Making Games for Grades – Development Pipelines for Students

In professional studios, digital production occurs on a fluid, staggered schedule. Teams of writers hand off work to artists, who hand work to designers, to programmers, and so on. In each stage, each team works on content for several weeks at a time, sometimes months.

However, our schedules look very different in game development classes. Since everyone on a team has to turn in a finished product at the same time, there isn’t room to stagger production or give team members specific roles. Everyone in a group project needs to work on everything, or the whole project suffers. Combined with the pressure of other classes, this presents a recipe for burnout and stress.

Based on the industry standard pipeline, I designed a production schedule which works for our realities as students: Pre Production (Week 1), Design and Prototype (Week 2), and Production (Week 3).

Note: I’m assuming a schedule of 21 days and roughly four team members. Your schedule may be different, so edit accordingly.

Pre Production (Week 1)

Pre-production covers the abstract development of the game. It’s tempting to jump right into design, but it’s vitally important to spend some time answering several core questions: What are we making? How does it work? And most importantly, how are we going to get this done?

Communication: Do everything you can to streamline communication. Get everyone’s contact information and establish a group chat. I recommend an application like Slack or Discord, which can be accessed on mobile as well as desktop, and which can be used to quickly share files. Also, you may need to set up a Google Drive or Dropbox for convenient file storage.

Logistics: Next, make a clear outline of every team member’s schedules. Get the times of everyone’s classes, clubs, work, and other obligations so that your team can agree on a regular meeting time.

Research: Then you get to the fun part! For projects in classes like ITGM 121 and 256, where you have the freedom to make pretty much anything, it’s important to play a lot of games. As you play, take detailed notes about interesting mechanics, how gameplay systems work together, and how players learn the rules. Digitize these notes on your Dropbox or Google Drive so your team can see and work on them at the same time.

When finding games to play, try to prioritize smaller, more elegant games. Board games like Forbidden Desert and King of New York are much better candidates than Twilight Imperium or Car Wars. This is because small games are usually built around one or two fun mechanics, which are easier to design for within a limited time frame.

Design and Prototype (Week 2)

Ideation: Once you have assembled your research, sit down as a team to brainstorm ideas for theme, mechanics, and interaction. Get a whiteboard and markers, or a bunch of sticky notes, and throw a bunch of ideas around. Try not to focus on elements like art style, which can be added later. Then, group down the ideas into buckets which work together; for example, you might group the theme idea of “Heist Movie” with the mechanic idea of “Character Classes/Abilities”. A rough picture of the project should start to come together. By the end of this process, everyone should be on the same page, allowing your group to start prototyping ASAP.

Prototyping: Start assembling everything you need to actually play the game. If you are making a board game, cut out and label pieces of paper. For a video game, make a basic white box level. The rules and gameplay do not need to be complete, just playable. In fact, it should be as simple as possible, so you can iterate more efficiently.

Iteration: Once you have a basic prototype, play the game as a team. When questions, issues, or ideas arise, make notes. As you work, make changes on the fly – rewrite rules, redesign layout, and restructure code – and keep track of your changes. If possible, use a workflow application such as Perforce to track which team member is working on a given file, with the option to revert changes if necessary.

Make sure you also test with players who are not on your team; being too close to a project can limit your ability to see its flaws.

Production (Week 3)

During this time you will mostly be making your game feel complete. By this point the core design and interactivity is done, and should not be changed unless absolutely necessary. Instead, reserve this time for making assets and visuals, rewording rules for clarity, and refining player experience.

Organization: As you create content, organize your Google Drive or Dropbox accordingly; for example, a board game might have folders for Rules, Card Art, Board Art, and so on. Make sure your team sends updates or questions through the group chat, so everyone can stay in the loop. If you find that the file structure or naming conventions become confusing, bring it up with the group and revise it before it becomes a problem.

Crunch: It happens. Your team will end up all working together in Monty surrounded by energy drink cans, putting everything together in one desperate push. However, taking the time to organize, test, and document your game can make the difference between a failed all-nighter and a successful work session.