Why Pre-production is important

In this post, we will delve deeper into the pre-production stage in game development. Many game developers in Indonesia often overlook this stage. However, pre-production is vital and has a significant impact on the enjoyment and sales potential of the game we are going to create. Let’s discuss further about pre-production in video game development.

Pre-production is the earliest stage in the game development process. The aim of this phase is to design and define the basic elements of the game to be created. During pre-production, we usually determine the theme of the game, target market, title, game release platform, marketing strategy, estimated development time, the number of people needed, and the budget. This is crucial to understand the scale of our game.

The team involved in this pre-production phase typically includes a producer, programmers, concept artists, and designers. This small team creates game pillars, game feels, and main mechanics to lay the foundation. The role of the producer at this stage is crucial as they must be able to do forecasting from the full game development process to ensuring the business sense of the game idea. Meanwhile, the concept artist needs to create the world of the game, its looks, and ensure all content created in the production phase will be consistent and cohesive.

Then, at this stage, designers start to design the Game Design Document (GDD) that will serve as a reference throughout game development. Keep in mind, this GDD is a living document that can change throughout the pre-production phase until it finds its final form. That’s why the role of the programmer is equally important to create a proof of concept, proving that the idea created is fun. At this stage, the programmer usually puts in a lot of placeholders. If the core mechanic isn’t fun with placeholders, adding any asset on top of it won’t make it fun. Therefore, this pre-production process can last from weeks to years.

Many game studios want to skip or often forget to do the right pre-production phase. This can have adverse consequences for the future of the game. You may end up with scope creeping, have to crunch, team morale is messed up because the game is not solid and not fun, and fall into the sink cost fallacy, which is because you’ve already invested in this game for so long, it’s a waste if it has to be killed and blindly continue a game that isn’t fun, and so on. So it’s better to not give emotional attachment to the game idea and be prepared if indeed our idea doesn’t work and has to be killed, before we have a solid pre-production result.

So, for everyone, make sure to study the pre-production phase well. Ensure that this is done properly so that the game development process can run smoothly and the resulting game can be successful.

original article from my blog ardisaz.com