How to Make a Videogame in Eight (Sort of) Easy Steps
- Thread starter The Escapist Staff
- Start date
Yeah wish it were all that easy. Tons of work goes into it. Especially during crunch time. I have a buddy that works for a major game company. And is working 16 hour days. I don't envy him.
Interesting read. However, in Bioware's case, I'd love tips on how to write in addition. Their writing is really good, and I think many people could benefit from some pointers and tips. Myself definitely included.
How to make a Bioware game:
Introduce hero
Hero witnesses catastrophic event
Hero gets a powerful position
Hero visits three major locations, gathering teammates as he goes
Hero visits one minor location between the three major and the final location
Hero visits final location and gets revenge for catastrophic event
And that, my friends, isa pint how you make a Bioware game.
Introduce hero
Hero witnesses catastrophic event
Hero gets a powerful position
Hero visits three major locations, gathering teammates as he goes
Hero visits one minor location between the three major and the final location
Hero visits final location and gets revenge for catastrophic event
And that, my friends, is
Damn, I wish I had the time and skill to get past step 1. But unfortunately I don't, I'm just the idea [sub]dog[/sub] man
Apart from the concept stage, that's basically the recipe for any major piece of software developed from scratch. Replace concept with "contract negotiations" or "client demand specification", and you could just as easy make a new revenue management system with that formula (well, apart from the lensflares maybe).
It's still interesting to note that the structure is there in games development, by many programmers seen as the fun exiting branch of code.
Programmer input and creativity depends, I think, mainly on the culture of the company and the size of the project. Some give a healthy amount of autonomy in implementing specifics to the coder in question; On a project of any larger size, like a mainstream game, you cannot micromanage to that extent. Also you hopefully hired the programmer because he knows what he or she is doing, and can implement an effecient algorithm. On the other hand, you have X amount of work to be done, and you cannot afford to delay the process by running everything past the designers that someone thinks is a good idea. The designer (which can overlap with programming) have the bigger picture, and sometimes you just need to get stuff done, so others aren't held up. If your design is modular enough, you can go back and optimize later: The golden ruie of performance engineering (making stuff work faster/better) is to optimize the bottleneck. At the initial development stage, you likely only have a vague idea of where those are, so you don't want to spend too much time making the super-clever (and timeconsuming) solution everywhere, if the normal-clever works satisfactorily.
It's still interesting to note that the structure is there in games development, by many programmers seen as the fun exiting branch of code.
Programmer input and creativity depends, I think, mainly on the culture of the company and the size of the project. Some give a healthy amount of autonomy in implementing specifics to the coder in question; On a project of any larger size, like a mainstream game, you cannot micromanage to that extent. Also you hopefully hired the programmer because he knows what he or she is doing, and can implement an effecient algorithm. On the other hand, you have X amount of work to be done, and you cannot afford to delay the process by running everything past the designers that someone thinks is a good idea. The designer (which can overlap with programming) have the bigger picture, and sometimes you just need to get stuff done, so others aren't held up. If your design is modular enough, you can go back and optimize later: The golden ruie of performance engineering (making stuff work faster/better) is to optimize the bottleneck. At the initial development stage, you likely only have a vague idea of where those are, so you don't want to spend too much time making the super-clever (and timeconsuming) solution everywhere, if the normal-clever works satisfactorily.
Thanks for this post, it was really interesting. I'm always interested in how games get made, but to be honest I'm more interested in how Bioware makes games, it always seems impossible that a team of people could have come up with all that. Bethesda even more so.
Pity the pretty list doesnt include the really nasty steps after prototyping and after shipping...
Hire in a lot of contract programmers, go through the production crunch time, ship product, backscale the production team.
Oh, incidently that answers the question of what do the large teams do during the earlier phases... the main players in the industry hire and fire programmers and asset artists like its a straight up manufacturing firm, and to the suits in modern day game business there no tangible difference between making games and running a canned soup manufacturing firm.
Hire in a lot of contract programmers, go through the production crunch time, ship product, backscale the production team.
Oh, incidently that answers the question of what do the large teams do during the earlier phases... the main players in the industry hire and fire programmers and asset artists like its a straight up manufacturing firm, and to the suits in modern day game business there no tangible difference between making games and running a canned soup manufacturing firm.
Well hot damn - now all I need is millions of dollars, a large team of capable programmers and designers, and creativity, and I'm in business. Who knew that it would be so sort of easy?