Contextual Study

Luke Wadey Written Report

Game’s Programmer/Developer

Workflow

My chosen specialism is being a Games Programmer and this is because it is the field in games development I feel as though I excel at the most and so I have been looking at some workflows for a solo/indie game developer and in the first one I found they seem to first setup vague milestones that they want to achieve throughout the project for example their first goal was to have a prototype of their game idea to build out what the mechanics and the feel of the game would be and I think this is an important first goal but it obviously assumes that you have your game idea already conceptualised which is where I think your workflow would start as an indie developer but before developing your prototype it does suggest you think about “who will play your game?, how will you reach your target audience?, how will you finance the project and what makes your game different?” and I think these are some really interesting points to think about as you can’t really begin any kind of successful development without first being able to answer these questions and after you can it gives you a good direction moving forward for the creation of your game.

Prototype example

Vertical Slice example

 The next step in the process was to create a vertical slice (which is a small portion of the game that is final quality) of your game after the prototype and this helps for a multitude of reasons which are it reduces the risk for potential investors as they know what they are getting themselves in for and it also gives you an idea of what sort of investment from yourself this game will take after this it is recommended to get your game to an alpha quality from a gameplay standpoint and then start to create final art assets for your game and this is important as the main focus of your game is the mechanics and gameplay so these should be your top priority and when you are at this stage you can have your game bug tested and then fix any bugs that appear and after that you can focus on producing final assets for the game and slowly move your game into a beta state and when you get there you focus on ironing out any bugs that might arise and finishing your final assets so that your game can move into its finished project 

Another workflow process I looked at was for developing a game from a team based point of view and its main steps for the process where “Concept, Pre production, Production and Post production” but went into greater depth in their pre production phase compared to the first article and this was what was missing from the article I based my research off of and I think this part of the process is incredibly important as it’s where you take your games concept and begin to really turn it into something and where the first article focused on the marketing side of the production of a game this one lends more to thinking about things such as the technical limitations of the systems you are working on another difference in the preproduction phase of this article compared to the last was the idea of creating a storyboard of the game and a design document first before getting to any kind of prototyping so that you have a clear direction of what the game’s story is and how the game will feel and play on your chosen platform this article also went into great depth on the different roles during the production phase of a game and focusing on only the programming is helped give a good idea of the scope of what needs to be achieved by the programmers such as creating all of the mechanics for the game as well as the AI and how the player will interact with the world they have built as well as all the other parts of the production team. The post production phase of the process is largely the same between the two articles and they both talk of ironing out any minor bugs that might crop up and then when the game is at a gold standard look to publishing the game. Overall I would say the two articles had very similar ideas in the milestones that need to be achieved as a games developer but when went into more depth on different parts to get to those milestones   

Historical Influencers 

Pong was the first game ever developed by Atari in 1972 and is one of the earliest arcade video games which saw huge success and due to its great success as an arcade game it lead to the game being developed onto a home console system by 1975 and this is truly how the games industry got started as without Pong there would of been no need for home consoles as games were seen as something you would play at an arcade and as other companies saw how well Pong on home consoles was doing it lead them into investing into the video games industry allowing it to grow and keep growing until this day where it’s bigger than it’s ever been and this was the biggest influence Pong has had on my profession as it allowed the work I want to pursue becoming a legitimate career for people 

Pac-Man was originally released in 1980 and was a great influencer in popularising the use of power-ups in video games as well as AI enemies and bonus items and the effect this has had on my profession is it’s opened the avenue for more advanced and interesting mechanics to slowly start to be introduced throughout the years making games more interesting as a result because it gives you more ways to play and interact with the games and another huge influencePac-Man had was having an easily identifiable main character which up until this point wasn’t something you really saw but you can see the ripple effect it has had throughout the years as if you think about your favourite games there is normally a main character that you associate with that franchise too and I think this has helped players build a connection with the games that have been produced  

Super Mario Bros (1985) refined the genre of platformers and helped really define the genre and from a programming standpoint it allowed for greater diversity in the control over the protagonist of the game and deliver more advanced and diverse enemy AI but maybe it’s crowning achievement was streamlining the feel of the input controls allowing them to be precise and satisfying and this is something that all games going forward have taken into consideration creating a more standardised control scheme for all games to the point where you can pick up any game and have a good idea of what the basic controls will be

Doom 1993 is considered one of the first true first person shooter games to exist though its argued whether or not it was the first it can’t be argued that it was the one that caught everyone’s attention and truly defined the genre and it did this by showing the real power the change of perspective has on the feel of the game making it more visceral and engaging for the player and at the time the game was a technological marvel that no one had come close to achieving before and because of this it helped really advance the abilities of programmers at the time to strive for greater mechanical prowess in their games and lastly and a very much so controversial influence the game had on the industry was the amount of violence that was present in the game which was one of its selling points and this has definitely had an impact through the years with violent games such as Mortal Kombat and GTA

Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (1998) was a game that revolutionised the rpg genre in the games industry and changed the way that game developers looked at creating an action adventure game with its well conceptualized 3D world with its layered storytelling and diverse environments and when it comes to the mechanics of the game and how it has affected the industry from that perspective it introduced a combat system that used something called Z-targeting where by the player could lock their focus on an enemy allowing for interactive one on one combat it also helped popularise the use of context sensitive controls which means one button can have more than one action depending on the situation you are in greatly simplifying the controls of the game and this is something that is used to great effect even today 

Contemporary Influences

There are many social issues now a days which have huge implications on the development process of being a game developer and some of these are things such as the level of violence of present in video games as video games have been pointed towards as root causes for violence in the real world and this has left game developers doing a balancing act of making sure that their games show an “Acceptable” amount of violence as to not be cast down by the media which I feel is unfair as there is a level of ambiguity surrounding what is acceptable so you can never be too sure what is considered okay to include in your game for example games such as GTA are shunned by the media for their level of violence and other such social issues that they seem to mock but depending on how you look at it you can form your own opinion on whether or not it is encouraging the behaviour or making a mockery of it as game development is an art form and art is up to each individual’s interpretation   

A modern influencer working in the industry currently is Hidetaka Miyasaki who has worked on the Dark Souls games which became incredibly successful due to their high difficulty and rich world building which is something that used to be present in older games but was lost in the rush for making games consumable to the casual player but due to the efforts of From Software and Hidetaka Miyazaki they have revived people’s wants for difficult games that have spawned a dozen clones of their Dark Souls franchise and even coined the name of the genre as a “Souls game” and its people like this that show me that there is still room for the games industry to expand and grow 

With the introduction of VR and what it can do there has been great strides in what can be done by programmers and with games in general so going forward I believe there is no limit to how far the games industry will be able to grow as there is constantly leaps in the technological capabilities of the systems we use and this is our only limiting factor so it’s my belief that before too long VR will be a standardised game platform and that is where the games industry will be going moving forward slowly phasing out the generations before it