Unit 1 - Zac Argo
What is pre-production?
Pre-production is the preparation e.g research, finance, time and locations.
Finance:
To create a professional, high quality game you’re going to need money and therefore a budget. You’re going to need to be able to pay for things such as crew, materials, facility hire and equipment. Distributors tend to give game companies money to get started however you have to remember that you must keep them updated with all the progress of the game. Distributors always give you deadlines so you must be always on time. You will depending on the strength of the game if you miss a deadline the distributor will either extend it or scrap the project. You always have to pay the money back so you would have to work out a payment scheme. Another good way to get money is sites such as “kickstarter” this is where the general public essentially donate (invest) money to you, usually you offer them an early trial (beta) of the game or something special in game when it’s released.
It is important to accumulate how much you're going to spend on the game so you know how much you're going to sell the game at (if at all). Indie games tend to be free as they only require a small team to make and a lot of the developers do it for fun. Big games companies however with huge amounts of manpower need to pay people salaries therefore need to sell their games (often at a hefty price). The advantage of this is if your game is a series game (Battlefield series, Call of Duty series, Fifa series) then you know you have guarenteed buyers of the game whom often don't care about the game - they just want to play it.
Time:
As I previously mentioned if distributors loan you money they often expect you to work by deadlines for example they’d want certain sections/levels completed by a certain date. Deadlines create a target for the team to work around allowing them to plan how much they have to work each day. If someone fails to meet their objective it could seriously jeopardize the project and lead to the individual being sacked. If you create a schedule it eliminates people getting confused and working on the same thing it also allows the workload to be spread evenly.
Personnel:
You will need to estimate how many bodies it would take to complete your project, the size of your team will affect how much money you will need (salary). Your skills will affect who you choose to employ and in the end effect how well the game turns out. You will need skills to choose who you think is the best at the particular job. It isn’t a bad idea either to employ an apprentice (if there’s time). This is because they can be trained by a skilled employee and you don’t have to pay them as much in terms of salary.
Facilities:
You will need the right facilities for your game to ensure that the end product is the best that it can possibly be. For example you would want the best equipment you could get your hands on like photoshop for example. Not only is it software though. Hardware is also important you would need good graphics card to handle the software. Peripherals are important too, artists would need to have a pad to create sprites/concept art.
Furthermore you’ll need to find a suitable working space and environment, too big and it will be a waste of money that could have been spend on other things. Too small and the workspace would be too cramped and wouldn’t be comfortable for the workers.
You’ll need to consider the cost of using facilities and add that into your financial plan.
You can add things into your workspace to cater your game for example green screens; green screens are a great way to add certain visuals into a game where otherwise would be impossible. Another example of this would be a studio where you can create your own sounds for your game. Another advantage of a studio is you don't have to travel anywhere instead you could hire someone to come to your facility and record sounds inhouse.
Outsourcing is a way of adding something to your game which you couldn't of had before. Outsourcing is basically temporarily "borrowing" somebody from another company to come and do work for you (not always another company, they can be free agents too). This can be quite costly, however the money that you could make would outweigh the cost.
Materials:
Materials are things such as sounds, sprites, artwork etc.
A plan needs to be made which discusses what materials are needed and how you’re going to acquire them. Suppliers are a good way to get materials however the big guys are often expensive, so you have if you buy from a large company only get what’s essential so you don’t go over your budget. You need to be organized in terms of how you’re going to get the materials and how much you’re going to spend on materials. Some people may find that they will get better value for their money with smaller companies compared to the big cheeses.
You want to acquire materials efficiently meaning that you don’t want to spend too much time acquiring them and you want to get them for as cheap as you can. It would be advisable that you’d make a priority list so harder to find materials are at the top of list. The most efficient way to find materials is to research on the internet and more often than not you can find deals for the materials that you want. For example sound libraries which allow you to download free music and sounds to use. This is efficient because it’s free and you don’t have to spend time getting sounds together meaning you can work on other aspects of the project.
Contributors:
As I mentioned in Finance there are many ways to get money for games. One of the ways I didn’t talk about was sponsoring. A sponsor can agree to fund you for your project if you advertise their product in your game. This is called product placement and it is a good way to get money for your project at the prices of placing their product in your game.
Contributing doesn’t always have to be money however, having a known talent contribute (work for you) can be a great help within the quality of the game. They can use their expertise to help the team or just improve a certain section of your game.
Celebrity personalities would help promote the game (also makes "hype" meaning future players of the game will be excited to see the celebrities in-game character). An example of this is Ricky Gervais appearing in the game "Grand Theft Auto IV". Adding a celebrity guest to your game would make more people interested in the game and create word-of-mouth which would create 'hype' around the game and make people intrigued (sometimes they wonder if it's just speculation. All publicity is good publicity though). Celebrities can also promote the game via social media such as Twitter and Facebook for example making a Tweet like "Check out this new game I made an appearence in"
Locations:
Locations are another good way to make people interested in your game, places that are instantly recognisable will make people think "Hey I've been there I'm gonna buy it to see if it's how it is in real life" and in turn selling more copies of your game. "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" is a great example of this. It is located in the state of "San Andreas". Whilst the state San Andreas is fictional, it is based on sections of Nevada and California. It's 3 major cities Los Santos (Los Angeles), San Fierro (San Francisco) and Las Venturas (Las Vegas), immediately this would make people living in them states intrigued and want to buy the game or atleast read more about it and spread the word. It is quite smart to do this as it can work the other way, "I've never been there I'd like to see what it looks like". There's only two types of people, people who've been there and people who haven't therefore it applies to everybody.
Also it can save on production time as you don't have to get employees to draft out a brand new city instead you could copy an already existing city and add things to it as you please (I'm sure there's not that many strip clubs in Los Angeles).
Codes of practice and regulation:
Codes of practice and regulations are there to ensure you're not stealing peoples work and they're not stealing yours. The practices include copyright, regulations, ethics, trademarks and rules.
Copyright is there to protect the creator/owner of the works work, it also allows then to have exclusive rights to the piece and if anybody was to copy/steal a copyrighted peice they'd be prosecuted and sued. This is important because it means you have to be very careful of what you're doing so you're not going to get prosecuted for any of your work, something like this could jeopardize your whole project.
Trademarks are words, logos, symbols or phrases (Ex: Nike, Adidas, Riot Games etc.). These logos and phrases often represent a company, the protection of this is important because it makes sure your company logo is unique and easily recognizable.
Ethics ensures that the game you're making is morally correct and doesn't offend or single out certain types/races of people. The most controversial sequence in a game is the "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" scene called "No Russia". In which you have the option to murder hundreds of civilians in an airport. This was taken to court and Infinity Ward argued the point that you don't to kill anybody it's an option you have. I agree with their sentiment but I can see why certain people got upset over this, however not once does it say "kill everybody" - only implications are given. The importance of ethical decisions in games is that you don't want to anger everybody. If you do this no one would want to buy your game, I feel the "No Russia" scene is borderline on ethically wrong but it doesn't tell you to do anything. Whereas if something was outright racist or there only to witch hunt certain groups/ethnic minorities then that's totally wrong and should not happen.
All of these rules and regulations are important to understand and obide by because it could mean your whole project falling apart meaning thousands of pounds and hours lost for something that could have so easily been avoided if the right attention was payed. Gaming companies are serious businesses and should be treated as so.
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