Three of the organizations have specific provision for ideas generated within the company to at least be considered for development. This formal structure was not found among our other participants; although one lead designer at another company stated that he would like to encourage this, he found it difficult to see how it could be accommodated within their normal working environment.
Incidentally, this person stated that he had actually got the idea from an article he had read in the games development press, although he could not remember where he had seen it. This organization and one other formally invited its staff to propose ideas. Approving Developments There was no real commonality among participants as to the processes used for approving game ideas for development.
This was partly because of the wide variety of models for generating ideas. Some organizations work mostly on licensed titles, for example tie-ins with films or books. For a significant licence, for example for a major film, these developers would be approached by the publisher which had paid for the licence. Some organizations licence IP from other game developers and create versions of games for different platforms; in one case, the impetus came from the participants, rather than from the owner of the IP.
Other companies tend to work on series of games, with each new sequel improving in some way on the games that had gone before.
One participant talked about approving in two stages; the first approval would be for the pre-production phase of the game, then, if that proved to be successful, approval would be sought for the actual production of the game.
All participants talked about the primacy of sales and marketing issues in the approvals process. Participants in general felt that industry giants like Will Wright or Peter Molyneux, who might expect to get even quite radical game concepts funded, are very much the exception in the modern games industry.
Throughout all the interviews, there was a very striking realism about the business issues relating to games development. Team Issues An issue that was mentioned by a majority of our respondents is the need to have a single person in the organization who holds and maintains the vision of the game. This will normally be the lead designer, but could equally be the producer or even a development director who may have oversight of more than one development.
The importance of trusting and supporting this person was stressed by all of our participants. While most participants hold meetings of the development team during the course of a development, they maintained that eventually one person must make a decision and everyone must follow the decision.
For all but one of our participants, a typical game development would involve more than ten people. Unsurprisingly, therefore, these participants stressed the importance of communication among team members during the course of the development. A number of different structures were proposed for this, including weekly meetings of the producer, lead designer, lead programmer and lead artist. More than one participant felt that communication was lacking, despite their best attempts to encourage it.
The participant whose company used much smaller team sizes felt that communication between teams was healthy, even if the teams were working on different products, and generally tried to encourage communication as part of the ethos of the company. In general, ad hoc communication appears to be the norm; while the lead designer must keep the design document up to date, in practice team members will tend to ask the lead designer questions about its contents rather than searching through it.
So the lead must be able to interpret the document and articulate clearly its contents, both at the concept level and at a very fine level of detail. Perhaps the most important aspect of teamwork in game development is the fact that the overwhelming majority of game developers are passionate about games.
This shared passion is arguably a very significant contributor to the quality of the games that are produced. More than one participant talked about using non-development staff in their organizations to evaluate games during production; while they acknowledged that this is not necessarily ideal, there was an understanding that they could do this, because there are always plenty of people in the organization who are willing to play through a game or a level and give some feedback.
It might be difficult to find this game-playing culture in other types of organization. Where the developer is working with an external publisher, the final arbiter in decisions about the game will be an external producer, and participants have explained that the compromise that may be required in dealing with this external authority can undermine the efforts of the lead designer.
Two interviewees have described cases where this external authority has not been a keen game player and therefore has not appreciated the rationale behind design decisions. These interviewees expressed frustration at the intervention of an external authority in the development of games and both believed that this had jeopardised the success of their games. Pre-production All participants stated that pre-production would be an iterative process. Wherever the idea for the game comes from, it needs to be refined by staff at the development company.
Essentially, the output of the pre-production process is a set of documents which describe in great detail the game which is to be developed. Development teams use a variety of techniques to reach the stage when they can produce those documents. All participants talked about prototyping as a key technique for pre-production, with more than one participant stating that pre-production should always involve a prototype.
More than one participant stated that prototypes did not have to be programs; their teams use pencil-and-paper diagrams, board games, LegoTM or indeed any material that can give a visual impression of a game feature.
One participant stated that trying to complete a design document without prototyping is actually the worst possible approach, akin to going through the whole process of designing a car without attempting to test any of its constituent parts.
Nevertheless, this is sometimes what happens. Even in the company for which it is now policy that pre-production should finish with a prototype of a vertical slice of the game, this has proved to be difficult.
One participant stated that his organization was currently doing some pre-production work which was paid for by a publisher, something that they had never experienced before. The clear implication is that in the normal case, designers would need to write the design document without prototyping the game beforehand, even knowing the problems with that approach. Documentation All of the developers talked about a canonical design document, which includes details about every aspect of the game and the user interface to the game.
There was a clear implication from the majority of the participants that the person in the organization who holds the vision for the game would be in charge of maintaining the document. Although all participants talked about the importance of this document, there was no real agreement about the form it might take. There was some variety in the suggested length of the document, and one developer stated that his organization was moving to documents with less text and more art.
Where there is a relationship with a publisher, participants suggested that different types of documents might be used, for example for pitching ideas. In this case developers would prepare a concept document, which is based on the design document, but which includes far more art and far fewer words. Production In cases where a separate publisher is funding the development, the design document becomes the basis for the contract between the developer and the publisher.
Essentially, the features listed in the design document are subdivided into a schedule of milestones. In one case, the participant expressed the shock he felt the first time he went through this process; he felt he had not considered the design document in sufficient detail for it to be used as the basis for a contract. The milestones are of critical importance for developers who work with external publishers. In this context, it is clear that developers must be fairly disciplined when it comes to the production phase of the development.
In general, the companies we interviewed all have a very mature approach to development, with a clearly defined management structure and very strict documentation requirements. This is a reaction to the very strong management processes imposed by publishers in the current game development environment.
This apparently goes against the stereotypical image of the game designer, but our findings so far suggest that there is a very good understanding of the consequences of feature-creep in the development of modern video-games.
A majority of participants recounted incidents where their publishers had insisted on new features and contrasted this behaviour with their own reluctance to try to do this. None of our participants expressed any nostalgia for those days, and all seemed completely committed to modern management practices.
The majority of our participants believe that their approaches to assessing engagement and motivation during the production of their games are inadequate or too ad hoc. However, all participants do use people from outside the development team to gauge the quality of their games during production, but only two described processes which were consistently applied.
At the moment, however, this is a plan rather than reflective of anything that his company has done before. Although our participants were somewhat critical of their own efforts at evaluating their products, it is very important to reiterate that they do involve people who are not members of the development team in assessing their products during development. Stay up to date on the latest articles, webinars and resources for learning and development.
What Is Game-based Learning? What Are the Benefits of Game-based Learning? Unlike the typical entertainment value that games provide, when used in a learning context, games: Encourage strategic thinking.
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More Information. MLA Iacovides, Ioanna,et al. Iacovides, I. Motivation, Engagement and Learning through Digital Games. Available In.
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