something positive and the best example of this would be in the Zelda games where if you open a chest a cheery tune plays as the character holds up the received item to the screen.
Legal and Regulator Issues in the GAVFX industry: The amount of legal issues within the industry go on and on and on but there are some specifics such as with trademarks and Copyright. with a Trademark you legally own something and its representation such as the McDonalds M or the Nike tick. However if the trademark is being used outside of your ownership then you have no choice but to defend your claim to it or else you lose that claim and issues with this have occurred all over the place its a use it or lose is situation as you cant not use it otherwise you have no right to the trademark. Copyright on the other hand is absolute ownership over something and is completely reinforced by all the legal stuff that comes with it and can only be used if given permission from the person who owns the copyright agreement. If this agreement is broken then the one who owns the agreement can sue the one who broke it for possibly vast amount of money.
Regulate: regulate means to control or maintain the use of something.
Regulatory bodies are what games are controlled by in the market with their target audience such as with PEGI or ESRB which have certain marks put on too games including age rating/who its suited for and Content that is involved in the game.
Its important that products are regulated legally because you wouldn’t have a game that has immense blood and gore but have it rated as a kids game because, that is just wrong on so many different levels.
18/11/20: ‘What makes Games Successful Beyond Core Gameplay’
Games can be successful in a number of ways beyond just its core gameplay. one of these ways could be by having end game content in which it means even once you complete the game their is still more things that you can do beyond what the game initially was which tends to be a big focus for MMO games. Other games have New Game+ in which you replay the game but at an even higher difficulty for Which Dark souls and souls like games are notorious for. The whole reason they engage their audience is because with MMO’s people like to have more content after they complete the initial storyline of the game such as higher level areas for high rewards, new locations and Raids and With Souls like games their players enjoy having the game become more challenging as they replay through it to rise above an every harder game
Exam Techniques:
Time management give you the time to do every question to the best that you can without stressing and rushing the last few questions because you spent to much time on a previous question. By planning your question you can give yourself an idea of what your gonna write about and how you think would be best structure it. Higher Level answers involve taking a real world example that fits with what your talking about and overall can produce a higher quality answer if done write.
These strategies help because they give you a better way to both organise what our gonna write about and to pull together something that my be worth more overall.
I think it will provide more focus because you can organise your questions better and you won’t be stressing as much trying to cram everything in within the last few minutes.
In the future i will most likely be using Paragraph structure and i may try to do Higher level answers if my knowledge fits with the subject.
Exam question Practice:
Q1: Market research
The Target Audience for the game is 12+ because there is violence in the game but it isn’t graphic and has a mostly cartoony theme to the style of the game and it is a 3rd person partial MOBA game.
This will impact he development of the game as we need to specifically build our game around our target audience because otherwise we would end up making the wrong type of game and if we don’t hit the target audience properly then it could end up disastrous for the games future.
The whole reason for why its important to research your target audience is because if you end up having a target audience of 12 and you make a game as gory as he mortal combat games or the DOOM games then you end up massively alienating your audience as that is the type of game you give and 18+ not to a 12yr old. On top of that if you say your game is one type of game but it ends up being completely different then you have completely lied about what your game is and you ended up attracting the wrong audience to your game and because of that nobody will want to play your game as you have completely gone against the regulatory body and made a game not suitable for either audience.
25/11/2020
How to Pitch your Idea/Game:
Pitching your idea/game can be done in a few different ways, the most common way is standing in front of a group of people to get the whole idea of your game across and to show your own enthusiasm in the project. if you pitch your game but don’t show much enthusiasm during the pitch then the people your pitching to will think your not willing to put everything into the project.
A pitch deck is a brief presentation of your plan for your product or business plan using PowerPoint, keynote or Prezi. It should feature the overview of your game, why it should be made and what your plan to make it happen are.
Th whole reason you want to pitch you idea to someone is to see if they like the idea and if they do then they could probably get you the resource you need to make your game what you want it to be.
After the pitch the people you have pitched to will either like it or not. if they don’t like it then you can’t make the game. If they take an interest in it hen you can begin the basic development of the game an with a possible provided team you can create the first prototype of the game.
2/12/20
Game Genres: there are thousands of game genres and sub genres. ranging from First Person Shooter to Real Time Strategy and Adventure to Hack’n Slash.
some others include:
Builders
Looter shooters
Turn Based Strategy
MMO’s
RPG’s
Puzzle games
Battle Royale
Looter Slasher
Third person shooter
Fighting game
Trends: Trends tend to be a thing in the industry that the majority of people are playing at the time with the current big on being Battle Royales although it isn’t as popular now as it was a few years ago and games seem to be spreading out more instead of every game trying to have a battler royale mode just to try to get people play their game. A good example of a none BR game with a BR mode is Call of Duty: Modern warfare 2019 which had its BR mode take inspiration from the mistakes of others and fix those issues to make a better BR. A bad example of this trend would be the Skyforge Battle royale which shouldn’t even be included with Skyforge as they are far to different of a game to be considered even remotely close, on top of that it was just bad in general. Trends tend to be a good thing mostly but it all depends on who you hear it from because even though most people will like a trend other won’t. its a very opinion based side of the industry.
Exclusive games: exclusive games are games which are only available on certain platforms such as halo being and Xbox exclusive of God of War being a PlayStation exclusive. the whole reason we have exclusive games a lot of the time is competition of the console producers to have more people buy their console to play their games that can’t be played on other consoles. they make playing games a nuisance sometime but they make sense as a part of the industry.
Ways to work in the GAFVX industry: there are a few different ways to work within this industry for example: Freelance, full time, contracted, etc
Full-time
to get a job within the industry by showing work that you have previously done through a portfolio or work that you can do for them.
Advantages of working like this would be that you have the company to pay for the tools that you use an get access to and that the resource you have access to will be at a much higher quality than what you could normally afford.
A disadvantage would be that you will most likely be bounced around a lot to multiple different projects or that your place in the project will mostly be towards one part of it.
9/12/20
‘Hypothetical Game Pitch’
The process was simple once the group got organised
The pitch could have been better if we had time to create more specialised slides to say more about different areas of the plan.
‘Building a business and Company Types’
Types of companies within the Games, Animation and VFX industry: For the most part it is Indie and AAA studios with Indie studios making much smaller lower budget games but with some being so good they knock a large number of AAA’s out of the water. While AAA studios make games that have a budget of over a few million.
In starting you own GAVFX business you would need varying resources such as the hardware to run the software you intend to use on top of that you need to pay for the software, the people you will employ, the services outside of your actual work such as maintenance and cyber security.
Pitching your product to a publisher can help you business grow because the publisher will make sure that people will see your product and the more people who see your product the more people will take notice of your business.
The challenge/risk of starting your own business is that you won’t have much room for errors if you want to be noticed and you could easily enough get overshadowed by other businesses.
Financial implications of starting your own business would be that you have to manage a lot more of your money especially if your business isn’t making as much money as you would hope so you may end up having to hold back on a large number of improvement you would hope to do until your business’s income can match what you want to do.
Another way you could finance your business could be through contractors which is where pitching your product would be extremely important because for the contractor to fund you you would really need to make an impact on them with your pitch.
Limited liability company: An LLC is where its owners are legally only responsible for the product by the amount that they invest into it.
Partnership: In a business partnership which is normally a written agreement between two or more people/companies in which any profits and loses the business takes all parties involved are equally responsible
Sole Proprietorship: Its a type of enterprise which is all run by one person in which there is no legal distinction between the owner and the business entity.
Corporation: Is a large company or group of companies all working as one business and is recognised as such by law.
Cooperative: This is a member owned business structure with at least five members all of which have equal voting regardless of how much they are involved with the cooperative and all members are expected to help run the cooperative.
6/1/21
Pressure Points and Cash Flow:
Pressure points tend to involve Staff, Events, Finance and Deadline/Milestones.
Staff: is a pressure because if you lack the staff to do all the required tasks then you will fall behind on your deadlines and people will have to crunch if you want to get the game out in time.
Events: This is a simpler one as it is mainly a way of trying to keep the fans happy as by attending events then you can give people some early looks into your game.
Finance: Everything needs money and if you want you game to make money you first need to have the finance to afford the resources to make your game. if you have a publisher and you run out of money then the game sort of just gets thrown to the wolves because they spent money to make this game then they are gonna release it no matter what.
Deadlines: Got to make those deadlines or you fall behind on your games progress.
The Money gets split between each of the games makers first the platform gets 30%, the Publisher gets 42%. then take away the cost of the resources and then the developer/shareholders get 25% each with up to 4 shareholders.
Working with the platform will mean that you game will be Advertise and pushed towards consumers who play on said platform I.E Xbox, PlayStation, etc.
Working with the Publisher will give more general showing of the game and they can give advice on how to better improve such as with quality assurance.
The Develops have to split profits but they also need to consider how much it needs to be distributed to the workers and how much costs the equipment they used costs.
Revenue: This is how much the game earns overall and is separated my the Percentages that I mentioned above.
12/1/21
Life cycle of a game:
Hype: last 1 week to 1 month
Release: 1 week to 1 month
The Growth: 6 Month to 1 Year
Peak is the point at which the game reaches fully developed with no more content left to come.
Decline: Around 3 years
The Death 5-6 years (not always the case)
Some games barely last 2 years as the get no bac king or are just that bad that nobody wants to play them. Even then those games will still have people who play them even in death.
Mock Analysis and Grading:
I found the process of marking a mock piece of work complicated because when you read over it he first time you can quickly see the surface level detail but it gets difficult looking for the finer details especially if the work your marking rambles on quiet a bit then you have a lot more to look over and there is ever possibility that the haven’t made it instantly obvious that they have mentioned something.
How to improve for when i do my mock exam: My plan will most likely be to try and explain the answer in as much detail as possible trying to focus more on quality over quantity.
20/1/21
Target audience and market research recapping:
Job Roles and interactions:
A job role that I would very much like to have in the GAVFX industry would be 3D art with a full time employment.
I would get this job by showing previous work that i had done in a portfolio and through talking about some of it in a personal statement.
In said job i would be responsible for both the modelling and texturing of the 3D assets that are intended to be used
If it comes to working with other departments such as the concept artists which it most frequently will be then it is about turning their concept art from a piece of art into a full on 3D model. Benefit of being employed full time would be that it is simpler and it is a standard job type with a regular pay check. The downside is that you don’t have the same freedom as a freelance worker may have.
27/1/21
Exam style question:
1: The main target audience of the game i for those who enjoy a fast paced, hack n slash style game that makes the player feel like an unstoppable force and to those among them who like to find every little collectable and with a variety of modes it can appeal to those who try to do everything in a game and those who want to consistently challenge themselves.
2: This will Impact the development of a sequel as the game will have to appeal to each of these audiences to the challenge of the developers is not making the levels completely linear and to have some small side paths for players to quickly explore during their missions and to change the missions up for higher difficulty to keep the player on their toes during each encounter. This means the game must be looked over multiple times to see how they can make the game interesting for each playthrough of the game.
3: It is important to research the target audience for a number of reasons. simplest reason is because if you decide to make a game and don’t keep up with t he way the market is and how the audience takes games in that genre you risk completely missing the target audience and make a game that completely goes against the initial audience that you wanted to appeal to.
3/2/21
Production pipeline
below are images taken of what i think are the major key role in these phases of development. they are at least the ones I could think of on the spot.
10/2/21
Production pipeline: Development cycle of a game and how a company can increase the lifespan of a game?
A games development cycle will always start with its pre-production phase, hammering down ideas for the game but keeping git in the direction that the pitch wants the game to be in. After that its prototyping, getting down the minimum viable product of the game so that the core mechanics of the game work and aren’t buggy. I the game gets the go head from higher ups a AAA studio can go from around 30 people to 500 in which the main development of a game will normally take around 2 years or more depending on the size of the game. then once the game releases the post production phase begins and the game will remain in this phase for the rest of its development in which MMO’s will be in this cycle for their entire life or looter shooters/slashers which require regular content added in to remain successful. This is ultimately how developers can keep the game alive by regular updates, look at Warframe a looter shooter that has been around since 2013 and is still receiving updates every few months to this day and will most likely not die anytime soon.
24/2/21
case study reflection
my confidence in each of the subject /10
job roles: 5/10
worldbuilding:7/10
target audience: 4/10
Regulatory bodies: 5/10
production pipeline: 8/10
monetisation models:6/10
Finance and Funding: 4/10
Agile Waterfall and Scrum Revision:
Waterfall method is an old development method of doing everything in big chunks such as plan everything, then do everything and it kind of drags a game through development but instead of a game you get a deformed mess which looks and feels awful to play. the downsides of this method are that if something goes wrong you have to go all the way back to the start of the development phase to fix things.
AGILE method is the newer method based around being more efficient when it comes to developing the project. the upsides to this method are that if something goes wrong it isn’t as hard to fix because it is done it smaller steps and you only plan out what you need in the moment rather than coming up with an planning the whole project.
A Sprint is the name of these phases that are used in AGILE. We can use sprints to better plan our production because we can plan what we need rather than what we need later on in the project. Perfect each sprint and the project will be much cleaner with a abetter product created from this method.
3/3/21
Personal goal: to better understand project management and how time and tasks can me better organised during a project.
Exam style question: AAA studio that releases own single player games.
1: The management of this project wont be to heavy since with the company being AAA they have the resources and manpower to handle games of this size and so its will more be among the individual teams of this project that will manage things but other than that there wont really be any one single plan or management due to simply how many people are involved. The main reason for this is like I previously stated ‘manpower’, once these projects move into production phase and it all kicks off the studio has the manpower to cover almost everything so one thing going wrong can simply be fixed.
2:Pressure points during the project will mostly be around funding the project since everything else can be covered by a studio of this size so the issue involved with all of this is being able to have the money to keep the project going as that manpower and equipment aren’t worth anything if you cant afford to keep it running. The only other thing besides funding would be if things start to really fall behind on the project for example if something goes extremely wrong then one of the major pressure points would be the deadlines as everything would still need to be made working and of quality for a game of this type.
3: The value of effective project management is that it all flows like a river if done properly. Having the project managed effectively means that productivity increases tenfold and you can hit your deadlines and milestones almost flawlessly(assuming everything goes right) but even if things don’t go right having the project managed effectively will mean that said issues can be dealt with in a ‘definitive and elegant manner’
10/3/21:
how world building effects development of a game.
1: The studio could develop their world with the same locations but change up the theming of the world and having that represent the issues that a certain area of the game poses for example if the game had one enemy as a major threat to the location and that enemy has been routed or replaced my another enemy have the landscape be transformed to match that with different architecture to structures in the region to show how it has changed from the previous title.
2: Sound is a very good way to immerse the player within the world but the sounds must match the situation for example in a location that is cursed then the music would turn incredibly ominous to match this or if the region itself is threatened my dark mystical entities the entire environment would match the effect that these entities have on the environment. another feature that can immerse the player would possibly be how the characters within the world react to actions you character has committed for example if you kill a certain character others in the world would react either positively or negatively depending on their own attachment to the character which immerses the player within a living world.
24/3/21
Presentation reflection
My approach to this task was to use the word document as a guide and plan because if i stick to this I’m not gonna get across the point i want to make so when i presented this i said it as if I was simply explaining it through examples and how these examples are a good showing of the topics that where chosen.
This method was useful to me because if I treat it like a casual conversation I can say more than if it was all written down albeit I tend to waffle sometimes.
Honestly the hardest part of this task was trying to think of what to talk about as by this point I understand most of the topics pretty well the only issue with me is with project management, sure I can explain it pretty well and understand it but that doesn’t mean I’m very good at actually doing it.
Despite how simplistic the document looks i think the presentation I gave off was pretty good.
when it came to actually delivering the information I just treat it as if it was a normal conversation rather than a brief.
id use this strategy again because it makes it easier to talk about.
14/4/21:
This Mock tests compared to older test I think I did worse in this test than I did with previous tests so I terms of confidence I’m at a 6 out of 10.
Overall I’m fine in most areas so that doesn’t effect my confidence with the exams, its more just trying to match what i know with what the background and questions ask of me that create concern
There isn’t really any area I need to go over to much, more I intend to see what I need to work on the most but if I had to pick one id say Legal issues as I struggled to really think about the amount of areas that it tends to cover.
Mock Test Result: pass
the reason I think I got a pass is because I didn’t go massively in depth to the question and in some places didn’t mention certain things that could have given me more marks.
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