Creating a video game takes a lot of work, involving lots of different people, and lots of different stages including pre-production, production, and postproduction. Also including lots of different people like artists, animators, programmers, etc. And how they work together to create a video game.
Pre-Production Stage. This is the first stage in creating a video game. To begin your pre-production stage, you need to start off with creating and idea plan for the gameplay. You need to think of the genre of game, and what type of game your going to create. For ideas you can think of what your favorite games to play are, use inspiration from you own life, or think of games that have room for improvement. Then you need to brainstorm aspects of you game that will stand out from the other games out there.
Once you have planned out all your ideas you should create a gameplay prototype, with some basic placeholder graphics, and only need to include the core mechanics of the game. The game needs to be playable and somewhat fun to play. While playing look to see how you can expand the basic little ideas off into big game changing ideas. If you cannot you need to rethink the story line. Then once you have a solid base, use the new ideas you have thought of to expand your basic prototype. Add in some different levels, change some things up.
A big part of planning the game is figuring out the complexity of the game, and how much time will be put into the game. Decide if it will be a difficult and challenging game with many levels, or and easy, not so difficult with only a few levels. The more time put in the more complex it will be. The less time the less complex.
After creating the prototype game, and figuring out the complexity of it, you need to come back to your original idea and make sure it fits well into what you have already created.
The next and one the most important steps is to create your characters for your game. First you need to teach yourself about the characters you are putting into the game, you made need to research some extra info if you do not already know about them. Give each of them storyline and a bio including different important facts like there full name, nicknames, likes, dislikes, goals, flaws, character traits, and for extra add their backstory. How they became who they are now in the game. Lastly plan out how their physical appearance will look once you get into your graphic designing stages. Maybe make a little sketch of them as well.
Once you have all the basics figured out you need to move on to creating a story outline. Get a solid beginning, ending, and then a big climax. Then you can slowly add in rising actions, but while making sure the plot for the story is still flowing smoothly. Do not add any foreshadowing if you are not going to mention it again or if you think you might cut it out later in the game.
Next you need to create an exposition so the players understand the characters that will be starting the game and what is happening in the game. Once you create your exposition go back to your story outline and add in some more character plot points that advance the character arcs. Polish the core mechanics of the games, and work on the playable character. Add more aspects like the facial expressions, what sounds they make, the way they preform actions, and how fast they are.
Once your done with that you need to take all your ideas and turn them into levels or worlds. Probably around 10-20 but keep adding ideas when you think of them. Then with all the content you have you need to write the entire story again. Rewriting it will make sure that there are now plot holes that you did not see before, and the story will flow more smoothly.
An extra part you can add is putting in a debug mode. The debug mode with just use different commands you make to give you abilities to make changes and fix some mistakes in you game. It will make editing so much faster.
Then we move on to the production stage. The first part of the production stage is to plan the games introduction. Usually the introduction will consist of a cutscene and an easier first level to introduce you into what you are about to play. Once you have your idea for your introduction you need to make your cutscene, but make sure to make a storyboard. Then finalize your storyboard for your cutscene.
The production stage consists of 5 phases vertical slice, pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and gold. The first phase, the vertical slice, is a 5-30 part of the game showing what the game look like. It is a little preview that is also used to help pitch the game to publishing companies.
The next phase is the pre-alpha phase. In this phase is where all the actions preformed during the game’s development but before official testing. This is where most of the content is made, which brings together the artists, animators, programmers, and designers to create the game. Then you enter the alpha phase. This begins when is feature complete, fully playable from start to finish, controls functionality and interface are in a finalized stage. Its where the games finishing, and polishing happens.
Next is the beta phase. This phase is mostly just fixing bugs in your game. All the games content is fully complete but has a few little things to fix. Lastly is the gold phase. This is when the game is 100% complete and is then sent to a publishing company to see how good the game is.
Then finally we enter the post-production stage. This is used to create patches to improve the gameplay or fix software bugs. There is also postmortem and closing kit. In the postmortem
the team gathers for a meeting to discuss how the game went. If they achieved all their goals. What went right, what went wrong, their mistakes, and what methods will work best in the future for creating more games.
Then there is the closing kit. The closing kit is a compilation of all the design documents, code, final game assists, music, and anything used for creating the game. This can be helpful for it you are creating a sequel for the game, or even to go through to fix some mistakes or bugs that were accidentally made while creating the game.
Then you are done. You have gone through all 3 stages of making a video game. Pre-production stage. The production stage with 5 phases vertical slice, pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and gold. Then finally the post-production stage with 2 phases postmortem, and the closing kit. The process of making a video also involves a lot of people to make it include people like artists, programmers, designers, animators, etc.
