Andy Kearney guest lecture report:

 

Lecture reference:

Kearney,A.2015.Game production: or how I learned to stop worrying and love the plan. GAM5000 Games Design. 27th March, University of Bolton.

 

Andy Kearney was a producer from Super-secret game dev. He talked about numerous aspects of being a games producers and the phases in games development. The phases of game development he discussed where concept and prototype, pre-production, production, pre-alpha and alpha, pre-beta and beta and finally pre-master and the master version. All these phases relate to stages of how close the game is to completion. Mainly concept and prototype is the stage where the game is being brainstormed and tested in any way it can be paper, wood, doodled on a napkin or using lego if it lets you test a games mechanics it works. Pre-production is where the basic assets for the game are being made. Production is where all the main assets get made and implemented ready for pre-alpha and alpha, this is when the games main mechanics are put in so that it loosely resembles the end game. Once alpha phase has been completed the pre-beta and beta phase begins this phase is similar to the alpha phase where mechanics are being added to flesh the game out near to completion and once the beta phase is done the game moves to master phase this is where the game is either completed or so close to completion it can be shipped.

 

With all these phases of games development I started thinking what is the most important phase of games design and why. You would think that they are all just as important as each other as without each phase the games development could fall apart but I wonder if there it’s any that’s more important than others. I personally think the prototype phase is the most important as with it you can test the mechanic ideas you have in the concept phase but it also lets you refine everything to do with the game later down the line. This means that you can figure out precisely what models, programming scripts, design choices, art styles and other things you will need in the future. It can also let you realise what mechanics do and don’t work and you might even come up with something that could make the game that extra bit better.

 

Unfortunately I couldn’t find any article that was mainly of the stages of games design in general, they were all too specific so couldn’t be applied to other forms of games.