Games industry report
Making a game requires a range of job roles and responsibilities. From artists to quality assurance, the games industry needs dozens of different job roles for large productions. Indie studios don’t tend to need as much staff as the games produced are on a different scale and usually aren’t related to a big name game that is guaranteed to sell well and so they can’t have hundreds of staff as there is no guarantee that the game will make money to pay them and still have profit.
Job roles can be summed up into large categories, programming for instance, covers everything from a gameplay programmer who would write the code for movement or a magic system to a lighting / shader programmer who would write code for lighting in engines that don’t have a built system or if a project needs a specific style of shaders in order to achieve the intended visuals.
Audio encompasses a range of jobs too, as does design but the crucial jobs that would make up most of the range needed for games can b identified through the credits of indie games, taking away jobs brought in and made by publishers, there is a list of the people who worked on the game and that would be the range of jobs needed to make a game as an indie game would not have a need for ‘bloated’ jobs where rather then having a concept artist, technical artist and so on, they would most commonly have an artist that produces all the artwork for the game. Using that is not always the best way to determine who is needed as many game released on a day to day basis are likely produced by a limited team of a few people, commonly one.
Looking at my own games, the only person credited in every one is me, the sole developer but each game does have one or two other credits for the place where I got my music or a certain model/animation which does not show the minimum viable amount of jobs as whilst the game was produced by one person, it does not show the range of jobs needed to actually create that game.
The responsibilities of the job role depends on the job role. Quality assurance is now one of the major departments inside of a studio, from AAA to indie. At first QA (Quality Assurance) was dedicated to bugs, glitches and faults but have since evolved into a department responsible for the enjoyment of the product. As the responsibilities for QA rose, so did the need. Many large studios have a possibility of releasing a game that does not work to well, this could be drawn up to the QA department or possibly a immovable deadline for release. Large AAA studios have a variety of options to fix this, releasing numerous patches, free content and so on. Smaller indie studios do not have this luxury and releasing a game in a faulty state could ruin the company’s reputation.
Quality assurance is refereed to by a few different names, games testing, quality testing or quality control testing to present a few examples. QA is a necessary part of development that everyone at the studio takes part in. At times QA can be tedious, as the process of reporting bugs requires you to replicate the fault to find the consistency. Even if you attempted to replicate a bug a dozen times, it still needs to be reported as it may crop up again in future builds of the game. There is a difference in the severity of bugs, as an example, a bug where the player can see outside of the bounds through an invisible wall would be considered low priority whilst a bug that causes the game to crash repeatedly would be a very high priority. When it comes to al bugs a major skill you need is an attention to detail, if an asset is present in a level as both a bin and the pot for a plant, it could be that the bin is supposed to be a potted plant too. Repeating this for any possible bug creates a difficult job with a specific skill set.
Respecting the player’s life outside of the game is a big part in creating an experience the player will pick up again. Creating an experience that forces the player to grind away every day for weeks or months lead to an experience that isn’t enjoyable, the player is being made t play as if they don’t play they lose out.
exit points and not waiting the players time making them do something they don’t want to do, it’s about not punishing the player for not playing the game. Creating a game that considers the player as a person makes it better for the person and the games industry. Exit points are vital when it comes to deigning the game and vital to creating a humane experience. Exit points give the player a chance to put the game down instead of continuing possibly though anger or boredom because if the player plays through those they might end up loathing the game and not picking it up again. It is important to minimize the amount of time it takes to put the game down but also to pick up.
Humane design and exit points
Respecting the player’s life outside of the game is a big part in creating an experience the player will pick up again. Creating an experience that forces the player to grind away every day for weeks or months lead to an experience that isn’t enjoyable, the player is being made t play as if they don’t play they lose out.
Humane design is also thinking and reflecting on what your game is, what effect it is going to have on the player. A game that has nothing good to say to the player means the player is just as likely to lose interest in the experience. Humane design is adding in exit points and not waiting the players time making them do something they don’t want to do, it’s about not punishing the player for not playing the game. Creating a game that considers the player as a person makes it better for the person and the games industry. Exit points are vital when it comes to deigning the game and vital to creating a humane experience. Exit points give the player a chance to put the game down instead of continuing possibly though anger or boredom because if the player plays through those they might end up loathing the game and not picking it up again. It is important to minimize the amount of time it takes to put the game down but also to pick up.
What platform do kids play on?
Identifying what platform your target audience plays on the most is important as that is where you are most likely to find a good sized audience. Before any research, I have an assumption that many of the audience plays game on mobile platforms (apple, android).
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1128294/video-games-frequency-children-platform/
According to one site I have found by Statisca, 46% of American children play games on the mobile platform, showing that m assumption was correct and that I now have a reasonable platform to target for the basis for my game. Knowing that my audience plays on phones the most, It would be worth it to look at the most played, downloaded games on the play store, the main market for games on android phones.
Some of the top grossing on the app store are Roblox, pokemon GO, genshin impact, Candy Crush and Clash of Clans. Out of these five games in the top 20 grossing games, the one that I have the possibility of creating is Candy Crush as this is a simple puzzle match game and my abilities are competent enough to create a game like this.
Generating Ideas
Deciding what I am going to make is not a simple process and it is best to think of several ideas through different means of ideation and picking the choice have thought out the most as this would be the easiest and higher quality idea out of the rest. There are a few forms of ideation such as derivative, serendipitous and targeted to name a few.
To start off idea generation I looked at and thought about popular games on the mobile platform and what genres there are.
When it comes to designing a game for a target platform and audience it is important to know what game genres are popular in order to put yourself in an area with a large audience. To do this I thought about what games I have played on phones when I was younger, what games do I see advertisements for and what is high on the downloaded and grossing lists that can be found on the play store.
For my own game I intend to along the path of a physics game similar to Angry Birds as this is a game I am familiar with from when I was an 8 to 10 and as the game is still popular today, it would still be popular with a similar age range o when I played it.
Mechanics in the game
Angry Birds follows a basic set of mechanics, A slingshot which launches several types of birds with unique effects that need to eliminate pigs that are defended by destructible structures and when structures or pigs are defeated, a set number of points is added to a score total which is then used to rate your performance out of three stars. I can make the physics objects simply in construct 3 as well as the destructible structures, enemies and point system but the slingshot is where I may have issues with development.
Design of the game
The way a game looks plays a massive part on how it is perceived, to target my game towards a younger audience the game would have a cartoonish design for all the assets, following other gams targeted towards the same age group such as the Lego games.
The design of the game is outlined in the GDD, where I have listed all features of the game in depth.
Creating the art for the game
The games assets are mostly bits o rubbish that would be seen day to day and as I already have a list of different assets for structures (cans, wood, glass bottles) I know what I need to make. To add variety to the visuals, a few variations of each of the three will be made.
To start of I made the cans and variations. I have made 3 different cans, all on the same template but the designs on the can change and as it is the same template, I can make more variations in the future if they where needed.
In the game, the two grey and green lines will be removed as these where used as guide lines for creating the template. For each of the three, I took inspiration from real life can brands, Pepsi, Coke, Monster (from left to right). Now that I have done these cans, I am going to make wood assets.
For the wood blocks, I have made two variations as I could not find anymore whilst I looked for inspiration. The two types of wood designed after is a 2×4 board and chip board. The chip board is the more interesting of the two as the visual of it ended up looking like a desert camo look. Now that I am done with the wood, I am moving on to the final of the three structure blocks, glass bottles.
I have made three variations of the glass bottle, finishing off all the assets for structures for the game. Now that I am done with these assets, I will likely move onto the enemy sprites, slingshot and projectiles leaving only the miscellaneous art such as backgrounds and foregrounds.
I have currently made two stages for the sling shot, the way the player flings projectiles in the game world.
it is intended to change to the second picture when the player clicks and holds to fire to show the effects that the player has on the in game world, which in turn would create a better experience. The visual feedback may also help younger players of the game.
Sound Effects for the game
The game has a limited need for sound effects and I have a full list of all needed already made:
The various items needing sound effects are listed on the left and the sound effects are listed to the right of each item. For finding these sound effects, I will look at audio library websites I have used in the past as well as on you tube for royalty and copyright free music for a background track.
Production Schedule
Setting targets for work to be done by and leaving time for reviews of your progress and feedback is integral to a well managed production. In the past when I have made production schedules I make a list of all the mechanics that I need to make and then I have my assets pre-made to production so the remainder of production is combining my mechanics and assets step by step so that when I encounter a bug I know what has changed and it will be easier to target and fix any bugs that arise.
-slingshot fling projectile
-projectiles respond to physics items (structures)
-structure items destroyable (Health & collision)
-Enemies destroyed on collision
– Score added when objects destoryed
-Timer
– Rating from score + timer
-Alternate projectiles.
This is a full list of the mechanics that I need to make for my game. I will be using the Construct 3 engine to make this game but before I start production I need feedback on a rough sketch of what the final project would look like.
I made a draft of what the game will look like and asked several people what they thought about it, if they understood the concept etcetera. As of writing this, the two responders have said they understand what the main premise and concept of the game is from the rough sketch but one did not provide any feedback to what they would change with one saying that the idea portrayed was simple and understandable from what was shown. The other said that maybe some additional User interface would be nice. I took this advice with me when it came to the different projectiles, I was going to have them on a cycle, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2 and so on but after some additional questioning, a menu to choose what projectile you use would add to the player experience but also add to the mechanics needed for me to produce. Whilst I was responding to the feedback of additional UI, another response said that they would would like more guidance with the target dots from the slingshot so I have increased the range of the guide dots to a more preferred level.
Now that I have a solid basis of what I did wrong with my first draft, I am ready to start production on the project.
Production
A version of the game can be played here, on both PC with a mouse and on mobile with touch controls.
I have started the early stages of development and have summed up the work I have been able to produce into a short clip
I have managed to make the slingshot fling the pebble projectile which collides with structure objects and then I gave all the structure objects a health variable which is reduced depending on what projectile they are hit by and when the health reaches zero the block is destroyed after 0.3 seconds. I did have the structures be deleted instantly as was seen in the clip before the final one (20). I made a timer for the destruction to give the hit blocks a chance to effect the environment before being removed. I did not encounter any bugs as of yet but did have some issues managing the collider boxes and physics attributes of the structure blocks and pebble projectile.
These are the first three items on my production schedule and next I am going to be moving onto developing the enemies, these will act similar to the structures, take damage from being hit and then be destroyed but defeating all the enemies completes the stage which will reset. I am not sure if I want to have the stage reset with a button or on a timer, I will produce both and send it out for testing and feedback to see which is liked more.
Before moving onto the enemies I sent the video above to some people and asked for what they thought of the early prototype, the main concern was the viewport of the game, it is to small which ended up making the video uploaded poor quality. I have updated this and made the viewport considerably larger. Apart from responding to feedback I have finished the structures, now all 8 variations are in game with complete systems for now and I have also made a respawn feature which I had some troubles with at first and then forgot to save my work for the day leading to me having to re-make the structures, respawn and viewport size.
Before I implement the enemies, I will create at least one variation for the sprite. The way I intend to create the level complete system is to have a global variable set to the amount of enemies on the map and then when an enemy dies, rather then waiting 0.3 secinds and being removed like structures, one will be subtracted from the global variable and when the global variable is 0 a layer with the win screen will appear.
Since adding enemies to the game, I have sent it out and uploaded it Itch.io in order to receive some feedback from any potential players. So far I haven’t received an constructive criticism with most people saying that its ‘alright’ or ‘Quite nice’. Whilst it is appreciated it doesn’t tell me what else the game needs that I haven’t thought about. I have asked what people think of the respawn time for projectiles (which is currently 5 seconds), the only direct answer to the question was that “It’s fine”. Whilst my ‘audience’ thinks that this is reasonable, the game is intended for a young audience to pass a few free moments or might not have the attention span for waiting 5 seconds in a game where you will need to fire a dozen or more projectiles so I am going to experiment and see what respawn time is suitable for the audience.
Whilst working on the game I received some more feedback about the game:
This feedback is substantial as it points out some bugs that I didn’t know where still present such as the win screen showing off centre rather then where it should be. Another peice that is valuable is the physics, gravity and weight of objects, an aspect that I didnt think about during development up to this point.
I have changed several features, responding to my feedback. I have also attempted to make new projectiles but I have tried with two different projectiles and several ways to make projectiles work but I wasn’t able to work the system out.
I first started with the skewer projectile. The first way I tried to work additional projectiles was by copying the launching mechanic of the pebble projectile and changing out pebble instances with the skewer. I was going to have the player swap out projectiles by clicking on a corresponding item at the bottom the screen, this worked but the projectile didn’t.
The projectile wouldn’t launch no matter what physics I changed, after fiddling with the emulation settings, I moved on to a new projectile to see if it was a creative block stopping a solution. Next I tried the fun snap bombs as its special effect is that it blows blocks away when it collides with any physics object.
I made the snap bomb projectile and spawner box before working on the mechanics, the design is based off of fun snaps that are found in joke shops everywhere you go and a are a hit with kids. I know how to make the explosion effect would work but the projectile again just wouldn’t work.
Unlike the skewer, which would barely move when launched, the fun snap bomb would launch across the screen so fast you cant keep an eye on it. No matter what setting where changed, it wouldn’t slow down. This projectile also somehow managed to break the pebble projectile, it would continue to spawn even when it wasnt in use.
I do want other projectiles in the game but I would also rather have a working game which means that I am going to have to make the decision to remove the alternate projectiles plan, this is disappointing as the ideas that I had for these alternate projectiles was interesting and likely would have added needed depth to the gameplay but at least the basic game is playable.
Even though I haven’t been able to add a mechanic I wanted, I have been able to listen to feedback provided by players and respond to the issues they had with the game. I have uploaded the game with these changes made, the only things left to add now are sound effects.
Sound effects are important to any game but I would say that they are more important in a children’s game as they need more feedback of something the world altering then just visual, this is why I am adding on sound effects to the environment, as well as s background track, to create a inclusive audio environment for my players and target audience.
For the background track, I need something for children, upbeat, simple, and non-genre specific so that it is clear and understandable to a young audience. After looking around for a background track, I have found 2 potential tracks to use.
Between these two options, scheming weasel sounds more child friendly comparatively as the low trumpets are too low for what I intend to be child friendly. At this moment in time the audio environment is mostly complete, but I have had troubles with the sling shot stretch sound effect. As I have made the game both playable on mouse and touch, I have used a control system that I haven’t in the past and so I though that i could work my sound effects the same way I have in the past but when I do do that, the sound effects loop creating a horrible sound until the player releases the the controls to fire. Since the audio is done, the only thing left on the list is the finish screen, which needs to show the score, time and have an option to restart the game.
I have added in these functions but one last bug has occurred before release of the last update, when the level restarts the back track doesn’t play, I’m not sure why this is as it plays on layout start and I’m reloading from the layout start but I will need to fix this before releasing the game.
I am not sure what caused this issue but I put an event to restart the layout after reloading the save before the start of the layout and now the back track plays when the player loads the game initially and after they restart the game
Development is now complete, if any bugs are faults or caught and sent to me, I will fix them but for now the game is complete and I am hands off from now on. Development went smoothly, I encountered many issues as is natural in games development and I was able to solve most, change some and cut some features due to these bugs, which is natural in games development. All in all, production of the game took 8 days. 4 of planning, designing and producing art work for the game and 4 working from those designs, publishing an early prototype and then furthering development and releasing the game as it is now with some features I did design and some had to be removed and some that where recommended to me from feedback from my audience.
Even though I have not used construct 3 for a year before starting this project, my skills in the software warmed up and developed quickly leading me to say that I have greatly developed what I can accomplish in construct and do so in a smaller amount of time. Looking back to my last project in construct, 1969, it took me from Jan 24th 2020 to march 6th 2020 to have the game in its current state but for this project it took me from 17th of Jan to the 21st to have the game in a similar state of quality, if not higher.
A version of the game can be played here, on both PC with a mouse and on mobile with touch controls.
Jacob's game journal 