300 THE GAME PRODUCTION HANDBOOK, 2/E
I was once beta testing an online game. There was a UI screen where you could
select different cities. I decided to find out what happened if I started rapidly click-
ing all the cities, and ended up crashing the server. The developer called me on
the phone, and I re-created the bug for him. In the background, I could hear the
QA lead say, “this is why we have beta testers, I would have never thought to have
tried that.”
Another thing is to make sure that the developers are available, even in a lim-
ited capacity, to interact with the beta testers. Testers are working hard, often with-
out pay, and it is good to know they are being listened to and that their feedback is
taken seriously. This could be as simple as having developers post on the message
boards or jumping into an online game and playing a game with the testers.
Finally, be careful when selecting beta testers. Some people who are more in-
terested in playing a free version of the game than in providing useful play test
feedback. It is really good to have a trusted core team of beta testers that you know
do good work. This core group can work throughout the entire beta testing process
and on features that you don’t want competitors to learn about. The developer then
can have other testers (non-core) focused on less sensitive areas of the game if the
situation warrants.
17.3 ART PRODUCTION CYCLE
The art production cycle revolves around asset creation—character, vehicles,
objects, weapons, environment, UI art, and cinematics are created during the
production phase. Each artist has an assigned deliverables to produce by spe-
cific deadlines. After the deliverables are completed and working in the build,
the feedback starts coming in. As with design, art will then revisit their work,
implement feedback and polish the assets until the game is in a shippable state.
Because each game has numerous art assets, the lead artist also spends a lot of
time tracking the asset creation and making sure the artists are getting feedback
in a timely manner.
Prototyping is still being done at this point. Even though the list of assets is
defined, concept art and prototyping is necessary for specific assets that are gen-
erated. Also, an animator will work with the producer on planning the motion
capture shoot if one is necessary.
Art will spend time working with the engineers to refine the art produc-
tion pipeline. Usually when art production begins, some of the proprietary art
tools are still being coded by the engineers. Usually artists can start creating
assets if the pipeline is not ready, especially if the source assets are created in
a commercial software package, but they won’t be able to view these assets
PRODUCTION CYCLE 301
in-game until the pipeline is complete. Be aware that any delays in getting
the pipeline up and running has a negative impact on the overall schedule. If
these delays drag on for weeks, it is possible that milestones will be missed, or
marketing will not have viewable builds of the game for important conferences
and tradeshows.
PROTOTYPING
Carey Chico, Art Director
Pandemic Studios
Prototyping is extremely important when creating art assets for a game. To this
end, the art director and producer must commit to doing everything in their power
to get prototypes of levels, models, special effects, and any other key art asset run-
ning in-game. One thing you can do, if the game’s engine is not up and running, is
to use a ready-made engine and level editor (such as Unreal) to build a temporary
world. If this is not possible, create a lot of concept art to convey the mood, feel-
ing, and style of the game. Although concept art will not solve technical challenges,
it can help define them when considering what technical art features need to be
included in the game.
Prototyping and concept art also gets the team excited about the game. The
more the team can see, the more they can share the vision of the game with each
other. Completed concept art and prototypes can create a lot of excitement and
positive energy on a project.
17.4 ENGINEERING PRODUCTION CYCLE
During production, engineering is working hard to get the features coded and
debugged in the game. If they are using middleware, they also work with a mid-
dleware vendor to get the code up and running. They will work closely with QA
to identify crash bugs and test fixes. As with design and art, engineering will also
implement any necessary feedback.
Additionally, engineering is responsible for making regular builds of the
game and maintaining the production pipeline. If the build is not working, more
than likely the lead engineer and his team will need to fix the problem.
Engineers might spend a lot of production time debugging and putting out
fires. Technology never works the way it is expected to, so a feature that was
302 THE GAME PRODUCTION HANDBOOK, 2/E
GIVING EFFECTIVE FEEDBACK
Carey Chico, Art Director
Pandemic Studios
Giving effective feedback to an artist is not difficult, if you answer two ques-
tions: do you like it? and why? Why is the cornerstone of useful feedback; if you
can’t explain why you don’t like something, the artist will not understand the feed-
back and will not know what changes to make.
All feedback on art assets should go through the art director and not directly
to the artist who created the asset. This way the art director can filter the feedback,
so there is no confusion on what changes must be made. The art director can also
rephrase the feedback so that it is diplomatic and provides useful information to
the artist. This also prevents the lines of communication from getting crossed, es-
pecially in a situation where the lead designer and lead artist might have conflicting
feedback.
Establish a good process for tracking all the feedback. For example,
Alienbrain and Perforce force you to add a comment when you check something
in, which is a good way to track what changes were made to an asset. You can
also track these changes in a change control log or in a designated area on the
team website.
originally planned for might need to be cut because the technology can’t support
it. Sometimes these problems are not realized until engineering begins produc-
tion and is finally seeing how things will function in the game.
17.5 WORKING TOGETHER
As discussed in Chapter 7, “Teams,” it is important that everyone on the team
works together toward a common goal. Art should be talking with design and
engineering on a regular basis about the game, and so on. If you have a team
in which art, design, engineering, production, and QA don’t interact with each
other, you might soon find that communication between the departments is rare,
and that when it does happen, it’s to complain about each other.
Feedback between art, design, engineering, and QA is valuable to the game
and the team. If an engineer takes time to play some of the missions the designers
PRODUCTION CYCLE 303
USEFUL FEEDBACK
Clint Hocking, Creative Director
Ubisoft
Sadly, everyone is a critic, and because design is something everyone thinks
they can do, everyone seems to think they are entitled to give feedback on the
design and have that feedback be integrated. What is the best way for an artist,
producer, designer, or manager to give feedback on code? The answer is: go learn
how to program, work your way up from intern to lead, and then conduct a thorough
code evaluation and present that feedback in writing. Unfortunately, it is true that
because design is so ill-defined and because we tend to not be rigorous, we are sub-
ject to this kind of input in ways that programmers or producers are not. This is our
fault. We need to develop and improve our methodologies and work on formalizing
our field and developing ourselves and our abilities to the point where some guy off
the street who happens to like Quake does not have a 50–50 chance of being as good
or better than any working designer. Until we reach the level where there is a quan-
tifiable skill-set that is possessed only by designers, until we get past the ‘wouldn’t it
be cool if. . .’ approaches to design, we will always be required to integrate feedback
from people in other professions. That said, programmers and producers and artists
out there have valuable design feedback. This is because they are engaged by design
problems; they are analytical; and they know what they are talking about as much
as your average designer. The best way for them to give their feedback is simply to
be able to analyze and criticize the design in the same vocabulary as the designer.
In other words, by coming to speak to me in my own language, you have shown that
you understand my field. It’s the same with art and programming and production.
It can be a challenge to get engineers, artists, and designers to effectively com-
municate with each other. We don’t yet have a full formalized vocabulary for talk-
ing about and, thereby, facilitating design. This is a primary goal for modern game
designers. Go read the books, lectures, or papers of Doug Church, Mark Leblanc,
Harvey Smith, Chris Crawford, Raph Koster, Ben Cousins, Robin Hunicke—or ba-
sically any designer who is linked off of their websites or blogs. Then you will start
to understand how to communicate with designers. Then you won’t be coming to
your designer and saying, ‘I think it would be cooler if ….’ When you can do that,
you will find yourself in one of two positions: you’ll either find yourself talking to a
designer who designs by saying ‘wouldn’t it be cool if’—in which case your project
is probably in trouble, or you will find a designer who can communicate with you,
in which case, everyone wins. Designers need to be more thorough, and when they
become more thorough, they will expect those who want to discuss design with
them to be thorough as well.
304 THE GAME PRODUCTION HANDBOOK, 2/E
has scripted, he might have some suggestions on ways to improve it or discover a
minor change he can make to the scripting tool that provides some added script-
ing functionality to make the missions more fun. Constructive feedback is always
welcome if delivered in a tactful and respectful manner.
During production, it is also important for the team to realize what the task
dependencies are and how any delays affect the overall deadlines. People need
to work closely together, especially if multiple departments are working on the
same feature. Each team member should set aside a few minutes each day to
check in with his co-workers about where they are with their work. Also, people
should not be afraid to raise red flags or bring any concerns to their lead or the
production.
Overall, production is a time filled with a lot of activity, and the team will
grow to its maximum size. Things will be happening quickly, so everyone needs
to be conscientious about getting their work done in a timely fashion. Production
is also when crunch time becomes necessary, so be sure to keep an eye peeled
for burnout or other potential personnel issues. Because so much is happening
during production, it is also one of the most enjoyable times of the project if you
have planned carefully during pre-production.
17.6 CHAPTER SUMMARY
Production starts after the game concept and requirements are defined in pre-
production. If the game plan is detailed and well-organized, production will go
smoothly. During production, art, design, engineering, production, and QA are
all focused on the same goal—delivering a high quality and entertaining game.
Each discipline will have different priorities for the game: art wants the game to
look its best; design wants the game to play its best; and so on. But they all work
together to strike a balance between each goal. These goals are influenced by all
the play testing and feedback that occur during production. The next chapter
presents some ways to keep the production process on track.
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