How do I do this? Epoch’s unofficial guide to game development
We’ve all had that moment — quietly minding our own business, and inspiration strikes -
“I have an idea for a great game, everyone will play it!”
Few answer the call, but those that do know this is but the first step of a multi-year journey that few will successfully complete. Anyone that has taken on this challenge — hobbyist or professional — has the tales to tell.
Much has been written on the subject of game design and development — yet we at Epoch talk to studios every day about their biggest challenges and frustrations. Yet we always hear how alone folks feel in the problems they face.
If you’re reading this and you feel the same way… you’re certainly not alone! In fact, nearly every single studio and game developer we talk to has the exact same set of problems. This is why we built Epoch, and we help studios address tricky issues every day by getting them all on the same page and in real time.
So we decided to write this unofficial guide to game development, a multi-part series on the ins and outs of getting a game to market based on our experience and many many conversations with studios in the industry. If nothing else, we hope to reassure those on the journey — you’re not alone, you’re not the first to face the trials and challenges of getting a game out to the world.
Also know we’re here to help you get your game to market, drop us a line! Once you get us a version of your game, we’ll get you feedback in 24 hours or less!
The four phases of game development
Game development largely falls into four phases:
- Concept: What’s cookin’?
- Pre-Production: Prototyping and Iteration
- Production: Making the thing
- Post-Production: Release and Live Ops
Each of these phases has their own dynamics and challenges, and while they can often blend into one another, are usually a good way to assess at what stage a given game is at.
Concept — the honeymoon phase
Coming up with a concept, often the most romanticized stage of game development, yet counterintuitively the least critical. The core concept of a game will often change multiple times before entering the production phase, as studios follow the path set by an initial concept to a completely different idea.
Some classic examples of this occurring are Overwatch, which was originally called Titan which was going to be a Massively Multiplayer Game — or Fortnite, which only added it’s Battle Royale mode well after release, being originally a zombie survival game
The biggest challenge in this phase is to not waste too much time trying to refine the concept before getting into the next stage. What feels like critical details, such as the name of the game, characters and their backstories, and even the core story will increase in importance as you get through production of your game —but until a game is released they are malleable and often subject to change.
Increasingly, games are being released in early access with many elements still in flux allowing for the ability to respond to the feedback of users and the community. We’ve made tools to make this extremely easy with Epoch as well, to better capture feedback and understand what led to it.
So while the game concept is critical and often fuels motivations to build a great game, it is less critical in terms of ultimately getting something out to market. Compromise is key in this phase, as is a healthy dose of a beginner’s mindset to get your team evangelized and keen to take a given concept into the pre-production phase.
Pre-Production — What is game…
Games are defined by their interactive mechanics, also known as gameplay. A game that does not hash out a core game loop and set of compelling gameplay mechanics is not a game, it’s a movie. Honing the core game play dynamics of a game is the most critical aspect of game development.
A common mistake is to skip or neglect this stage altogether, in a rush to get to the production phase. The pre-production phase is incorrectly seen as a gating factor to enter the production phase, even it’s name is “pre” production or what you do before you enter production. This is unfortunate, because this stage has more to do with the ultimate success of a game in the market than any other stage, while also being the most nimble and flexible stage. In other words, small investments here pay off big time down the line.
Numerous videos show the how games evolved from concept to production, but one of our favorites is the God of War pre-production demo showing how refined already the game play of the game was before entering proper production.
The pre-production phase empowers a small team, sometimes even just an individual, allowing them to focus entirely on nothing but making something that people want. It’s like a perpetual game jam, where you’re refining and iterating, until things can really feel “right”. In this stage, a game may undergo a complete transformation, with the resulting concept looking completely different than where things started.
This stage is defined by constant iteration and feedback, with new game builds multiple times a week that vary wildly. As such, keeping track of feedback across versions of the game is critical and can often get lost in the weeds.
This is one of the most frustrating aspects of pre-production for studios. Epoch has addressed this problem directly for many studios, both by powering the distribution of game builds so that everyone is playing the most up-to-date version and also by automatically instrumenting all game sessions — so all feedback is captured alongside video, log and even input device capture.
The pre-production and production phases can often blend into one another. As with the God of War example above, in larger studios this stage comes to an end when either a given project is greenlit or fails to acquire greenlight. In smaller or medium stage studios, this designation can often be harder to delineate.
While hard advice to give, yet much harder to take — often if a game is “just not working” at this stage, moving on to the next stage will not necessarily address core issues in gameplay but rather amplify them as the team has less and less time to focus on gameplay as a result of having to support an ever expanding amount of content. So if a game “just isn’t working” it’s a better idea to take a step back, go back to the drawing board, or scrap it entirely and start over.
Production — Draw the rest of the Owl
The production stage can often feel like the classic “draw the rest of the owl” meme
Coming out of the pre-production phase you’ll often have a tech-demo and now it’s time to take that wonderful demo and transform it into a game that can be played and enjoyed for hours on end. Modern games are expected to deliver hundreds if not thousands of hours of gameplay, and while gameplay will be deciding factor between whether folks will actually experience those hours, you also have to have those hours available to serve them.
*Content has entered the chat*
Production is all about content, which is ironically the least well defined term in game development while also the most critical. Content can literally be anything, whether it’s the audio of your voice actors, the music playing in the background, the 3d and 2d art that populates the game, or the rigging and resulting animation of 2d/3d assets. In short, production is nearly 100% about content. Finding it, harvesting it, then nurturing it until it grows up, gets a job and does it’s own laundry. When people talk about how hard making games are, they’re often talking about how hard it is to make content.
Making killer content is the realm of amazing developers, artists and designers like you — and Epoch is here to give you all the tools and solutions you need to be successful. As such, we see a lot of studios struggle with the production phase which can often feel like an all-out-slog to the finish line of releasing the game. This all-out-slog is one of the reasons folks we talk to feel so alone, because it’s hard to take a step back from it all and see how the frustration of the day is not unique to you or your game, and that’s why Epoch is here — to give you that dashboard level view, and to know that things are going in the direction you want.
While there are many challenges in this phase, the one we see most often is the difficult job of maintaining quality and controlling time to market. Every new asset, feature, or ultimately piece of content needs to play nice with every other bit — and the quality of the overall experience and product needs to constantly be monitored not just to the point of release, but post-release as well.
In the words of Jocko Willinick, “Discipline will set you free” — the production stage is a lot of work, and it’s critical that teams stay on the same page. This is where we see frustration from all studios we talk to. Keeping track of what feedback came from where and who. Was this issue resolved, and when? Introducing feature X broke feature Y. Anyone who has had to get a game to market knows that these are just the tip of the iceberg, and due to the diversity of games and the studios behind them, everyone will have a different set of frustrations but they all stem from the same core issue — communication and collaboration.
To be blunt, this is why we built Epoch, and the tools and solutions we provide or custom build for studios in some cases let them resolve these frustrations often 10x faster. Every bug report has a video and log, every missing texture has context. Teams will often plaster together a variety of different tools that were never meant to work together, and certainly were not designed for game development, and then get upset that things go wrong. These same teams love Epoch, because we built a solution by game devs for game devs.
Making games can be tough, but we see time after time many of the frustrations and slow downs studios suffer from are avoidable and addressable. Things like getting the most up to date game builds / versions to the right people, collecting feedback, and ensuring that bugs and issues are resolved shouldn’t be what takes up mindspace. These are the problems we built Epoch to handle, so help is there if you need it!
Post-Production — Sunglasses and hats
You did it! You launched your game and you’re getting users by the boat load!
We’re certainly papering over one of the most important bits of getting a game out to market, which is the actual release aspect. Getting attention on the right platforms, getting distribution on platforms like Steam or various app stores, and making sure you can get sufficient eye-balls to have a smash hit of a launch. These days, with the noise online, it’s hard — but a good game will often standout.
One of our favorite examples of this is Astroneer, which launched against the backdrop noise of No Man’s Sky (which at the time was getting extremely critical reception, souring the well on space exploration games) into early access. The initial success of the early access launched then funded the growth of the team and development of the full release, and largely this was due to Astroneer above all else being a great game.
As in the example of Astroneer, the road doesn’t end once a game is released. Not only do existing players expect a stream of new content in order to continue coming back to your game, further sales and growth of your title is going to often depend on this to continue to grow the user base or to elongate the lifetime of the game. Getting a game from production to release can often be measured in years, so sustaining a game can be just as important as building it in the first place.
At Epoch, we like to call this the “sunglasses and hats” problem. Say you are making a game about sun lounging cats, which can wear any number of sunglasses or hats. Every new hat, or pair of sunglasses, added to the game needs to be tested against every other combination. So as new cosmetics are added the problem of ensuring the game continues to work as intended becomes an exponential problem, and now in the face of live users which may have spent actual money on these in-game items.
This is why games in the post-production stage continue pushing out new content to keep their existing user base engaged as well as attract new users as well. Also, DLC or in-app-purchases, help fund these efforts as engaged existing players may purchase these and lessen the need for the game to attract new players which becomes harder as a game matures.
As such, studios face the same set of problems here as production, but with the added pressure of live user feedback and reviews which makes it all the more critical. A combination of internal and external playtesting can help, as feedback can be collected from internal and external parties prior to the release of these expansions or changes, and this used to sample the likely response and reaction from the live players.
As is the case in the production phase, the hardest bit here is keeping track of everything, not to mention the ability to get in-development builds to internal and external play testers. This is something that Epoch helps studios with, as sharing a build with a new prospective playtester be it internal or external, is as easy as sending a link or entering their email address. In fact, sharing builds with anyone is as simple as drag-n-drop!
Making games is hard, but it’s worth it
While likely one of the most challenging vocations, making games is ultimately a worthwhile and rewarding endeavor. To make a game that players come back to hour after hour, or gives players experiences that they could have no other way (like being a Stray Cat, or 2 inches tall), means a true enrichment of the human experience.
Games are not only a source of entertainment, but allow communities to form and create long and lasting friendships. Games have been shown to truly help people, or if nothing else make a subway ride or flight slightly less boring.
At Epoch, our hope is that we can lessen the load on game studios. Let us take care of the plumbing and pipes, so that you can focus on delivering what matters to players — great experiences that have them coming back hour after hour.
Epoch is now available to try for free at epochml.com , or if you’d like to talk to us directly about the problems that you and your studio face feel free to contact us directly at info@epochml.com.
Also, if you’ve enjoyed this kind of content and would like more of it — let us know!
