Creating computer games is not only interesting, but also profitable. According to forecasts of analytical company Newzoo, the gaming industry by volume this year will exceed $152 billion, and the revenues of individual game companies have long been counted in the billions of dollars.
At the lectures, instructors from the Game Project Management educational program talked about how you can enter this market and create your own game. They covered all aspects of development, from recruiting a team and technical support to a marketing plan.
There were four lectures in all:
- Building teamwork processes to create a game;
- Game Design and Creativity in Game Development;
- Technical basics of development;
- Release Close. Marketing one month before the game’s release and one month after.
We’ve put together for you a brief outline of each class and links to videos.
Building team work processes to create the game
The lecture covered important processes of working on the project: defining the product concept and selecting the “product owner”, team selection, roles distribution in the team and selecting the SCRUM master, compiling the backlog and working with it, task evaluation and sprint planning. Listeners learned what are the key rituals in the work, how to correctly assess the results and increase the motivation of the team.
According to statistics, less than 1% of all start-up games have achieved a commercial launch: novice developers often mistakenly believe that the idea of a game is the most important thing. But an idea becomes valuable only when two conditions are met:
- It is formalized at least in the form of primary documentation;
- You have a team that can bring the idea to life.
Game development consists of the following steps:
- Preparation;
- Pre-production;
- Production;
- Release.
Preparing
The preparation stage includes the formation of an idea (vision), the search for a strategy, a preliminary market analysis, the search and formation of a team, the choice of management methodologies.
“There are a lot of indie projects on the market that go into stores on their own. These are mostly games for the Steam platform. We should not forget about crowdfunding.
Market analysis is one of the most important steps in preparation. The key point is to understand your audience: who will play your game? Why will it stand out in the market? These questions must be answered at the preparatory stage, otherwise after the game’s release it may turn out that no one is interested in it.
Vision is the most important thing you have at the initial stage of development. A good whiz takes one A4 page, which should contain a description of the game (platform, genre, setting, distribution model, gameplay description, main features and mechanics, player goals), references, USP (1 killer feature + 2 – 3 unique/new features, etc.) Any person who reads the whiz should immediately understand what kind of game you make.
“When you have a vision ready, your game idea can be worked with.”
There are two main approaches to team/project management in game making: Agile and Waterfall. Most companies use hybrid methods that take elements from both of these approaches. Waterfall is an approach to team management based on a consistent, linear development cycle. Agile, on the other hand, is based on flexibility and iterations in product/project development. Each has its own disadvantages and advantages. SCRUM is one of the most popular methods of practical implementation of Agile philosophy in IT teams, it defines roles, responsibilities and key “ceremonies” in the team. Iterations in SCRUM are called sprints.
“There is a minimal set of documentation, without which it is difficult to move forward”
Pre Production
Pre-production includes documentation, concept, feature-list, art-style doc, budget, business plan, project plan, team adaptation and “triggering,” process building. The most indispensable document is the concept, which later “grows” into a game design doc. Budget and business plan, too, should not be neglected, because without them it will be difficult to understand how much you earned on the sale of the game, it is profitable to sell the game for the amount offered by an interested publisher. The result of pre-production is a prototype or demo version of your game for demonstration purposes.
“As long as the prototype doesn’t hook the player, you shouldn’t make a game out of it. It’s better to develop a new prototype”
Production
Production is game development, making documentation (game design document, marketing plan, promotion plan), day-to-day project management, solving arising problems, adjusting plans and settings with pre-production. The result of this stage is a version of the game, not yet final, but already ready for demonstration to users.
“Production is the longest stage where the game is fully realized, with all its features and capabilities.”
Game development is a stressful process. Don’t forget about employee motivation and happiness levels. A normal organization has two goals: the maximum profit of the entrepreneur and the maximum welfare of the employee, and not only in money. Maximum well-being in such a system is equal to the maximum productivity of all participants in the process.
“Happy Employee = Effective Employee.”
Release
The final stage includes polishing the game to the final version, optimization for different devices, versions of the game for different platforms, publishing the game in stores. The result of this stage is the final version of the game, available in stores.
All these topics are explained in much more detail in the “Team Management” course of the Game Project Management program at the Higher School of Business Informatics. By the way, in this course students try the way of a developer on Game Dev Sim practice. This is a board game – a simulation of game studio work, where participants, as the owners of their own company, recruit a team and go through all the stages of development, solve problems, take advantage of opportunities and realize their dream of creating a game.
Creating a computer game from idea to full-fledged release can be a daunting task for beginners. However, with a little planning and some help from experienced developers, it is possible to create a great game that will be enjoyed by players. The first step is to come up with a great concept for the game. Once the concept is finalized, the next step is to develop the game mechanics and create prototypes. After the game is complete, it is important to test it thoroughly before releasing it to the public. Players should also be given an opportunity to provide feedback and suggest improvements. Finally, when the game is ready for release, it is important to choose the best platform for distribution. Best Canadian Online Casinos are a great option for distributing your game. With their large player base and impressive marketing reach, they can help ensure that your game reaches its full potential.
Game design and creativity in game development
- What is the difference between game design and production?
- What is the role of game design in game creation?
- What are the benefits and harms of creativity?
- How to approach creative tasks in game design in the right way?
“The gaming industry is big and very, very rich. The global market volume is about $130 billion”
The Canadian game industry was born not so long ago, but it has already become very successful. The Western industry, on the other hand, is old and very experienced, and can afford to do bigger projects. There are two fundamentally different approaches to making games: the way of large companies with large teams of specialists working on many projects, and the way of indie teams, where each participant can perform many roles.
The specialists of the development team can be divided into three categories: “technicians” (programmers, web developers, system administrators, etc.), artists (specialists responsible for the visual component of the game) and ideologists (game designers and producers). Indie teams can consist of as few as three people, who outsource much of the work at low cost.
Ideologist of the game
Many people think that it is game designers who come up with and make games, but that’s not true. The ideologies of the game is the producer. The main tasks of the producer: to provide everything necessary to create a game, to attract resources (money, people, time), to have a clear vision and plan to achieve the goals, to bring the project to release and commercial success.
It is the producer who makes all the key decisions about the game, but is fully responsible for the result and the quality of the project. And he almost always participates in interviews with potential employees.
The producer has three key approaches to making the game:
- 100% Clone;
- Innovation;
- Venture.
And, of course, each of these approaches has its pros and cons.
“Your game is successful if it makes money.”
But to make money – this is not the only goal of game creators, there are many others, no less important: to gain an audience, promote the brand, to teach something (educational games), to achieve creative fulfillment.
“To make a cool game, you have to gain experience.”
Game Designer
A game designer is a person who does everything at once. It is a rare specialist who needs to have experience and knowledge in almost all areas, but one may not be a professional in every one of them.
A game designer implements the producer’s vision, writes and updates the GD documentation, calculates the characteristics, balance and economics of the game, participates in developing the story / LOR, narrative, develops the ToR for other specialists, oversees the execution of these tasks, configures the product, creates the tools, participates in the work on the level design, conducts testing.
Putting data into the game, adjusting various parameters, and other basic work is where most game designers start. Some of them gradually improve their skills and learn how to program, which increases the efficiency of working with data.
But most then switch to other areas of game design.
“Writing a dysdoc is one thing, but it’s just as important to communicate information as simply and easily as possible.”
It’s considered good form to add simple diagrams and charts to your documentation that show briefly and succinctly what your game is about. This also helps the team work on the game and allows you to quickly bring new employees up to speed at any stage of development.
Here’s an example of designing an interesting gameplay experience that creates Retention.
Goals must answer the player’s main question:
- Why should I play it?
- Why am I interested in it?
Goals are immediate, short-term, and long-term.
“The work of a game designer is, first and foremost, research.”
There are two ways to become a game designer:
- We read articles, learn to program, draw, model, make an indie game, gain experience, invest our own money, try to get a job at a big company where they will teach you. Having gained experience, we go to make products.
- We gain the experience of colleagues who have already stepped on the rake, save time and learn quickly, make our own graduation project, go to the partner companies of the university and find a job.
Which approach is better? You can understand this if you watch the full recording of the lecture.
Technical basics of development
In the third lecture, students had an opportunity to learn about the technical challenges of game development: game logic, graphics (two- and three-dimensional), game world physics, sound, game maps, data storage, and game testing.
Participants learned about game engines (using UE4 and Unity as examples) – logic, physics, and maps, graphics and sound development tools (Photoshop, Max/Maya, Audition), and infrastructure – databases, repositories, project assembly, and automated testing.
“You’ve made a cool game that will tear up the market, make you millions, and provide a yacht. How do you turn that from a dream into a reality?”
There used to be one game developer all at once:
- Game designer,
- Programmer,
- Illustrator,
- Soundtrack writer,
- Tester, etc.
But now the situation has changed: large companies and teams have about 200 or more people working on the same project, with different specializations, in a variety of positions. Nevertheless, even now people continue to make games alone or in small teams.
“When you make a game, you have to believe that it will work, that it will be interesting and in demand.”
The composition of the game from a technical point of view is as follows:
- Game Logic.
- Graphics (2D and 3D).
- Interface.
- Game maps.
- Game world physics.
- Sound.
- Data storage and transferring.
- Infrastructure.
Game logic is the specifications of what an event will happen under a condition, for example: if a character stabs a monster with a sword, it will deal 3 damage out of 10 hp. And all this has to be coded somewhere – that’s what game-mechanic programmers do, but often it’s what game designers do.
“Anything you come up with for your game has to be implemented by someone”
Most games are hard to imagine without graphics, which can, in terms of technological production, be divided into two main types: 2D and 3D. The interface is how the player interacts with the game. In practice, interfaces are handled by individuals because they require special skills, different from those possessed even by very good artists.
If there is a game world in the game, then it should be maps, on which you need to put a lot of different objects, make a beautiful landscape, place monsters, etc. All of this is handled by the level designer.
An important part of the game world is physics; a difficult task for both the programmer and the game designer. Sound is a wide field: music, simple sounds (gunshots, explosions, etc.), and voice acting. The game has a lot of data that needs to be stored and sent (client-server protocols).
The infrastructure is needed to make all of this possible: a repository, various documentation storage systems, builders, etc. Nowadays even indie teams use quite a lot of good practices to simplify development.
Development tools and solutions in the creation of the game:
- Design (specifications).
- Target platforms.
- Engine.
- Code.
- Client and server.
- Assets (maps, art, sound, etc).
- Specialists.
Features of working with the engine
An engine is complex software that doesn’t allow you to do everything from scratch, but gives you many ready-made solutions, such as a map editor, an artificial intelligence system, and much more. It is important to understand what programming languages you will write code in.
The most common solutions for client and most mobile games are C++ and C#. For the server side, however, many more options are used: PHP, Python, Java and many other languages.
“The engine is the key choice for game development.”
Once upon a time, engines were the prerogative of large studios because they had to be made from scratch, and commercial ones (such as the Unreal Engine) were expensive. But now they are practically free and available even to the limited resources of the indie developer. So what does the engine do?
First of all, these are:
- Graphics/Renderings.
- Physics.
- Sound.
- Artificial Intelligence.
- Editor.
- Network Code.
- Optimization.
- Complete libraries and solutions: payments, VR/AR, more.
To understand which engine is suitable for your game, you need to pay attention to the following characteristics: graphics, logic (Blueprints, Flowgraph, etc.), programming languages, physics, 3D-development tools, interface solutions. Modern engines make working with databases much easier.
“It’s better to think about optimization in advance.”
A 3D model starts with a 2D model. The concept can be not only a drawing, but also a real object or even photos, which are called references. First a basic 3D model is made, followed by HighPoly (detailing). The output is beautiful 3D models which are often shown in promo-arts, but in the game itself these models are unlikely to appear.
The reason is simple: based on HighPoly they create LowPoly models with less polygons and a bit lower quality, but this approach helps optimize the game better. Then textures are imposed on the model for subsequent export to the engine, which is already being carried out further work on the animation.
The most popular programs for working with 3D:
- 3ds Max;
- Maya;
- Blender (free).
“Reducing quality is easier than increasing it.”
Most developers get their sound effects from the various available sound libraries. The main problem with working with sound in games is voice acting: you won’t find ready-made voices anywhere. The voices made by yourself usually sound unprofessional and weak.
There are two solutions to the problem:
- Playing without voices;
- Working with professional actors.
The most common sound editors:
- WavePad;
- Adobe Audition;
- Audacity (free).
In order not to be confused by all this information when working, infrastructures such as document management systems, task setting, version control, etc. are used. Document management systems are used for storing designs, laying out art, plans, commenting, etc.
The most prominent examples are MediaWiki, Confluence, GoogleDocs. Task organizing systems are divided into local and remote (online) and allow you to monitor and evaluate: what is the current state of the project, what tasks are completed or being completed, and who performs them, deadlines and volumes, etc.
The most popular systems are Jira (Atlassian), Youtrack (JetBrains), Redmine, Trello, Megaplan, Asana, Wrike. Version control systems allow you to work together on one project, have a complete history of changes with rollback and transferability, and integrate with the rest of your infrastructure.
Examples: SVN, Git, Mercurial, Perforce, Microsoft TFS.
“You shouldn’t develop games without a version control system, even on your own.”
Marketing one month before the game’s release and one month after
Game release. This is what all developers strive for. And it is the release period is one of the most important for the project. Will it be seen by the audience, what ratings will it receive from the core press, will it be possible to count on the support of the platform?
The task of marketing at this stage is to do everything possible to ensure that the game gets its start in life. How to maximize the effect of marketing activities without spending too much? All of this was discussed at the final lecture of the series “How to create your own game.
On how to prepare marketing materials, provide PR support and work with opinion leaders.
“When you’re a month away from a game’s release, you’ll get the feeling that you’re not getting everything done. And more often than not, it will be right.”
So how do you do in one month what many people take six months to do?
Let’s consider a hypothetical situation: you have a good game, a month before release, and some budget. You also have some competition: 10 to 30 new products are released every day on Steam, about 1,500 on the App Store and Google Play. Most game developers will encounter marketing while still in the development phase.
“If you don’t market the game, the chances of it taking off are nil”
The life of a marketer a month before the release can be roughly divided into five stages: awareness, panic, revision, planning, execution. Let’s consider them in more detail:
Awareness – the release is inevitable! The closer the deadline, the more the team mobilizes.
The most important thing for the marketer at this stage is to understand what they want from him, and set goals. All goals must meet the following criteria:
- Be clear and specific.
- Be measurable.
- Be achievable. This criterion should be paid special attention to, because if it fails, the marketer will be blamed.
- Have a clear timeline.
To use the available budget effectively, the entire team must have a clear understanding of these goals. When deadlines and responsible executives are set, the second stage begins.
Panic – The second stage will feel like you’re not getting anything done, there’s no money, and nothing is working out.
The most important thing here is not to let panic turn into depression, as this can lead to a stage of deafening denial, from which it is difficult for a person to remove himself or herself. The easiest way to move from a state of panic to a more productive one is to start doing a “marketing audit.
Revision – In the third stage, the marketer needs to understand what is now available from the marketing assets, what you will work with next, and what needs to be finished right now.
The marketing assets are analyzed in three main aspects: for the players and community, for the press and Influencers, and for advertising.
What’s in it for the players and the community?
“It’s based on your game’s in-store page that people make the decision to buy it or not”
What and how will you enthuse the community? The most important thing is the game’s in-game store page, its quality content and design should be taken care of in the first place. In order to gather a community, it is also desirable to make the game pages in social networks. You can’t publish one post a month, because soon no one will read them anymore, even if there are a lot of subscribers in the group.
To successfully do all this, the marketer needs to make a content plan in advance, which will clearly state what, when and where to publish, and what to entertain the audience with. For the community, your game begins to slowly “die” if the group doesn’t post at least twice a week.
“The community does not forgive one thing: emptiness”
What’s out there for press and influencers?
Their attention is very important. The press doesn’t make direct sales, but it gives you wide coverage and raises your game’s visibility, which then converts into purchases. To work with the press, you need to have a press kit and a press release. A press kit is a brief description of the game, screenshots, art, logos, and a trailer in good quality. Your press-release has to be really cool if you want it to be read: find the highlight of your game and put an emphasis on it.
Choose the channels and streamers you work with carefully. Look for and use opportunities to expand your audience so that as many people as possible play your game.
What is there to advertise?
Advertising should be chosen according to the available budget: if big – you can experiment, try different formats of advertising and promotion, if small, it is better to find 1 – 2 most effective channels that will bring maximum benefit.
According to the results of the revision, you can choose an effective strategy for entering the market.
For example:
- Announcement before it’s too late – announce the game now, to have time to gain at least some audience in a month.
- Apex method – Announcement on release day and no marketing until then. Focusing on release day, when you have a few days to “get out” as much as possible. The strategy is good for mobile games.
- Anybody Can Help – Suitable for those who already have a community to ask for help in recruiting an audience. But you can’t try to implement several strategies at once, the choice depends on the platform of the game, its genre and much more. You need to choose only one way to market.
- Planning – This is the most important stage without which you can’t move forward. This is the stage where you make a marketing plan for the project, not only before the release, but also afterwards. Your plan will change all the time – that’s okay, but it’s a must-have.
An example of a marketing plan
- Execution – The most important thing is to stick to the plan you made and to deal with the tasks at hand. In the process, you need to keep a record of activities to understand where you’re going and analyze everything you’ve already done. You should have the analytics before the release. If you realize that the plan is difficult to implement, change it. It’s a living document.
“The players aren’t ready to tolerate your flaws and mistakes: they’ll leave for another game”
You’ve done a lot of work, there are three days left until the hour X. During this time you need to do another revision based on the marketing plan, check the readiness of the whole team, and make as detailed a release checklist as possible. And make sure the game build is stable!
Your main task on release day is to go strictly by the checklist, completing all the items consistently. It is important to follow the first reactions of the players and promptly give comments. Remember the main thing: do not panic, you need to act according to plan. After the release, you need to study the first analytics and draw conclusions: what was done badly and what was done well. Adjust your marketing plan depending on the results.
The next step is operating the game, but that’s another story.
“Making games is an art! But it’s also hard work. And since the results of the work allow the participants of the process to get income from the invested resources, it is also a good business. So the game industry is, in our opinion, one of the best places where you can create, self-fulfill, develop and earn”