Moving and Game Production

Hello Everyone,

My chosen topic for this week concerns something that we are all familiar with…moving. I decided to talk to you about moving because frankly it is all I can think of lately. This is because I am in the process of moving out of one apartment into another. Don’t be worried, this won’t be a long gripe about the trials and tribulations of moving! This is relevant, I promise.

As I was going to sign the lease for my new apartment this weekend, I was thinking about how moving can be compared to the production cycle of a game. There are a couple of stages of moving and every stage takes attention to detail and planning much like game production. This week, I will talk about the preproduction part of production with regards to the early stages of moving.

In a game’s production cycle, you have a brainstorming phase called preproduction. In preproduction, you are building ideas about your proposed game and working out the logistics of how it will come together. It is at this time that the game design document is written and “quick and dirty” prototypes are made. If is hasn’t yet been done, the production schedule, cost benefit analysis and budget would also be formulated at this time. Planning and foresight is very important in every phase of production but greatly so in preproduction. It is important that the project is planned as thoroughly as possible and potential bottlenecks and inefficiencies are anticipated before they become a problem later on. This is because inefficiencies can cause problems and delays that can compound over time to cost very large amounts of money.

When you are moving, there is also a “pre production phase”, I call it the “pre-move” phase. About one or two months before your lease is up, you start looking for a new place to live. You do a cost/benefit assessment where you ask yourself questions like “Do I REALLY want to go through the hassle of moving or just stay here another year?” You go to open houses, answers ads in the newspaper and drive around neighborhoods. At this “pre-move” stage, you are not tied down to any one place. You don’t put any real money down anywhere because you want to find out as much as you can before you get tied in. During the “pre-move” stage, you may also look into pricing moving supplies and plan ahead for the actual move date. Note that you don’t really pack during this phase of moving. At this stage of a move, planning and foresight is also important. Imagine what would happen if you decided on a really great rental in Reseda, CA when your job is located in Los Angeles, CA. If you did not initially consider the long commute and factor in the extra money needed for gas and maintenance into the budget, you could be left between a rock and a hard place in a couple months time.

During the preproduction phase of game development, developers aren’t always completely sure if they will run the project to completion. This phase is for developers to get a feel of what the project will be and if they want to continue with it. They don’t really start production of the game (like building levels and writing the full script) because that could potentially be a large waste of resources if the project does not get picked up to continue on. Just imagine if you jumped into a lease at a bad rental property without considering the pros and cons. You could be stuck in a place you hate for a whole year, and have to pay for it too. With game production, moving forward without planning could cost a company millions of dollars and could lead to employees losing their jobs!

Basically, what I am trying to say is, planning is key not only to making games, but to many everyday tasks that all of us do. Being organized and having foresight are skills that everyone can benefit from, especially producers!

Natascha