Seven stages of game creation: from concept to release
How to create your game? How much can you earn on this? What team is needed? What are the key stages of development and what should the team do at each stage? The answer to these questions is in the open lecture on game development within the framework of the “Game Management Internet Projects” program, which our partners have hosted - the open electronic education system Universarium . Here you can see the open lecture:
And under the cut you will find a short text description.
I give a lecture, Konstantin Sakhnov, director of the gaming department of Rocket Jump, research supervisor of educational training programs for the gaming industry at the Higher School of Business Informatics, HSE.
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I must immediately make a reservation, in this article I will give only a squeeze - a list of stages, their goals and the logic of the transition to the next. The full lecture is available on video . In addition to the detailed description of the stages there is a little about the size of the gaming industry and the calculation of the payback of game projects.
Most of the lecture is devoted to the stages of creating a game product, the main aspects of developing, documenting, creating game content and developing a project after the start of open testing. Let us consider these stages in more detail:
In this first step, the team comes up with the concept of the game, and conducts initial development of the game design. The main goal of this stage is the game design documentation, which includes Vision (a detailed document describing the game as the final business product) and Concept Document (initial development of all aspects of the game).
In product documentation, game designer formulates and saves his ideas. Documentation allows the contractor to correctly understand their product sales tasks. The tester clearly sees what and how to test. For the Producer / PM, this documentation provides material for making plans and controlling the execution of tasks. The investor (especially in the early stages) gets an understanding of what exactly he allocates funds for.
It is of fundamental importance that all project and product documentation is kept up to date at all stages of project development. For its effective use and updating properly use special tools. For example, using Confluence to maintain game design documentation greatly simplifies the process of simultaneously making changes by several development participants, and also allows all team members to quickly receive any relevant information regarding the product and all its changes.
Among the key principles of the formation of product documentation, it is worth noting: structuredness, protection from misunderstandings, a full description of the product, regular updates.
An important stage in the design of any game is the creation of a prototype. What looks good “on paper” will not necessarily be interesting in reality. The prototype is implemented to evaluate the main gameplay, test various hypotheses, test game mechanics, to verify key technical issues.
It is very important at the stage of creating a prototype to implement only what needs to be checked and in a short time. The prototype should be simple to implement, because after achieving his goals, he must be "thrown out." A serious mistake by novice developers is to carry the temporary infrastructure and the “crutches” of implementing the code into the main project.
The goal of the Vertical Slice is to get the lowest possible full-fledged version of the game, which includes the fully implemented main gameplay. At the same time, the high quality of the study must be realized only for those game elements that significantly affect the perception of the product. In this case, all the basic features of the game are present at least in draft quality. A minimal set of content was implemented (one level or one location), minimal but sufficient for the realization of a full-fledged gameplay.
At this stage, a sufficient amount of content is produced for the first launch to an external audience. All features scheduled for closed beta testing are implemented. This is the longest stage that can take, for large client projects, a year or more.
At this stage, the largest number of professionals involved in the production of all the main content of the game. Artists create all graphic resources, game designers set up a balance and fill configs, programmers implement and polish all features.
At the CBT stage, the product is first demonstrated to a fairly general public, albeit loyal to the product or company. Among the most important tasks at this stage are: the search and correction of game design errors, problems of game logic and elimination of critical bugs. At this stage, the game already has all the key features, created enough content for a full-fledged game for a long time, configured to collect and analyze statistics. Testing is under the test plan, stress tests are carried out already with the involvement of real players.
At this stage, the game is being tested, but for a wide audience. There is optimization under heavy loads. The game must be ready to receive large traffic. The game has billing implemented and payments are accepted.
At this stage, the development of new features is fully completed. Feature freeze happens, programmers stop implementing something new, and completely switch to debugging and tuning existing features. Game designers, producers and analysts draw conclusions from statistics collected at CBT and check the effectiveness of monetization.
At the same time, by the beginning of the stage, the project infrastructure must be fully functional: the site, social groups. networks, channels of attraction (User Acquisition), user support.
The key goal is to make a profit. The basic criterion used to assess profitability: the amount of money brought by an average player per time (LTV aka lifetime value) must exceed the cost of attracting this player (CPI aka cost per install).
At this stage, the operation of the product should be fully debugged (technical support, work with the community), marketing and financial plans are respected, work is underway to improve financial indicators, and channels to attract traffic are being actively worked out.
The development team at this stage deals with the correction of technical bugs detected during operation and product optimization. Game designers are engaged in fine-tuning gameplay under the real situation in the game world (especially important for MMO projects). It also implements various in-game features that support new monetization schemes. And of course, there is development and integration of new content into the product that supports the interest of players.
So you want to know more? Then watch the full lecture, links to which are given in the introduction to the article.
By the way, on the 21st of September the next open lecture is planned as part of our program “Management of online gaming projects”, which will also be analogous to the “combat occupation”. This time about monetization actions from the program director of Utochkin Vyacheslav viacheslavnu . Visiting it as usual is free of charge, but preliminary registration is required due to the limited number of places and entry through the list. Registration and details about the new lecture HERE .
Ask questions on the topic of lectures in the comments, we will be happy to answer.
And under the cut you will find a short text description.
I give a lecture, Konstantin Sakhnov, director of the gaming department of Rocket Jump, research supervisor of educational training programs for the gaming industry at the Higher School of Business Informatics, HSE.
')
I must immediately make a reservation, in this article I will give only a squeeze - a list of stages, their goals and the logic of the transition to the next. The full lecture is available on video . In addition to the detailed description of the stages there is a little about the size of the gaming industry and the calculation of the payback of game projects.
Most of the lecture is devoted to the stages of creating a game product, the main aspects of developing, documenting, creating game content and developing a project after the start of open testing. Let us consider these stages in more detail:
1. Concepting (Concept)
In this first step, the team comes up with the concept of the game, and conducts initial development of the game design. The main goal of this stage is the game design documentation, which includes Vision (a detailed document describing the game as the final business product) and Concept Document (initial development of all aspects of the game).
In product documentation, game designer formulates and saves his ideas. Documentation allows the contractor to correctly understand their product sales tasks. The tester clearly sees what and how to test. For the Producer / PM, this documentation provides material for making plans and controlling the execution of tasks. The investor (especially in the early stages) gets an understanding of what exactly he allocates funds for.
It is of fundamental importance that all project and product documentation is kept up to date at all stages of project development. For its effective use and updating properly use special tools. For example, using Confluence to maintain game design documentation greatly simplifies the process of simultaneously making changes by several development participants, and also allows all team members to quickly receive any relevant information regarding the product and all its changes.
Among the key principles of the formation of product documentation, it is worth noting: structuredness, protection from misunderstandings, a full description of the product, regular updates.
2. Prototyping
An important stage in the design of any game is the creation of a prototype. What looks good “on paper” will not necessarily be interesting in reality. The prototype is implemented to evaluate the main gameplay, test various hypotheses, test game mechanics, to verify key technical issues.
It is very important at the stage of creating a prototype to implement only what needs to be checked and in a short time. The prototype should be simple to implement, because after achieving his goals, he must be "thrown out." A serious mistake by novice developers is to carry the temporary infrastructure and the “crutches” of implementing the code into the main project.
3. Vertical cut (Vertical Slice)
The goal of the Vertical Slice is to get the lowest possible full-fledged version of the game, which includes the fully implemented main gameplay. At the same time, the high quality of the study must be realized only for those game elements that significantly affect the perception of the product. In this case, all the basic features of the game are present at least in draft quality. A minimal set of content was implemented (one level or one location), minimal but sufficient for the realization of a full-fledged gameplay.
4. Content Production
At this stage, a sufficient amount of content is produced for the first launch to an external audience. All features scheduled for closed beta testing are implemented. This is the longest stage that can take, for large client projects, a year or more.
At this stage, the largest number of professionals involved in the production of all the main content of the game. Artists create all graphic resources, game designers set up a balance and fill configs, programmers implement and polish all features.
5. Friends & Family / CBT (closed beta)
At the CBT stage, the product is first demonstrated to a fairly general public, albeit loyal to the product or company. Among the most important tasks at this stage are: the search and correction of game design errors, problems of game logic and elimination of critical bugs. At this stage, the game already has all the key features, created enough content for a full-fledged game for a long time, configured to collect and analyze statistics. Testing is under the test plan, stress tests are carried out already with the involvement of real players.
6. Soft Launch / OBT (open beta test)
At this stage, the game is being tested, but for a wide audience. There is optimization under heavy loads. The game must be ready to receive large traffic. The game has billing implemented and payments are accepted.
At this stage, the development of new features is fully completed. Feature freeze happens, programmers stop implementing something new, and completely switch to debugging and tuning existing features. Game designers, producers and analysts draw conclusions from statistics collected at CBT and check the effectiveness of monetization.
At the same time, by the beginning of the stage, the project infrastructure must be fully functional: the site, social groups. networks, channels of attraction (User Acquisition), user support.
7. Release
The key goal is to make a profit. The basic criterion used to assess profitability: the amount of money brought by an average player per time (LTV aka lifetime value) must exceed the cost of attracting this player (CPI aka cost per install).
At this stage, the operation of the product should be fully debugged (technical support, work with the community), marketing and financial plans are respected, work is underway to improve financial indicators, and channels to attract traffic are being actively worked out.
The development team at this stage deals with the correction of technical bugs detected during operation and product optimization. Game designers are engaged in fine-tuning gameplay under the real situation in the game world (especially important for MMO projects). It also implements various in-game features that support new monetization schemes. And of course, there is development and integration of new content into the product that supports the interest of players.
So you want to know more? Then watch the full lecture, links to which are given in the introduction to the article.
By the way, on the 21st of September the next open lecture is planned as part of our program “Management of online gaming projects”, which will also be analogous to the “combat occupation”. This time about monetization actions from the program director of Utochkin Vyacheslav viacheslavnu . Visiting it as usual is free of charge, but preliminary registration is required due to the limited number of places and entry through the list. Registration and details about the new lecture HERE .
Ask questions on the topic of lectures in the comments, we will be happy to answer.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/308286/
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