Business of the games industry - 2

Game Development Process. 

In a games company there are many different roles that cross over and effect alot of other people. 

• At the head of the snake you have the publisher, the publisher is king and makes any major decisions. 
• Below the publisher are the senior development team, these people devise strategy and manage the development of the whole project including IT, Media and marketing.
• Below the senior management teams there are the admin support and development support teams.
  -The admin support team has many titles under it mainly IT, HR& Recruitment and Legal
  -The Development support team also has many different titles under it however its main focus is quality assurance and anything directly with the product and its development. 
• Alongside the support teams there are  Project managers/Directors and Producers. All of these people ensure that the product is coming along smoothly and make sure that the development teams have everything they need. 
• Under the producers/ Project managers there are three managers.
  -Technical managers; these manager the workflow from the programmers and ensure that programmers meet their deadlines.
  -Creative Managers; these managers also manage the workflow but from the artists. also making sure deadlines are met.
  -Design Managers; these managers manage the workflow from the level designers and make sure that any deadlines they have are met as well. 
• Artists work under the creative manager, among the artists are alot of different fields from concept art to 3D modelling. its their jobs to create all assets and art related materials. 
• Programmers work under the technical managers creating the mechanics for the games for example the UI and AI. 
• Designers work under the design manager, the designers create the levels that the game will be played in and can also the story. 

Milestones

There are three types of milestones within a games company, firstly you have the Pre-Production milestones; these milestones determine planning, visual preparations, possible prototypes. 

Alpha Milestones: These milestones are the creation of the game essentially. creation of all Art assets, Code and level Design are all milestones. 

Beta Milestones: these milestones are in the testing and debugging phase of the game creation. Possibly Downloadable content. 

What is SCRUM?

Scrum is a system that allows all of the three development teams (Programmers, Artists and Design) to come together and to inform each other of what you are going to be doing for the day, this helps keep track of where people are and also allows others to find out whether or not someone else possible mistakes will effect them. Scrums are normally held everyday with a weekly scrum at the start of the week. 

Product Backlog

The product Backlog is a high level document of the whole project. it determines any major decisions made, required resources and possibly better equipment that they could use. it is an open document to all in the games company and is editable by anyone.