CASE STUDY—GAME PRODUCTION CYCLE 451
A.6 POST-PRODUCTION PHASE
Post production is covered in more detail in Chapters 24 and 25. The team
worked very hard on Justice Unit and is looking forward to taking some time
off after the project is completed. However, before they can go on vacation, the
producer wants to conduct a post mortem and create a closing kit. These tasks
will not take more than a week or so to complete.
A.6.1 Post Mortem
The producer asks the team to prepare for the post mortem by listing five things
that worked and five things that didn’t work on the project. Some people have
been anticipating a post mortem at the end of the project and have been jotting
notes about this throughout the project. Other people start thinking about these
items at the end of the project.
While everyone will have a slightly different list of good and bad—for
example, the artists may be more focused on things that directly impact the
art production cycle, and engineers are focused on the engineering aspects—
these items will have some common elements. The producer and associate
producer organize everyone’s items into broad categories and then schedule a
meeting to discuss the information. Each category is discussed for about 10 to
15 minutes. At the end of the meeting, the team selects three categories that
can be improved upon for the next project. The producer writes up a brief
lessons learned document for these three categories and publishes it to the
team. The team’s goal is to focus on improving these three items on the next
project.
The other items on the list aren’t considered any less important, but the
producer has found that it is more effective to concentrate on three areas of
improvement at a given time, instead of the entire list. Once the team has
successfully implemented the first three lessons learned on the project, the
producer will then work with the team to publish lessons learned on the next
three items on the list. Every few months, the team will work on integrating
new improvements in the development process. Refer to Chapter 24 for more
information on post mortems.
A.6.2 Closing Kit
Once the game is approved by the console manufacturers and the PC gold master
is completed, Supergame Studios needs to complete a closing kit for the project.
They archive all the code, assets, and documentation and create three copies.
One copy is stored on-site, one copy is sent to the publisher, and one copy is
archived off-site. The leads work with the remaining team to get this done in a
452 THE GAME PRODUCTION HANDBOOK, 2/E
week so that everyone can take some time off before starting their next project.
Chapter 25 contains more detailed information on how to create closing kits.
A.6.3 Completing Post-Production
Supergame Studios has completed post-production and consults their checklist to
confirm that they have completed all the major pre-production tasks. Figure A.41
is the post-production checklist.
WRAP UP CHECKLIST Y / N NOTES
ARCHIVE PLAN
Is closing kit completed?
LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE
Is post mortem completed?
Is post mortem published to the entire development studio?
FIGURE A.41 Post-production checklist.
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