The Production Pipeline

1. The Production Pipeline

2. Concept Art • Make concepts of what the assets are going to look like  •  UI designs • Storyboard The point in concept art is to convey a visual representation of your design/idea for your game. 

3. previsualization • Previsualization is where you make lower quality versions of complex scenes in a movie before filming to see if it works.  • is the visualizing of complex scenes in a movie before filming. It is also a concept in still photography. Previsualization is used to describe techniques such as storyboarding, either in the form of charcoal sketches or in digital technology, in the planning and conceptualization of movie scenes.

4. PRE-PRODUCTION / time management Pre-production / time management is very important to game design, as WITHOUT IT, PEOPLE WOULD STRUGGLE TO MEET DEADLINES, AND CERTAIN DEPARTMENTS WOULD FALL BEHIND OTHERS. For example, if the coding/programmer department were falling behind on their tasks, they would need to me managed better using different time management methods. If people fall behind, this will cost the company money, they will need to hire new staff etc.

5. Michael's tasks (don’t go on my slide ) • Project management • Time management • Asset list • Storyboard • Concept art • Pitching

6. Tasks There are a lot of different tasks in pre-production, and they vary in importance. Some tasks are essential and should be prioritized in order to ensure the whole production process goes smoothly, such as scheduling time management, creating asset lists and organizing job roles in your team. To the right are the reasons why each of these tasks are important. • Scheduling: We do this in order to break down the time we have for each task during development, and so we can see what we may need to allocate more time too. This is also useful as it lets the development team know where they are behind schedule, and where they must focus their time. • Asset Lists: We use these in order to know which models need to be prioritized in production, and to keep track of what has been / needs to be done. This is useful because it helps the development team know what is left to do, consequently allowing them to focus certain tasks if they are behind schedule. • Organizing Roles: Making sure everyone knows their role is important as it lets them create their own time management schedule and know what their job is.

7. Promotion and Events • Jobs and roles: • Marketing executive • Marketing executives create campaigns targeting specific audiences about key aspects of the upcoming game. They use social media, reviews, adverts, online communities, dedicated game websites, sales platforms and face-to-face events. • There are different events that games and other projects are announced at, some of these events are E3, Insomnia, EGX, Eurogamer, Gamescom and PAX.

8. Asset creation In asset creation, things like art, 3D models and Scripts are created which will be used in the development of the game and as visual content for your audience.

9. QA Testing and bug fixing • The quality assurance team make sure that the quality of the product is good. They do this by testing things such as a certain game mechanic, to make sure that it is fun and of a high quality for the game. • With this comes the bug fixing side of things as to make sure a game is of high quality there shouldn’t be bugs, therefore they will find them and try and iron them out to the make the game the most fun and the best it can be. (In some games, bugs can lead to fun mechanics which may be kept in the game or slightly altered.)

10. Producers monitoring progress and scheduling • Producers monitor progress as part of their jobs. They do this for 2 reasons. The first reason is for people lacking, who need to be told to speed up with their work. The second reason is so they can find people who are struggling with the deadlines and people who have been given too much work. If these problems continue, the company will lose money, and potentially need to recruit new staff. Producers don't tell people off necessarily, however they do help anyone who is asking for help, or is falling behind on their tasks.

11. Post-Production • Bugs: Ensuring all bugs are addressed so that quality is high. • Events: Promotion of the product in its final form. • Interviews. • Trailer Production. • Polish: Development teams will work on polishing the quality of existing assets. E.g. quality of models, animations, etc. • DLC: Additional future content development may start. • Patches: Additional bug fixing / modifications. • PEGI: Rating the game and ensuring the product is right for the target audience. • Optimization: Improving the running of a game. • Localization: Translating text/speach into other languages for release in other countries.

12. PEGI Pan European Game Information is a European video game content rating system. This would give a game a certain age rating depending on the content of the game. This ensures that the game is right for the correct target audience. 

13. Why are patches so Important? • Patches are important as it improves quality of gameplay for the player.  • Patches can also fix bugs that players are complaining about. This will cause games to maintain a player base if they fix bugs that are ruining the flow of the game