Reading Week 2

What Makes Game Development Hard?

• Before you start to make the game you must have a good plan to make sure you have covered everything and so everyone has a role in the development.
• Games aren't always profitable, you need to sell a huge number of games in order to make decent money on it, although 15% of sales go to the developers.
• You have to have a reason before you make a game. It might be for a hobby, for an assignment of for profit in a company. You have to set a target of how much money you expect to make from it. Make sure you know what the expectations of your game are.
• If your game is part of a company, then is it expected to profit hugely? Will it give the business a bad name if it doesn't?
• Time and Money are of the essence when creating a game.
• Make sure your game delivers in the genre that it is placed in. Your game can't be everything and include everything so it has to be a good representation of it's genre. For example if it's an FPS then it has to be a good FPS, and not try and be an RPG as well.
• You have to take game creation step by step when you are first starting out, you are not going to be head of a company or a millionaire with your first game.
• Use the software that you are familiar with, for example 3DSMAX or C++.
• Make sure your game can run on different hardware types, for example on a Core 2 Duo Processor or an 8800GT Graphics Card.
• Don't spend too long developing the game, development costs may run high and you may never make them back.
• Your company and publisher will get annoyed if you take too long to finish the game, and may even cancel the project so that their reputation isn't destroyed.
• Constraints in your game development may help you focus on the task more.
• If there are bugs in your game the quality will be low and it might not run on some consumers computers. The bugs need to be patched when they are found.
• Set Goals and meet them and you have future success, so if you set a specific deadline for the release of a game and meet it then the company and publisher will be pleased.
• Send out a playable demo in preproduction to generate hype about the game, and to show people what to expect from the full version.
• The hardware vendors decide whether or not a console game gets published; it may get sent back to the developer a dozen times to be improved, but the profits are greater than for PC games.
• Green-Light Meetings are where a decision is made on whether a game should be published or not. The best bits of the game, "eye candy" are presented in these meetings.
• Make sure you organise your project carefully.
• Make the tasks clear to your team and try to motivate them so they don't lose track of the goal. Keep the tasks regularly updated.
• If your game is a success, listen to what your fans say about it and what they would like to see included in a sequel, maybe.
• Hardware and Software for a console won't change, unless a new console is released, whereas PC's are changing all the time.