Creating a video game takes a lot of work, involving lots of different people, and lots of different stages including pre-production, production, and postproduction. Also including lots of different people like artists, animators, programmers, etc. And how they work together to create a video game.
Pre-Production Stage. This is the first stage in creating a video game. To begin your pre-production stage, you need to start off with creating and idea plan for the gameplay. You need to think of the genre of game, and what type of game your going to create. For ideas you can think of what your favorite games to play are, use inspiration from you own life, or think of games that have room for improvement. Then you need to brainstorm aspects of you game that will stand out from the other games out there.
Once you have planned out all your ideas you should create a gameplay prototype, with some basic placeholder graphics, and only need to include the core mechanics of the game. The game needs to be playable and somewhat fun to play. While playing look to see how you can expand the basic little ideas off into big game changing ideas. If you cannot you need to rethink the story line. Then once you have a solid base, use the new ideas you have thought of to expand your basic prototype. Add in some different levels, change some things up.
A big part of planning the game is figuring out the complexity of the game, and how much time will be put into the game. Decide if it will be a difficult and challenging game with many levels, or and easy, not so difficult with only a few levels. The more time put in the more complex it will be. The less time the less complex.
After creating the prototype game, and figuring out the complexity of it, you need to come back to your original idea and make sure it fits well into what you have already created.
The next and one the most important steps is to create your characters for your game. First you need to teach yourself about the characters you are putting into the game, you made need to research some extra info if you do not already know about them. Give each of them storyline and a bio including different important facts like there full name, nicknames, likes, dislikes, goals, flaws, character traits, and for extra add their backstory. How they became who they are now in the game. Lastly plan out how their physical appearance will look once you get into your graphic designing stages. Maybe make a little sketch of them as well.
Once you have all the basics figured out you need to move on to creating a story outline. Get a solid beginning, ending, and then a big climax. Then you can slowly add in rising actions, but while making sure the plot for the story is still flowing smoothly. Do not add any foreshadowing if you are not going to mention it again or if you think you might cut it out later in the game.
Next you need to create an exposition so the players understand the characters that will be starting the game and what is happening in the game. Once you create your exposition go back to your story outline and add in some more character plot points that advance the character arcs. Polish the core mechanics of the games, and work on the playable character. Add more aspects like the facial expressions, what sounds they make, the way they preform actions, and how fast they are.
Once your done with that you need to take all your ideas and turn them into levels or worlds. Probably around 10-20 but keep adding ideas when you think of them. Then with all the content you have you need to write the entire story again. Rewriting it will make sure that there are now plot holes that you did not see before, and the story will flow more smoothly.
An extra part you can add is putting in a debug mode. The debug mode with just use different commands you make to give you abilities to make changes and fix some mistakes in you game. It will make editing so much faster.
Then we move on to the production stage. The first part of the production stage is to plan the games introduction. Usually the introduction will consist of a cutscene and an easier first level to introduce you into what you are about to play. Once you have your idea for your introduction you need to make your cutscene, but make sure to make a storyboard. Then finalize your storyboard for your cutscene.
The production stage consists of 5 phases vertical slice, pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and gold. The first phase, the vertical slice, is a 5-30 part of the game showing what the game look like. It is a little preview that is also used to help pitch the game to publishing companies.
The next phase is the pre-alpha phase. In this phase is where all the actions preformed during the game’s development but before official testing. This is where most of the content is made, which brings together the artists, animators, programmers, and designers to create the game. Then you enter the alpha phase. This begins when is feature complete, fully playable from start to finish, controls functionality and interface are in a finalized stage. Its where the games finishing, and polishing happens.
Next is the beta phase. This phase is mostly just fixing bugs in your game. All the games content is fully complete but has a few little things to fix. Lastly is the gold phase. This is when the game is 100% complete and is then sent to a publishing company to see how good the game is.
Then finally we enter the post-production stage. This is used to create patches to improve the gameplay or fix software bugs. There is also postmortem and closing kit. In the postmortem
the team gathers for a meeting to discuss how the game went. If they achieved all their goals. What went right, what went wrong, their mistakes, and what methods will work best in the future for creating more games.
Then there is the closing kit. The closing kit is a compilation of all the design documents, code, final game assists, music, and anything used for creating the game. This can be helpful for it you are creating a sequel for the game, or even to go through to fix some mistakes or bugs that were accidentally made while creating the game.
Then you are done. You have gone through all 3 stages of making a video game. Pre-production stage. The production stage with 5 phases vertical slice, pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and gold. Then finally the post-production stage with 2 phases postmortem, and the closing kit. The process of making a video also involves a lot of people to make it include people like artists, programmers, designers, animators, etc.
Video Game Problems Essay
In the last 10 years there has been and increase by 300% in the number of students with disabilities(U.s. Department of Education). The reason the evidence on the increase in the number of students is provided is because teachers and parents are not prepared to meet the needs in order to teach these students to maneuver in the outside world. When the article talks about disabilities they are talking about people with blindness, deaf, etc. Throughout the years these types of educators have found out how to help these students with each disability using video games. See the reason video games help teach these students is because there are people out there that make it possible to play their games no matter who the person is and the person playing the game always find a way to learn how to play games with their disabilities.
Almost everyone uses video games to help them in their lifestyle one example of this is when it comes to the air force this military branch uses video game simulations to teach people how to fly jets since it can be very dangerous when it comes to not knowing how to maneuver one of these vehicles. There is no actual proof of this but it has been shown that people when it comes to learning how to do medical procedures they use video game simulations where the person is operating on a person in game. Other way video games help people, for example people like veterans who suffer from PTSD (U.S Department of Veteran Affairs) or other traumatic past. The way video games help them is by the people playing games that involve different types of situations by having a game that involves doing a calm activity for they can ease up a bit.
Other things video games are also good for when it comes to helping someone in their lifestyle is when it comes to someone that are in constant pain or even when it comes to some that is in an abusive state. One example of the way it helps is someone in constant pain because the person is focused enough on playing the game so much they keep their minds at ease from the pain . Another way it helps is with someone that is addicted to drugs or alcohol as said from this 53-year-old woman she says “ it’s like sometimes when i can’t take it anymore and it seems like it pings in my head that I’m going to drink” . The reason she does say this is because she has nothing to do in her spare time, so the first thing she thinks of is to drink in order to pass the time. So in order for her to not think of drinking she has made up a schedule in order to keep her busy so her schedule consist of “Meditating for 15 minutes, Zumba and then game time” (U.s. Department of Education).
One thing people think about video games is that they cannot teach you a new language or improve someone learning skills but that is not true in fact video games can actually teach you a new language with apps. How? See there are things that make something a video game and that something is prizes/rewards (Using Gamification to Enhance Second Language Learning Pg.39) . There are apps out there like Duolingo, Bsuu and Babbel that teach someone a new language like spanish, french and many more. Another example is when kids learn their ABC’s they use a website called ABCMouse that has learning programs that enable the children to increase their language skills or even their math and reading. See the reason these are games is because they reward you the next level of learning in order for you to learn more of the language or subject in order for you to continue on.
It has been said that video games can help someone improve their everyday life style that will help in someway. Back in 2010, researchers have said that playing action video games like Call of Duty, God of war, or Legend of Zelda many other games help improve in someones processing skills the reason how this works is because each game causes the person to execute a command as fast as they can in order to be able to win or beat the level so it has been said that there’s a possibility that games can help improve one’s thinking process (Increasing Speed of Processing With Action Video Games). For example of this is when the person is driving when it comes to driving the person will have to be able to think ahead when your on the street when a car comes speeding through the person will have to react quick enough in order to move out of the way of the oncoming vehicle. Another way video games help with people’s daily lifestyles is when it comes to being active for example some games involve motion controls like Wii Fit or Wii Sports or even dancing games that is basically just Zumba which is an activity were the person dances to music for a good amount of time . Some games even involve the player to walk a certain distance in order to reach a certain amount of steps or exercise to win prizes.
There are many good things about video games but when it comes to everything there are always cons of things. One thing video games do is they can cause psychological stress back in 2018 an experiment was done of people ages 18 to 30 years old these games consist of a Runner game which is a game that has the player running in one direction and have the option to go left or right on certain point while being chased in game. Excitement game which consist of the player fighting characters in game or involve some type of action. A fear game which consist of the player playing a game which have pop up scares or a scary creature. Also a puzzle game which involves the player to solve puzzles here and there to be able to continue on with the game. These tests have shown that when it comes to Runner games the player was 20% before about playing and in the end was about 25% more stressed in the end when it comes to Excitement games the player was 24% stressed and after it was huge increase to about 33% while the puzzle game was 35% before and after it was decreased to about 25% the only game which drastically changed was the fear game which went from 46% to a while 87% increase (The Beneficial or Harmful Effects of Computer Game Stress).
Video Game Career Essay
In today’s day Video Games are a really popular hobby for a lot of people in the world and for the people who do like game always give thanks to the people that put the hard work into developing the games.Some games are extremely time consuming and difficult to make because it takes a lot to know how to make games like for example the Grand Theft Auto series,each game is an open work game and takes a lot of time to think of the map designs and the graphics and a whole bunch of things game developers have to deal with in making the games.There are many different Jobs when it comes to videogame development and each type has a different pay rate per year and per hour here’s a list of jobs that are involved with video game development.
Today most jobs in video game development are really high paying for a first job to start with the lowest paid job is $32,000 a year and it’s just testing games and tying to find glitches or bugs in the games system. Some starting jobs in Quality Assurance (video game tester) start off with good pay around 14 dollars an hour to to test video games and see if they need any fixes here is a website that shows the starting pay for most jobs in mostly around california.. Some jobs require the person to have some experience with testing games and mostly most places want the person who is going to test it to have at least 12 months experience .Not all the video games are the same there’s a lot of different game styles out there so you need to know how to play games because if you go in to play a first person shooter game like Call of Duty and you’ve only ever played a game like World of Warcraft which is a MMORPG game you won’t know how to play and wouldn’t really be able to test the game completely. As a video game tester you can work about 40 hours a week just like a normal job and in a whole year you can make around 30,000 dollars as a job for a single person it can be good enough for someone to live off.
A Senior Software Engineer is an experienced game designer and has at least a degree in computer science, web development, and or engineering and if they have a bachelor’s degree in any of those fields it’s a plus.Usually a career like this pays around $100,000 a year if the developer is really experienced and knows what he’s doing usually gets paid more that that . Wherever the software engineer starts to work him or her needs to learn everything about the new place they are going to start to work at because if they don’t know anything about the company they’re at they won’t be that successful there.There really isn’t anything else to talk about in the career of a software engineer but from all that you atleast need to have somes years in any type of development software to become a senior engineer.
There are many many other type of jobs in video game design another easy one is video game artist this job requires you to make the color in the type of game you’re making.Artists create the visual elements of a game, such as characters, scenery , objects,vehicles, surface textures, clothing, props, and even user interface components. Depending on what type of game that you’re making it can be a 3D or 2D you need to know how the software works and how you can become better at it. Some of the jobs that they give you as a game artist just require you to know how to design objects or styles in a game like if they want you to make a design on the wall for a room in the game you can do that and do many more jobs, if your game if a level type of game they can make you work on a single level and you can do any type of design you want thats whats really cool about it.The salary a of game artist starts around $42,000 a year and goes up gradually up to $54,000 a year with more experience and more styles you make.