The Iceberg Economics of Game Development - Part 2
Unless you are building a single player, offline game with premium monetization on just the PC platform, the cost to design and build the core gameplay is just the tip of the iceberg.
Catch Up
If you’re looking for the other parts, here are the links!
Intro
As a refresher, the first article described a wonderful spreadsheet that captured all the essential tasks necessary to create a movie. I want that spreadsheet for game development, but to get there we need to enumerate All The Thingstm for game development.
This article series is attempting to lay that foundation by capturing the work -- the tasks, areas, issues, and systems -- you need to pay attention to when building and launching a game.
We already discussed the core gameplay artifacts, which embody the core gameplay for the player or players. In this article we enumerate the first five areas of fifteen that I've identified.
Systems listed below are drawn from conversations with colleagues and from my personal experience across four game genres, three game engine technologies, and four game companies. However, it is assuredly not complete so your suggested additions are welcome.
So let's start enumerating All The Thingstm and organize them into functional groups.
NOTE: there isn't room to provide details, caveats, and nuances in implementing and/or integrating each low-level system because this is not a book. It's an article. 😣
Core Game Systems
These systems provide the underlying capabilities you need to support what the player does and sees in the game and define where players interact in multiplayer games. Some systems are focused on providing immediate feedback to the player in a variety of forms, such as sound effects, visual cues, or haptic feedback.
Character model customization
Maps and fog of war
Sound effects and music
Accessibility features
Talent trees
Character loadouts
Game modes
Matchmaking
PvP features
Dungeons, arenas, etc
Levels, maps, environments
Outer Loop Systems
Outer loop game systems are focused on providing feedback to the player on their overall progress in the game and to provide a reason to be in-game when not in match or on an adventure. They are designed to keep the player engaged and motivated to continue playing. This feedback can come in the form of things like level progression, item/feature/zone unlocks, or achievements, but also things to purchase, narrative/story to interact with, or custom content to create.
Achievements
Quests
Crafting
Inventory management
Emotes
Cosmetics
Audio packs
Collectible pets
Player housing
Narrative features
Social Systems
Game social systems enable and encourage players to communicate, collaborate, and interact with each other. Their purposes include making games more fun and engaging, improving player retention through engagement, creating new gameplay opportunities through introductions, and enabling cooperative multiplayer and player-versus-player (PvP) competition.
In-game mail
Auction house
Guilds
Party management
Player trading
Friends list
Leader boards
Text chat
Voice chat
Cooperative gameplay modes
Toxic player mute, reporting
Parental controls
Cross Platform and Cross Cultural Concerns
Games can be played on a range of platforms and delivered through multiple pathways. Players want to play on their favorite platform, and with their friends. Sometimes they want to play across platforms, like PC and Xbox, or PC and Playstation.
Each platform or delivery service can have specific requirements not just for engineering integration, but also for platform specific content like achievements and DLC.
Your game will need to do additional work to provide the best experience to the player across all platforms, including minimum frame rate targets, maximum CPU and memory usage, overheating restrictions, and player input methods (e.g., there is no viable KBM on the Switch or phones).
On PC through STEAM
On PC through Epic
Multiple Microsoft console generations
Multiple Sony console generations
Multiple Nintendo Switch generations
Apple Store
Google Play Store
Cross platform matchmaking
Cross platform text, voice
Cross platform party management
Cross platform opt-in controls
Country specific content restrictions (e.g., violence, religion, sexuality)
Development Infrastructure
This is last but definitely not least in the first five. The process of designing and implementing a computer game requires many moving parts. If you are starting with a third party engine then you will at least have an editor and other associated tools. But those tools do not cover everything by a long shot. Here are a few more.
Your team needs tools to work, and the larger your team grows and/or the closer to launching your live service you get, the more critical these tools become.
Version control
Artifact storage
Digital content creation tools
Art asset processing pipeline
Content processing pipeline (cooking)
Client, server performance analytics
I18N and L10N management pipeline
Content loading optimization
Content optimized patching
Outro
OK. That's five areas so far, and we have ten more to go. These five areas capture a total of 54 tools, systems, or concerns that go beyond the core artifacts that teams focus on -- the game client, game server, and persistent storage.
Some of these are needed during development but can be done without at a prototype or pre-production stage. Say, when you are looking for a funding source. But for most games, you need some or many of these systems.
Once again, I voice a disclaimer that my enumerations must be incomplete. And even the finer grained items could be expanded.
Here is an updated graphic we'll be filling in as we go along. 🙂 In the last part in this series I'll provide a full-blown, all-the-details graphic. It's a dang busy wheel.