Crunch Time!

What? A new blogger you say? Yes, it’s true. I am pitching in by writing this week’s blog entry. It’s my job here at Legacy to oversee all of our game production. The best part about my job is that I get to be knee-deep in the development of multiple games at the same time. The worst part of my job is, well, that I am knee-deep in the development of multiple games at the same time. It certainly can be very challenging to be constantly juggling multiple tasks simultaneously. You don’t want to know how many sticky notes are on my desk at all times…

I thought I would give you folks a little insight into the different phases of a game’s development. The first stage is the Concept stage, which Don’s blog covered last week. This is when a short document is created that conveys the big-picture idea of the game in order to get approval (given the “green light”) to move forward by the publisher or developer.

Once a budget and schedule have been agreed upon, the Pre-production phase can begin. That’s when someone (usually a game designer) needs to flesh out that concept document into a full-fledged game design document. The goal is to create a detailed description of all the gameplay elements that will be understandable by everyone who reads the document. Design documents are “living documents” since the design of the game is constantly being updated as the game is being developed. Artists can then work on concept art to determine what the look and style of the game will be.  Programmers usually begin by creating a functional prototype that demonstrates one or more features of the game, usually with placeholder art.

When the Production phase begins, the entire team is in full motion.  Programmers start to write real code for the game. Artists work on creating the bits and pieces (game assets) that will be needed, such as characters, backgrounds, objects, buttons, other interface elements, animations, and much, much more. A sound engineer creates the sound effects, and a musician composes the game music. Actors may be hired to record voice-overs. Game development projects are usually required to meet milestones, which are predetermined interim project goals. Achieving these milestones requires meeting specific deadlines for phases of the project. It usually takes a lot of hard work to meet the deadlines, since some tasks often take longer than what was originally planned. Alpha (partly done), Beta (mostly done) and Gold Master (completely done) are common milestones that must be met when developing a game.

During the Beta phase is when the game needs a lot of testing by members of the QA team (Quality Assurance). The testers are the ones that play the game over and over, looking for things in the game that don’t work as they should.  Typos, missing graphics, broken features, freezes and other glitches are common “bugs” found during this phase. Descriptions of the bugs are entered in a database so that they can be tracked and verified that they really have been fixed when the programmers say they have been. It’s during this final push toward reaching a “Gold Master” is when the team often puts in a lot of overtime to finish the game. The long hours of “crunch mode” can be very tiring, but it makes actually finishing the game feel very rewarding for everyone involved.

The team working on “The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes” is definitely in crunch mode now, performing the final testing and bug fixes to the game to give it that final polish. We look forward to sharing the game with you very soon, and hope you enjoy playing the game as much as we have enjoyed creating it, every step of the way.

Craig Brannon