Pre-production techniques for the creative media industry.

Pre-production techniques for the creative media industry.

My game that I am creating with Wayne is a game intended for the smartphone market. The game is about a man named chef who has to try his hardest to get out of the way of an explosion that is coming from the restaurant that he is currently working at, he does this by grabbing a pan and attaching some wheels on it and rolling down a hill with it. The player is awarded points on how far and the tricks the player pulls off. I will now go into detail about the cost of making a game and then finally how much money it would take to make my game.

Finance

Costs:

There would be quite a few costs when it comes to making a game, you need all of your equipment up to date. If you went for the minimum cost of a computer here is what you’d be looking at:

· Windows XP SP3 (32-bit only), Windows Vista, or Windows 7. = £19.95

· 2.0+ GHz processor. = £34.90

· 2 GB system RAM. = £22.99

· SM3-compatible video card. = £100

· 3 GB free hard drive space. = £41.47

This would cost a total of £219, but if you were going for a top of the line PC (which would probably be the wisest move.) you’d be looking at around £500 - £600 and that’s a cheap good build as well. You’d also need these computers for all your employees as well so you’d have to double/triple that figure. And this isn’t even taking in the peripherals of the computer. That would be £120-£150 on top of that.

Another thing to take into consideration also is the program you would use to make your game. Here is a list of the costs of most of the dev kits/programs you would have to pay for:

Dev kits

ID@xbox = free for early access

Ps4 dev kit = $2,500

Software

UDK = free, except for royalties

Unity = free, except for royalties

Game maker = free unless you are paying for the premium which is £149.99

Maya = free for 30 days otherwise £97 a month

The last thing to be said about the cost of actually publishing your game to the company, for steam greenlight this is £70, $5,143 on xbox one and ps4 is free except for royalties.

Funding


Self-finance:

Self-funding is spending your own money that you earn yourself without borrowing or lending money from any other sources. Normally working after hours or taking up a second job just to fund the game. This is an extremely risky choice but if you pull it off the reward is worth it. Obviously the risk of this could be that the game you make is a complete failure and you lose thousands of pounds, or you make pure profit without having to owe any of it out.

Indie funding/crowd funding:

Indie funding or crowd funding is getting a group of people to look at your project and let them decide whether or not to decide to donate money to help fund your game. This can be done in many ways. You could physically go out and ask people to take a look at your game and possibly get a donation. Or the more popular way which would be to go on indiegogo or kickstarter and get people on the internet to help you get funding, this is more of an efficient way because this way a lot more people can see your project instead of just people in your local area.

Grants:


If you were looking to get a grant of a big publishing company you’d have to be very confident about your project and actually have a really good project. People like UDK give grants if they like your project and look into it.

Publisher funding:

This is normally used for triple a games companies and is where the company uses the money they have to fund their own game, this is for games like call of duty, battlefield and the Sims etc. the risks that come with this are if the game is a Failure then the company get the full blame for making it and lose fans, but if it’s not a failure then they get to reap the rewards.

Deadlines:

A deadline is when a piece of work or anything is meant to be in for, this is to get some information in as fast as possible as the person would require it fast. If this deadline is not met you would get into a lot of trouble with your employer or mess up a project completely and set it back a few months on release. Deadlines are the most important thing to keep in mind when making a game because one loose link can mess everything up.

Material:

Using material for a game can be tricky unless you have the know how. www.freesounds.com is a very good website that hosts a plethora of free sounds for you to use in your game without any work. You could always use house hold objects to make sound as well. This is free and easy. Another good website is www.freegameart.com is another good website for free art for your game, for example you need a good forest background for your game, this website can help you out big time.

Codes of practise

To help my game with copyright I have done it on animals which helps as no one has a copyright on naturel. Meaning that all of the enemies in the game and even the end goal (a lily pad) are parts of nature, either an insect or a reptile/animal.

All games in Europe are rated by the pan European game information team or PEGI for short. Again this will help my game as it contains no violence and includes friendly animals which will lower my PEGI rating and open up the doors to a wider audience to buy my game and not exclude anyone.