The Production Pipeline PreProduction Concepting Storyboard Scripts Developing

The Production Pipeline

Pre-Production • Concepting • Storyboard • Scripts • Developing Ideas • Meetings

Concepting • • • Develop a Problem Statement Select the �� rainstorm Team Organize the Brainstorming Session Provide Background for the Brainstorm Break the Ice Individual Idea Generation Expand Ideas Select and Refine the Two to Three Best Ideas Check Feasibility Prepare Visual Presentations of Concepts The creative concept shapes the core of the team, which helps create consistency across messages and materials. Developing creative concepts is also important because it allows the team to: • Test which benefit is most appealing to the audience • See how the product will work (or not) across multiple media channels • Identify an idea that ties the whole project together, often referred to as the seed • Reach the audience more effectively by finding ‘big ideas’ that resonate with them

Storyboards are used to plan out how a scene will play and give a basic idea on how it should look. They are normally rough sketches that don’t take too much time but still provide a good representation. This is important because it allows everyone to see how the scene will look and give a visual representation. This is necessary as the directors need to see when and where a scene will play.

Scripts are used to show voice lines and characteristics of characters in a scene, these scripts will be used by animators and voice actors to create a final product that has the characters voice match up with the characters actions and model.

Meetings - SCRUMS The main purpose of a meeting is to share information with a group of people, which will allow the selected people within the group to make judged decisions within one anotherefore allowing the progression of the subject matter. Problems are also presented at meetings which allows the group of people to resolved said issues. Within meetings people also negotiate about selected topics.

Production • Asset Creation • QA Testing and bug fixing • Produces Monitoring Progress and Scheduling • Promotion and events • Meetings

Promotion and Events • Once the game is announced, normally by a teaser trailer saying 'Coming 2020' or something similar this starts to build hype around the game. After this you can start posting on social media concept art, features etc. Go to events to talk about the game or do a showcase on the project. Alphas and betas are normally a great way to get people playing your game and testing it to see how the audience reacts to the product. Events such as E 3 are big for companies as they get a chance to show off a polished gameplay experience and closer to release reveal the release date in a trailer.

QA Testing The role of a Quality Assurance Department would be to test the product to search for any bugs within the game, with each bug they find they have to test it several times to check how the bug can be done / activated, after testing the bug the game tester has to write a detailed report about the bug about how it's done and what can it do, they also have to re-test that specific bug once the development team has fixed the bug to see if the can reproduce the bug. They look for programmer bugs, graphical, spelling mistakes or audio glitches within a game. By doing so they assure the game quality is up to standard.

Asset Creation Asset creators are responsible for the creation of various components ranging from game mechanics in the form of scripts to concept art; these people will create most of the final product as they will be creating all the different parts of the final product.

Producers Monitoring progress and scheduling Producers are there to help deadlines to be met. They will monitor each area of the company to make sure each group is doing their part for the game/film. They will often talk to the head of each area such as Head Artist and they will be able to see what areas are excelling and who is falling behind. The producer will also manage the budget for the game/film. If the film/game has a maximum budget they will try to stick to it by changing things within the company. If a game is set to release by a date, it's their job to make sure the game will be ready for that date. Therefore regular meetings are needed so that they can communicate and clearly see how far off the game is from completing.

Post-Production • Bugs • Events • Interviews • DLC • Patches • PEGI • Optimization

PEGI • Pan European Game Information (PEGI) is a European video game content rating system established to help European consumers make informed decisions when buying video games or apps using age recommendations and content descriptors. PEGI 3 • The content of games with a PEGI 3 rating is considered suitable for all age groups. The game should not contain any sounds or pictures that are likely to frighten young children. A very mild form of violence (in a comical context or a childlike setting) is acceptable. No bad language should be heard. . PEGI 12 • Video games that show violence of a slightly more graphic nature towards fantasy characters or non-realistic violence towards human-like characters would fall in this age category. Sexual innuendo or sexual posturing can be present, while any bad language in this category must be mild. Gambling as it is normally carried out in real life in casinos or gambling halls can also be present (e. g. card games that in real life would be played for money). PEGI 18 • The adult classification is applied when the level of violence reaches a stage where it becomes a depiction of gross violence, apparently motiveless killing, or violence towards defenceless characters. The glamorization of the use of illegal drugs and explicit sexual activity should also fall into this age category.

Bugs in the post-production stage can be extremely bad as players don't expect a buggy game on launch. If the game is broken on launch, it will give the players a bad first impression which might stop them from returning. The players expect a game to be polished on release however, minor bugs that don't really change the gameplay are not serious and do not have to be fixed instantly.

DLC Downloadable content (DLC) is content which is added to a game once it has already been released adding new, characters, skins and other content which is added after a games release. Oftenly DLC is only obtainable through microtransactions which help fund the further development of a game.