Production Pipeline

Production Pipeline Miles KEARVELL, ANDREW KINCHELLA, Samuel KENNY, ANTHONY BLACKMORE

Pre-production

Time Management Burn Down charts These are important as they enable you to set an amount of Things that you wish to have done by a certain date then week by week you can input what you have done to see if you are on schedule or not. Production Schedule This is another way to manage your time in an excel document by laying out the weeks and a list of what you need to do you can see what you need done over the weeks. This is a better way to visualize the workflow.

Pitch This is where the idea is explained to a company so they can choose if they want to invest money and time into the project if they see a market for the product to be sold in and believe they could make money on it. The pitch is the idea behind the project, the main part of inspiration for the project and how it should feel and be like.

Concepting/Initial Ideas Concepting and initial ideas are essential to creating a product. It allows the developers to understand the idea of the project and how the pitcher wants it to look. This results in less time pitching ideas within a group, maximising time efficiency. Concepting and ideas then lead onto prototyping an idea to pitch to a bigger company, to gain funding to create the product on a bigger scale.

Prototyping Prototyping is the phase of development that expands an idea into an environment or small game level. Prototyping is important to include as it lets the development team generate the very basic, main mechanics that will form the idea of the product. Prototyping is also a way to visualise what the final product will look like and feel like (see pre-visualisation).

Previsualisation Previsualisation is the process of blocking out and creating the product idea as a less detailed version to see if the idea is engaging and will work. This is an important step because it gives the developers a chance to see what the product will look like before it's made, they can make changes to things they don't like, or perhaps even change the idea entirely if it's not as engaging as they anticipated. It can also help setting up shots, lighting, and camera angles and getting them right before production starts.

Asset Creation Asset creation is one of, if not the most important job in production. Assets are basically everything that needs to be made for the project, these can include; 3D or 2D assets such as 3D models or 2D textures and sprites if needed, all the programming and code that’s needed for camera translation, and other movements, audio and music both diegetic and non-diegetic such as environment sounds and background music.

Producers monitoring progress and scheduling The producer is a key part of the team as they oversee the whole project. They will need to visit all the teams of the project to make sure they are all working to schedule and on the right tracks and are meeting deadlines. They will make important decisions as to how the funding is split and is something isn't working; they have the say to cut it. If they don't stick to the schedule, they will fall behind in effect loving money.

QA Testing and Bug Fixing Quality Assurance Testing is less a of a phase than most as it happens throughout the product creation. The development team for example, will create a single level or section for the QA team to test and look for bugs. The primary job for the QA is to find bugs, may that be visual, or mechanical. However, they also need to ensure the game is fun, otherwise it will not pique the interest of the public. The QA team provide feedback on design choices and art styles on top of all of this.

Promotion and events The game is announced to the public that they have been developing the game and then show trailers of the game, they then say what gaming events they are going to and have a demo version for the people at the event to try but won't be finished and keep doing this they can release a beta for people to try and see if they like the game as it is free people will try it and also gives feedback to the developers as well, they then go to the release date where weeks before will have had livestreams of the game and also trailers being shown then the game will be released for customer to buy. After the game has been released there will DLC content as well show they will show of the new content that comes will it showing trailers and game player on livestreams to show it off to getting hyped for it and wanting to buy it.

Post-production

Polishing and DLC During the polishing stage they have the game in a state they are happy with and what they want to release but they are spending an amount of time on making some of the animations and other game mechanics a little smaller in file size or refining art so that it's in perfect condition. DLC's will be added so that once the player base has done everything that they will have more content to keep the base there while also creating a new player base where they weren't sure about. By the DLC's being added it keeps the game alive and stops it from getting stale.

Post-production Testing During the Post-production testing the QA team will look extremely critically to find bugs and figure out how the product can be optimized. However, the company will also gain feedback and criticism from the public and other critics that they can take in and update in patches. Most of the bug finds will generally come from the public, since the QA team cannot find every bug, the game will most definitely come out with bugs the team did not find. Post-production also includes constant patch updates to the game, to ensure there are as few bugs as possible, allowing the product to be as polished and refined as possible.

Trailer Production Trailer production will happen during the end of production, and post-production trailers for DLC will also come out to try and keep the product alive and exciting for new players, and current players who need new content.

Events and PEGI The events after the games release would be the dlcs within the game with the events aimed to show off the extras in the game what is going to be added and keeping the fan base on the game and bring new players into the game as well so keeps the game alive and making money with players buying the game but also with microtransactions as well as having more players or new content for players to use will then make them spend more money on the game so keeps the game making profit for the company. The PEGI rating is to tell the customer what age the game is meant for by the amount of blood and gore in the game and violence in the game as well.

Marketing wrong • Money is a big factor into a games profit or lost depending on the amount of money and time spent on making it so once published and the sales have come in for the first day or week the developers will get a feel if the game is worth making a second one or if they should not. They will check if promotions helped sales and see if they were to make another one and what events helped to make more sales and get people more hyped for their game so they can repeat this for a better outcome.

Optimisation and Localisation Optimaisation is a process of improving the game and making sure it runs smoothly on each platform the product gets released on, this is done both before the product is released, probably during a polishing phase, and after production if new updates to platforms come along the product can be optimised for that platform. Localisation is the process of translating and adding different language options for the product, depending on where the product will get released. Most games will be made originally in English, unless they are made elsewhere. Localization means translators can take any speech or text in the product and translate it to subtitles, or have recorded audio in different languages, this allows the product to be sold in different areas of the world, not just their own, and in a way, gives them a choice to pick and choose where the game goes

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Production Pipeline