Unit 12 - Task 1 - Daniel Maddox

Unit 12 - Task 1

Types of game developer

1st Party developers are developers which are owned by the platform makers they are making games for. An example of a 1st party developer would be Lionhead Games who are owned by Microsoft and make games for their Xbox 360 console and PC.

3rd Party developers are not owned by a console’s maker though they need a publishing partner to fund their development may also have a publishing deal with a console maker with them to make game exclusively for their console. An example of a third party developer would be Capcom.

Indie developers make their games without the need of financial aid from a publisher. An Example of an independent developer would be Valve Corporation.

Bioware

Bioware is a highly regarded game development studio founded in 1995 by Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk. They are best known for their high quality role-playing games like Baldur’s Gate and Star Wars: knights of the old republic, but recently the Mass Effect series. They now have two studios, one in Edmonton Canada and another studio in Austin Texas which specializes in creating MMOs. They currently have 5 games in production for multiple platforms. They are a third party studio who is owned by Electronic arts.

Departments of game development

Design

It is the designer’s jobs to come up with the fresh ideas for the mechanics and rules of the game and try to make them as fun as they possibly can for the player. All of the ideas that the designers of a game come up with are usually put into a game design document that will feature all the ideas for things the like the heads up display and how each level is going to play out, game design docs come complete with illustrations like concept art to help get across their ideas better.

Concept Art

The concept art department for a game is typically given some sort of guideline of what it is they need to create. It could be a Character, vehicle, weapon or environment. When the concept artist is told what it is he will need to create, then draw up step by his idea of what is wanted. Usually a concept artist will create many variants of his ideas so he can use different elements from each design and put them into one great piece of concept art. The concept artist will then pass the his work onto the likes of the 3d modellers so they can then use the piece of concept art as a reference making it easier for them to create whatever it is they’re creating.

Physics Programmer

It is the physics programmer’s responsibility to program the engine to typically replicate physics of what they are on the earth. Different games will require different amounts of physics engine work for example, Crysis a game which is heavily dependent on its physics engine will need a large team but other games like Mario are not as heavily dependent on physics so their physics team is likely to be much smaller.

Quality Assurance

There are two types of quality assurance. The first is Alpha testing which is followed by the second, Beta testing.

Alpha testing takes place in house while the different features and design of the game are still being put into the game. The tester plays the game, checking to see if all the features work properly in every sort of situation, if they find a bug they fill in a bug report which sent off and then later fixed.

Beta testing happens when all the features are in the game; it is not necessarily about finding bugs but playing with the game to see that everything is balanced correctly within the game so that tweaks can be made. Beta testing can take place in house on a small scale or a developer could do a private beta to a select a number of public testers to see if the game is working properly on a slightly larger scale or even a public beta so they can test the game on a very large scale.

AI programmer

It is an AI programmers job to code the games engine in such a way that the AI in the game will act the most logical, realistic and usually the most human as it can when trying to deal with a situation. Different types of AI will need to be programmed in different way depending on what their purpose in the game is. For example, if you shot at an enemy soldier he is logically more likely to shoot back at you rather than running away in terror, which is more how an innocent would react in a game.

Intuitive HUD and information delivery

As game developers are trying harder and harder to immerse the players into their games one of elements that they feel is holding them back in trying to immerse the gamer is the heads up display or HUD. Dead Space is a spectacular example of what an intuitive HUD looks like because there basically is not one. The reason for this is to make the game more cinematic, like a movie thus immersing the player in the game more. For example, the health is not located in a corner of the screen it’s located on the main character back. There is no targeting reticule in the game instead this is replaced by a laser in the in the game. I think these are very good ideas because the HUD actually becomes part of the art style of the game instead of something that could get in the way of the gameplay.

Forests are the new water

In previous generations of consoles one of the focus’ of game development was making water look good with new technologies and art as a way of proving how good their game looked. Nowadays developers are more accomplished in the art of making water look good with games such as Crysis, Halo 3 and Bioshock almost perfecting it. They are now trying to prove how good their games engines are and how good their game looks by producing levels in games rich with vegetation. A string of games came out in 2007 with levels of the game based in jungles. Example of this are Halo 3 where the very first level is one based in a jungle, taking this a step further was Uncharted for the Playstation 3 with a large portion of the game taking place in a jungle environment, taking this yet another step further was the game Crysis with an even larger portion of the game taking place on an jungle like island rich in vegetation that was all entirely movable things such as the tree’s could be shot in two. Although this game caused a lot of controversy when it was released because of high hardware specifications for the PC.


User generated content

A new feature that a lot of the developers are working on is User generated content for their games, although this has been present in PC gaming for a long time it is now starting to gain a presence on the console with games like Little Big Planet having a heavy focus on user generated where you can create entire levels for the gaming then post them on the internet for other people to download and play. Other games like Forza Motorsport 2 &3 have user generated content features like being able to put custom paint jobs on your cars.

Milestone Contract
When a publisher hires a game developer to create a game the terms are negotiated so the developers and the publisher can strike a deal so that they can make a contract.
One of the agreements that will have to be made and put into the contract is who owns the intellectual property or IP. For example the games publisher Microsoft Game Studios has a deal with Bungie to make the Halo series however Microsoft own the Halo IP which means they can use other developers to make Halo games like they did with Ensemble Studios when they created Halo Wars.
Some more of the terms of the contract will include how much time the developer has to make a game, how much money they will pay them and what royalties if any are going to paid to the developer.
Other agreements such as the payment schedule, game design document and how the royalties are going to be calculated.

Employee Contracts
These are the contracts that the employee will sign when he gets a job at a game development studio. The terms of the contract will be what are you going to give to the company and what the company can and will do if you comply with the terms of the contract.
One of the terms that will be included in the contract of an employee will be confidentiality. Terms such as not leaking any of the secret information from the game you are making or from the studio itself which could be threatening if a competing company got knowledge of these secrets. It will also give information on what will happen to you if there is a leak and it is your fault.
While you are at a company usually the inventions that you make such as a 3d model, piece of art or a game design idea will belong to the company and not an individual person

Ethics
As game developers try to make the medium of games more sophisticated and maybe more lifelike more and more ethical issues are being raised against games, mostly against them. For example, Mass Effect came under fire from the mainstream media for have sex scenes in the game, even though it was rated 18+. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare also caused controversy for having a level where you play as someone pretending to be a terrorist where you are given the choice to shoot civilians in an airport although this was part of the story of the game. Violence in games regularly gets games banned from certain countries like Germany and Australia because their rating system seems to be far stricter than those in the UK and USA. Often when the games are banned from these countries the developers have to spend extra time in the game changing certain aspects of it so it can pass through the rating system without getting banned. if a game did get banned in a country it would be bad because it would not sell as much as expected.