Industry Case Study

What happens in the studio?

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Concept

-Come up with ideas for a game

Analysis

-Go to marketing
-Number of users
-Target audience

Develop ideas

-Game design document
-Unique selling points

Prototype

-Use rapid prototyping tool
-Edit finished game engines
-Only need a small team

Production

-Get funding and start production
-Much larger team

Post production

-Give finished game to publisher

After Sales

-Updates/patches etc.
-Sell IP? Make money

Roles in the Games Industry

Programmers

Programming is usualy classed as a very difficult skill to learn! (Why did we choose it?!)

Programmers are traditionally from a Computer Science type background, although now more games courses are being introduced into universities, this will probably soon change. Most old / good games programmers come from a ‘Bedroom coder’ background, which means they have taught themselves in their own bedroom and are ‘obsessed by logic’. Programmers (at this date in time) are mostly all skilled in C++, which is a language that is mostly used for developing games.

Engine

The games main engine is essentially the fabric of the game world and is normally comprised of various code libraries relevant to the way that the game will work. An engine is essential to a game. If there was no engine the code for a game would be an endless string of repeated tasks and the lines of code would run into the millions. Some engines are purpose built for a single game, especially in the case of older console games. However newer engines are often sold on or re-used to make games that can vary wildly from each other, such as Epic’s popular Unreal Engine and Valve's Source Engine to name a few.

AI

Artificial Intelligence is essential to many modern games and need requires a lot of programming skill and effort. In older games this was possibly not as an important a task, with enemies and other objects simply following a fixed loop and showing little or no intelligence as a direct reaction to anything the player does. AI is now rapidly expanding and a very important part of modern intelligent game-play. Normally a developer will have a few programmers entirely dedicated to AI development.

Artists

• Art Graduate
• Creative but computer literate
• Traditional Art skills
• 2D Drawing / 3D Modelling /Animating

– Concept
– Animators
– Modellers
– Character
– Texture

Designers

– Game
• No specific degree
• Difficult to teach
• Experience led
• Often transferred from different discipline
• Game Ideas
• Communicate Gameplay to the team
• Creates Game Data e.g. Levels / Enemies
– Script Writers
– Level Designers

Producer / Assistant

– Leads

Music / Sound Engineers

Quality Assurance Testers

Once a game reaches the point where it can be play-tested (beta stage), the producers hand it off to the game testers at Quality Assurance. Game testing is the classic entry-level position in development since the only qualification is to be an excellent gamer. Testers are encouraged to explore the game fully, to try unexpected and counter-intuitive moves just to see what happens."
Once a game has moved to gold status, it is handed off to the people who will attempt to market it. This field includes everything from packaging and design to the individuals who write the press releases."

A game team

Usually Graduates
Programming
Art
Design
Production
Quality Assurance and Testing

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