Games Industry
Games Development Pipeline
Pre-production - Defy the solid concepts of your game to give yourself something to reference from in the production phase. Define the story or premise of your game to make it easier to develop level design concepts and potential characters off of that. Draft out some storyboards and playboards to get a feel for how your game might look when you play it. Work through the level design process to finalize your level layouts, polish these further by developing some basic 3D blockouts of it and turn it into a basic prototype. Decide on your game play mechanics to help defy what could potentially be some key selling points of your game. Determine the costs of the game, this including both the games creation and eventual maintenance costs, if you're a small team then think carefully as to how you're going to apply your resources. Create a game design document.
Production - Bringing the game to life. Making changes here is very costly so make extra sure that you're plans in Pre-production are finalized and everyone is happy with them, analyse potential flaws with your game prior to this too. Have everyone come together to confirm that they're on the same page and reassess your schedule to make sure everyone can follow it. Develop all the 3D/2D assets and texture them, program all the code and all in all get the game into an Alpha stage in which the game is playable and able to be completed start to finish, ship this Alpha build out to numerous testers and work from the feedback to develop your Beta build.
Post-production - From here is the point where you want to begin marketing your game to the outside world in order to allow it to develop traction. Ship the game to stores. Get the game to be as widely covered as possible. Fix new bugs as updates and possibly even develop and incorporate new features as DLC to increase the game's retention.
Job Roles in the Games Industry
Level Designer - Level Designers take specifications of the Gameplay Designers and map everything out into format, these things ranging from object placements to character behavior around the level they build. They imagine and draft out the playing experience in 2D, putting themselves into the player's position. Because of this they need to have a lot of foresight and really consider every what and how concerning the actions of the player, to ensure nothing plays out as unplanned, to fix bugs before they could potentially happen and to create a good playing experience worth the consumer's money. Good ways to begin building level design skills are to refine both your creative and logical thinking, as well as ensuring you can do just was well artistically as you can logically, and vice-versa. Modding games with open-source assets and creating levels from those can nicely represent your capabilities as a level designer.
3D Modelling Artist - Modelling Artists create all the 3D models for the assets that will be used inside of the game. Like the level designers, they draft their concepts in 2D before refining and finishing them in 3D development software. Depending on the format of the studio, these employees are normally categorized into environment artists, character artists or vehicle artists or potentially given a less specialized range of many different models to develop. To begin building 3D modelling skills and making your way into industry, it's important to network, and not just with games companies. 3D modelling is a good transferable skill and can get you into a lot of places, networking and working with other companies from industries such as VFX can make yourself more employable both for your current skill level in modelling and your outside knowledge of industry which might be useful.
How would being a 3D Modeler and Level Designer apply to Super Smash Bros Ultimate (Nintendo Switch)
The 3D modelling artists have to design the models for the characters, items and stages.
The level designers have to design the way the stages will play out, the character moves and the ways items and assist trophies will act.
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