Whenever you try to learn something about
a video game production cycle, be it online
or at a school, usually you will see the following
nice timeline.
It is certainly pretty and gives a general
understanding of how games are developed - you
first brainstorm what you would like to create,
come up with a plan how to make it exactly,
actually develop it until all features are
done, then finish up all the content, fix
bugs and release.
But it’s not how things work exactly, ever.
Don’t get me wrong, the whole game industry
would love the production cycle to be as clean
as this, and we set up milestones to try and
make it true, but even in a perfectly organized
efficient production, the timeline looks more
like this.
Here’s the thing, most of the things that
look good on paper don’t really turn out
like that in reality.
Which means you often are going back, iterating,
testing, making changes, iterating.
More than that, all required work is done
in tandem as much as possible, which means
different things are at different points of
progress at different points in production.
It depends of course on priorities and how
many people can work on which feature.
Now there are two things that can happen because
of this.
First - a decision on one feature can require
some changes in another one.
Second - as the game starts taking shape,
you see how things start clicking together…
or not!
The latter being more likely, which, again,
means you need to go back and iterate to make
it all fit together into a cohesive whole.
I think a good analogy for a game production
cycle would be the following.
Imagine you want to make a puzzle as a team,
but you can’t just make a drawing and then
cut it down to pieces.
You have to make each piece separately and
then connect them together.
All while working on different parts of the
puzzle at the same time.
So you decide on a sketch of what you want
to do… and then different teams start making
the actual puzzle pieces separately, trying
to fit them together into chunks, and then
trying to connect those chunks together, seeing
what’s missing, where connection is not
good, and going back to redraw those parts
or make totally new pieces, until you eventually
have the fully complete puzzle.
Hope this makes it clear what a production
cycle is really like, and why!
If you have more questions, feel free to ask
them in the comments, I will gladly answer
them.
A special thank you goes to my patrons - I’m
doing this during my free time and all support
helps dealing with my student loans, which
means I will be able to make better videos
in the future!
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supporting the Patreon campaign as well!
Thank you very much!
