Introducing the Game Production Process
Welcome to the games industry! It’s an ever-changing world where competition is fierce, publishing platforms and business models come and go (in just a few years, crowdfunding has appeared, peaked, and seemingly vanished), whole genres of products disappear (only to be revived or reinvented 15 years later), and big publishers, small independent studios, and even streaming services such as Netflix all fight for an ever-limited resource – player attention. As game makers, we often give away more and more (if not all) of our content for free, hoping to monetize users later down the line.
At the time of writing, Valve’s Steam still dominates publishing on PC, while Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo keep fighting for their share of the console pie. Despite Nintendo Switch’s success and the emergence of Steam Deck, handheld consoles are on the back foot, quickly being replaced by phones and tablets.
The mobile industry...
Game design roles
Game designers come in all shapes and sizes. We’ve got generalists that work on everything as well as highly specialized craftspeople put in charge of a single area or system. Creative leads, on the other hand, often work on a more conceptual level, maintaining a cohesive vision for a game and shaping it through feedback, with typically little to no hands-on involvement.
There’s no universal distinction, with roles and responsibilities varying between companies and even teams, but game designers can be roughly divided into the following categories:
- Generalists: These include junior and senior game designers, as well as lead designers and creative directors. A generalist will often take care of (or provide feedback on) all areas of game design not already covered by someone else on the team.
- Economy designers/monetization specialists: This is a role very likely to be encountered in the mobile games industry, as nearly all products require...
Development teams
In tiny independent teams, there can often be no space for designated product people (a term used to describe game directors or managers, producers, game designers, and live operations managers). In such situations, game design responsibilities are distributed between the artists and programmers.
However, while a team with no designer may work well on a small indie scale (one to four people), the prospect of running a game team of more than five people without a designated designer is a very risky one. With the freedom of distributed design (colloquially called design by committee) often comes a lack of ownership and accountability.
Making good design decisions becomes increasingly difficult as a game is being pulled in different directions and lacks a cohesive vision. In such teams, even the most pressing gameplay issues can go unaddressed. Everyone loves to chip in with their ideas, but nobody feels compelled to work on design problems, be it for the fear...
Software development models
We’d like to help you better understand the production process and the path a game project takes. To achieve that, let’s take a brief look at the two most common software development models, Waterfall and Agile.
Waterfall
Waterfall, as we understand it today, is a sequential approach to production with no space for iteration. The product is supposed to go through six rigid phases in a specific order (always trickling down, such as a waterfall):
- Listing all software requirements.
- Analyzing requirements.
- Designing the whole product and its architecture.
- Writing and implementing all of the systems and content.
- Testing and debugging.
- Operations, support, and maintenance of a completed product.
Since this process allows for no iteration, its use in games development is highly limited. It can, however, be applied on a small scale, be it on a part of a game’s content (for example, art asset production...
Production schedule and milestones
Due to their ever-changing nature, game projects are incredibly difficult to plan. By now, most gamers are very familiar with the frustration of having their most anticipated game delayed and pushed back multiple times. In such situations, no one suffers more than the developer; publishers rarely pay for extended development.
Games vary in size, and teams vary in velocity. Still, the main production phase can span anywhere from several months for some of the smaller mobile games to three years, five years, or beyond for more ambitious titles.
Game projects are divided into specific phases and milestones, and each milestone has a set of criteria that has to be fulfilled. If the project is being funded by a publisher, the developer will only be paid once the milestones are delivered, reviewed, and approved by the publisher.
The production process allows for better-structured development, better cost estimation, and a better chance of finishing...
The role of a games publisher
It’s possible that a game project you’ll be working on will have a publisher other than your studio. The relationship between the publisher and the studio can either be internal (in which case they own the developer) or external (the publisher is connected to the studio).
Whatever the relation to the developer, the publisher will not only release the product under its own name and market it but also very likely cover all of the development costs. Deals and royalty structures vary greatly, but in most cases, publishers are the ones who keep the cash flowing between all involved parties and are the ones who are set to gain (or lose) the most.
Publishing can get very complex; sometimes, more than one studio will work on a single game, and other times, an external owner of an intellectual property (IP) will be involved (the IP itself can be a brand, a book, a video game, or a movie universe).
When a publisher is engaged in the project...
Summary
As you surely realize by now, game development is quite complex, and game design itself can be a very broad and elusive subject.
We might have just scratched the surface, but so far, we’ve looked at how games are produced, what kinds of teams make them, and what responsibilities a designer can assume within a development team.
Some games might have no real ending, but every game project has a start! We’ll now put some of that industry knowledge into perspective and start looking at how to work on a game idea and turn it into a presentable game concept.
And remember, your job is not to design the perfect gameplay system and walk away. You are there to help realize the game’s potential and turn it into the best possible experience for your players. Put your personal preferences and biases aside and focus on what’s good for the project, even if it requires you to scrap ill-fitting ideas and throw away weeks or months of work in the process...