Game On

“The game industry is not the place for the complacent. It is always, always, always changing,” says Mary Beth Haggerty, senior manager for Games at Autodesk (autodesk.com). She adds, “The technology is always changing”—she cites the hardware leaps made by products like the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, as well as the proliferation of games on handhelds like the iPhone to games on Facebook—“and the customer is really expanding.” And here she cites the fact that in senior citizen homes they are bowling with the Nintendo Wii.

Although Top Global Markets, a report from The NPDGroup, GfK Chart-Tack Ltd. and Enterbrain, found that combined video game software units across the world’s three largest games markets—the U.S., Japan, and the United Kingdom—declined an overall 8%, two points need to be made:
1. Game makers still shipped 379.3-million units
2. According to Anita Frazier, industry analyst with The NPD Group, in the U.S. market, “While year-over-year comparisons show declines, the industry is still boasting significant volumes that were unseen before 2008.” What’s more, Frazier said that 2009 saw the greatest number of new titles launched, 778 compared with 264 in ’08, so game development is occurring at an increased pace.

So how is a video game developed?

Haggerty, whose background includes stints at game companies including Electronic Arts and Perpetual Entertainment, starts by making a point that underscores what is often a massive product development undertaking: “A game, in essence, is a piece of entertainment software. It has to be entertaining and it has to be a piece of software.” She contrasts that with film (and it is worth noting that she spent nine years in the film industry, Including positions as computer graphics supervisor and technical director at Industrial Light & Magic, so her bona fides are most certainly solid), where the entertainment is the thing. Unless you’re James Cameron, you probably don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about software.

The first step in the process, she says, is when a small group of people get together and “brainstorm the entertainment side of what the game might be.” Here it is all about what the story is, who it is for, and the type of game. One those issues are identified, and they think they’ve come up with something solid, then there is an expansion of the team—including both technical and business personnel—who fundamentally ask the question: “Can we make this game?” This is not just a technical question, but one that implies a business case, as well.

Once the concept is accepted, it’s on to the pre-production phase. This includes activities by technical personnel who look at the technical requirements, the business people who look at the financial requirements, and the designers/artists who look at what the game might look and behave like. “Games are a marriage of many disciplines,” Haggerty says.

If it is a go, then it is on to Production. “This is when a game becomes very, very big. I’ve been on teams of well over 100 people, when everyone is working hard to get all of the characters into the game, all of the art assets, all of the environments, as well as working the technical side of the game.”

While there is no set rule in terms of the number of people on a team, Haggerty estimates that in the case of a completely new game—not a variation on an existing car racing or sports game—the team might be 40% art, 40% engineering, 10% design, and 10% production. And as a quick assessment of their roles, she says that:
•    The artists create what you see
•    The engineers develop what the game runs on
•    The designers work the mechanics of the game
•    The production and management team provide support and coordination.

Games, like many products, are predicated on tradeoffs. For example, there is the issue of the number of polygons that can appear on the screen. There are memory issues: if it is a console game, then when the player does something, then the information must be brought in from memory. There is the issue of physics, of how actions and reactions occur. There is the artificial intelligence of the game that anticipates and reacts. (“Games are unpredictable. It is difficult—if not impossible—to predict what a player might do, or what a character might do. How does the game react? It’s not deterministic.”)

Haggerty says that those involved in creating a game are “a really creative, dynamic group of people who are constantly making value judgments,” who are deciding what’s important to pulling off the game.

As the process proceeds, the artists are creating the aesthetics of how everything looks. The engineers spend a lot of time coding (e.g., C++, Python). Haggerty says that because engineers are working on particular sections, there is the “Check Into Game Build,” wherein an engineer puts what she’s worked on into the larger game to validate that it works. This isn’t just a matter of looking at lines of code, but early versions of the game itself. The designers stay on for the full length of the development process because, she says, “I’ve never been on a game that goes from start to finish the way you’d expect. There is something that needs to be compensated for in some way, shape or form, and that’s often done by designers. They are determining the variables, playing the game a lot to make sure that it is balanced. They’re also tuning the levels.”

The business portion of the team? They are often, in a word, gamers. “The business side of games doesn’t lack creativity,” Haggerty says. “Most business people in games are creative people at their core.” She points out that this isn’t all about running spreadsheets, but actually having regular interaction with the animators, molders, and designers.”

Timing, like team size and make up, depends on a number of things, especially the platform. “Teams can develop iPhone games in weeks or months. Big titles for the PS3 or Xbox 360 can take years.” In some cases, like “Need for Speed,” there is essentially an annual cycle that teams are working to. Or it can take longer.

What’s more: “Every time we see a console revolution, there’s a change. When it moved from PlayStation 2 to PS3, the architecture change was monumental: parallel processing, huge amounts of memory . . .”

And there are huge amounts of money associated with game product development as well. According to M2 Research, it can cost as much as $10-million to develop a game for a current generation (“seventh-generation”) console, and $18- to $28-million for multiple platforms.

Yes, games are big.