Games - Game development

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	Games - Game development

Game development is the process by which a game is produced. Today this term almost exclusively refers to the development of computer or video games.

Overview

Development of computer and video games is undertaken by a developer, which may be a single person or a business. Typically, large-scale commercial games are developed by development teams within a company specializing in computer or video games. A typical modern video or computer game costs from USD$1 million up to $15 million to develop. Development is normally funded by a publisher. A contemporary game can take from one to three years to develop, though there are exceptions.

Roles

While in the early era of home computers and video game consoles in the early 1980s, a single programmer could handle almost all the tasks of developing a game, the development of modern commercial video games involves a wide variety of skill-sets and support staff. As a result, entire teams are often required to work on a single project. A typical present-day development team usually includes:

At least one game designer
Artists
Programmers
Level designer
s
Sound engineers (composers, and for sound effects)
Testers
One or more producers to oversee production

The development process

The development process of a game varies depending on the company and project. However development of a commercial game usually includes the following stages.

Pre-production

Normally before development on any game can begin a pitch must be made and given a "green light." Who has to give their approval depends on the developer.

In the (rather frequent) case in which developer and publisher are separate companies, the pitch must be made to management, approved and then it needs to be shopped about to various publishers. For this activity, a running demo is helpful, but not necessary for an established developer with a good track record. If an interested publisher is found, production can begin. Today, a game idea is rarely worked on without an interested publisher.

If the developer is also a publisher, or if both are subsidiaries of a single company, only the upper management needs to give approval. Depending on the size of the publisher, however, this may require several rounds of pitches as the idea makes its way up through the layers of management.

The person presenting the project is normally a game designer, but is possibly one in any role in the video game industry. Before full-scale production can begin, the game designer must produce the game design, a detailed document describing the concept and gameplay. It may also have some preliminary sketches of various aspects of the game. Some game designs even include a sample running prototype of one or more aspects of the game. Most game designs incorporate all or most of the material from the initial pitch. The most important aspect of the game design is that it is a "living document"—it is never truly complete while the game is in development. It can change weekly or, sometimes, daily. So even though the design document needs to exist in some form before full-scale production begins, it is almost never a complete design, though many aspects of all stages of the projected complete game may be described.

Before an approved design is completed, a skeleton crew of programmers and artists may begin working on ideas. Programmers may develop "quick and dirty" prototypes that showcase one or more features some stakeholders may like to see incorporated in the game. Or they may begin developing the framework that the game will eventually use. Artists may develop volumes of sketches as a springboard for developing real game assets. The producer may work part-time on the game at this point, scaling up for full time commitment as development progresses.

Production

During mainstream production, a great deal of work is accomplished. Programmers churn out volumes of source code, artists develop game assets such as sprites or, more often today, 3D models of game elements. Sound engineers develop sound effects and composers develop music for the game.

All the while, the game designer implements and modifies the game design to reflect the current vision of the game. Some features or levels may be removed, others added. The art treatment may evolve and the backstory may change. A new platform may be targeted as well as a new demographic. All these changes need to be documented, and most of them need to appear in the design document.

From a time standpoint, the game's first level takes the longest to develop. As level designers and artists use the tools for level building, they request features and changes to the in-house tools that allow for higher resolution development. Newer features may render older levels obsolete, so many revisions of the game's first level may be developed and discarded. In addition, because of the dynamic environment of game development, the designers' vision of the first level may change over time. It is not uncommon to spend upwards of 12 months on the first level of a game developed over the course of 3 years. Later levels can be developed much more quickly as the feature set is more complete and the game vision is clearer.

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