There is now enough literature and various materials on game development. Game design and level design, game analytics and psychology of gamers, narrative and history of popular projects - they tell a lot, meaningfully and interestingly, at least for those who are just “rolling in” into the game development industry. Which is growing rapidly : billions of dollars in deals are heard by everyone and draw exciting prospects for novice developers.
And here's the problem. Yes, the game industry has long since becomea large conveyor business, with its own laws, processes, practices, terms, etiquette, etc., common to market participants. But, nevertheless, this extremely important aspect often remains behind the scenes - as a kind of esoteric experience, inaccessible to beginners and outsiders. As a result, some developers enter the market blindly, without reference points, step on all sorts of rakes and spend resources on inventing bicycles. And this is one of the reasons why not everyone, even with a promising product, manages to survive in this business.
It is this informational lag that closes the book “Game as Business. From dream to release ”(2020) Alexei Savchenko.
Game as business
The book capaciously accumulates industrial practices and personal experience of the author (now the manager of Epic Games ) in several areas of game development at once, including:
- the production of games itself: planning and organizing the working environment and pipeline, stages, prototypes and vertical slices, the use of third-party engines, etc.,
- organizational and legal aspect, including registration of the company and trademarks, conclusion of contracts and communication with publishers and investors,
- search for partners and marketing of the project.
In fact, we have before us an abstracted “helicopter view” of the industry from the position of a submerged and observant insider. Do not look in the book for analyzes of (un) successful cases, historical excursions, predictions for the future, live illustrations and dialogue with the reader - there is nothing like that, except for a few point examples "for clarity." But there is a very intelligible and consistent description of the mechanisms of "play as a business", which will give any newcomer a comprehensive idea of what awaits him in the industry. Unambiguously, systematically and to the point.
This is the main and unconditional merit, the "killer feature" of the book, by which it stands out among the mass of gamedev literature. But here, in a certain sense, the main vulnerability may also be hidden. And the point is not so much that the market realities and production standards, which Aleksey Savchenko meticulously describes, may change dramatically tomorrow and all the “instructions for use” will only be of historical value. No, volatility is the norm for a dynamically developing industry. The main vulnerability of the book, in our opinion, is the excessive meticulousness of the regulation. Sometimes it seems that the author is trying to codify absolutely everything that he can get his hands on: standards of communication, correspondence, visiting exhibitions, business lunches and parties. Yes, this information is really very valuable as “advice from the experienced”.But from time to time, it is presented in the same reinforced concrete as production standards - unambiguously, without options, leaving no room for creativity and as an objective reality, even where you expect subjective opinion. And it is possible that in the context of the book the reader, instead of looking for his own approach, will take even such petty advice for dogma.
Otherwise, the book is an excellent professional guide to the gaming industry, honestly telling about all the significant stages that games and development studios go through.
Zero stage
The production of a game begins with defining its conceptual characteristics. Key questions a developer should ask:
- Multiplayer or not ? Singles are a “sprint,” and multiplayer games are a “marathon,” which will require a radically different approach to how you organize your work.
- Free to play or not? If so, then you need to design the product as a complex service system with internal microtransactions and the motivation to implement them.
- What platforms will the game be for? Each platform has its own hardware, its own controls and interface, its own audience and its own expectations.
- How high is the quality of the content planned and what are the strongest and weakest points of the game? Since being the best at everything is not easy, it is necessary to articulate the strongest sides of the team (for example, the gameplay, storyline, or art direction) and focus the concept of the future game precisely on them.
The earlier, the better it will be to determine the type of business activity that you plan to conduct. There are four of them:
- Hobby development - working in a small team on small games and rather for your own pleasure, for a small audience of fans, without tracking market trends.
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Speaking about business planning, the author gives specific practical recommendations for registering a company, trade marks, organizing business activities, licensing development tools and many other routine issues that, at first glance, seem far from game development. And warns:
One way or another, your activity will become diversified and fly away into multitasking, especially at the first stages of the formation of processes. There will be days when you want to calmly drive the build of the game and adjust the gameplay. Or sit yourself and draw. But you will have to deal with taxes, the budget, resolving the issue with the contractor and make three or four difficult calls. Some can switch to this, some cannot at all.
In addition to the formulated business strategy, the main results of the stage are the concept document of your project (including its brief description and market positioning, its main “chips” and “pillars”, plot, key mechanics, description of the game session, features of visual and sound accompaniment, and (See also monetization model), as well as a design document and vertical slice prototype.
From prototype to release
Vertical slice is the most important element of project development and promotion. They imply 5-10% of the game, which will contain 70-80% of the total functionality (“a small part of the game in maximum quality”) and, thus, will give publishers, investors, partners the impression of a small finished fragment of a finished game. By being ahead of time, you demonstrate that as a team, in principle, you are able to achieve the planned quality. In addition, the vertical slice will set the standard of work for the development studio itself, streamline production interaction within the team and the technological chain ( pipeline ) and, ultimately, will become the foundation for further development.
The central theme is the game production process and its stages. From the issues of organizing the working environment (room, software environment, project management tools and intra-team communication), we go to building work processes, where the main principle is decomposition. “The development of game projects is arranged in such a way that any formulation of tasks goes from top to bottom for a generally simple reason: the game is often invented as something more or less a whole in the head of the author of the concept, then lies on paper, and then it is dealt with first into large block components, and - subsequently - into smaller tasks ”. In the field of project methodology, the author adheres to a hybrid approach: highly iterative Agile - for working within departments and stages, and linear Waterfall - for delivering stages of work to the publisher on time and in the planned volume.
Production itself can be thought of as a decomposition of high-level “ game features” - functional units that make up the game and affect the generated game experience. Formulated in the form of a creative brief (general description) and a design brief (the composition of the required specific unit mechanics), the feature is decomposed in the technical brief to specific components, assets, dependencies, so that in the end we get a complete list of tasks for development.
After testing, ready-made features and game entities are integrated into an integral system, a game loop is assembled on the game engine, compiled for a specific platform - and now you have a ready-made build in your hands - a playable version of the product that you can launch and test.
Overgrown with the "meat" of new features, the product goes through a sequential path from the prototype and the vertical slice - to the alpha version (a practically finished product with errors), "beta" (a fully equipped product with non-critical errors) and a candidate release (a product ready for replication and certification). Each of the stages in the book is detailed.
A separate chapter is devoted to the choice of the game engine. The engine directly affects all production processes, determines not only the pipeline and the composition of the team, but is also a tool for promotion - vendors can help you both with access to various exhibitions, events and press conferences, and with access to large publishers and partners. And someone is lucky to become a participant in grant programs.
Using the engine will significantly affect the entire development process, the strategy of the studio and the company, but it will allow you not to do two terribly complex tasks at the same time - developing a game and developing an engine. For some reason, many people underestimate the complexity of such a course of events, especially for a young and small team with limited resources. Also note that the use of technology will - among other things - affect your communications with potential partners, in particular in terms of their assessment of technical risks. I'm afraid that a proprietary engine and, say, numerous product platforms do not sound reliable to investors and publishers.
Partner search
There are two main routes here:
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Alexey lists and analyzes in detail ways to find and build connections in the industry - from (mostly useless) requests through feedback forms on websites and pages on social networks to more effective ones: contact on Linkedin, contact databases in closed communities, participation in contests and initiatives and working with industrial friends. In addition - hiring a “bizdeva” (business development director), who will become your face in the industry, and using the services of professional agents. And of course, visiting exhibitions - the reader receives a detailed checklist of what needs to be taken, what to be ready for, and how to make the most of these events.At the
same time, no matter how tempting the options proposed by the publisher may seem, it is better to make sure that the team agrees with them project.
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The final point of searching for partners is an agreement .
The standard contract should contain information about the duration of the obligations, the distribution of revenue between the parties (revenue share), the proposed platforms, copyrights, obligations for localization, updates, the boundaries of creative control, etc., as well as guarantees for sales (marketing investments, attitudes) by the publisher.
Alas, many developers underestimate the importance of this document: someone relies on their own interpretation, understanding narrow terms in their own way, and someone simply without looking (well, or having read 2-3 paragraphs) signs and as a result easily loses the rights to their intellectual property or gets disadvantaged. The ideal option is to turn to professional lawyers specializing in international contract law.
The final part of the book is a concise step-by-step scheme of project development “from A to Z”, which summarizes all stages, from a one-page pitch of a future game and business model to a release build and choosing a further path for studio and project development.
Summary
Overall, Game as Business is a good example of a travel guide for anyone looking to understand how the game industry works and what is behind success reports. And not only for beginners: even for established studios, a “helicopter glance” will help to understand their place on the industry map, with problem areas and growth points.
The gaming industry loves the persistent, hardworking and not shy of rough work and iteration. It will not work more than it will work. And it's worth planning long-term in advance, developing a philosophical attitude towards problems and accepting the fact that you may have to take part in twenty games until you can make a very successful twenty-first.
