Unit 1 - Pre-Production

Unit 1 - Pre-Production

To produce a game or for any form of the media industry, various industries such as film production, advertisement, television production, website creations pre-production is required to lay the foundations of your game or other entertainment, the requirements pre-production needs are

-Finance

-Type Of Production

-Time Constraints

-Personnel

-Facilities

-Materials

-Contributors

-Location And Codes Of Practice

Finance

Finance is needed for almost all pre-productions, a budget would need to be established, before pre-production to give an aspect of how much money the development of the production would cost. The advantage of having a budget is knowing when to stop investing in a production, which would not produce a substantial amount of profit. equipment needed for the development of the game is required, such as cameras to take pictures for pre-production and scenery this would have a cost. employees is another important aspect of finance, people are needed for animation, programming, or voice actors especially celebrities, which would require a lot of money to get celebrities an example of a celebrity who has voiced in a video game, is Sean bean voiced a character in the elder scrolls V oblivion. Materials needed in creating a game will also cost a lot of money materials such as good quality computers for editing and rendering a game engine is also required for the basics of the game these can cost up to thousands. facility hire is needed if your game is based on a real life place, such as a racing game, you may hire a racing track to take photos and observe the surroundings so you can get it looking as real as possible in game.

clearances is where you are paid by the company you are making the game for in portions, the company does this to make sure they will invest all their money into a game that may fail.Sources of finance can be from private loans, sponsors , or from contracts from other companies an example of this is Call Of Duty. Activision offered a contract with infinity ward to produce some of the games in the franchise.this meant that Activision would give infinity ward a set budget to produce the game under a contract.However lone developers who create a type of media by themselves, most of the time will not have a contract 

Type Of Production

 Type of production is how you will produce copies of the media entertainment, whether it be television or the film industries the type of production applies to all types of media production.
There are four main types of production. batch production is where small amounts of copies are produced and sent to retail, usually from 30-120 copies per batch this is only used when needed. one-off productions are when the is one copy produced most of the time this is not used in game design and is used more by fashion industries, continuous production is when  production of the game is continuous, the games are produced 24 hours everyday this makes use of the money needed to create the copies as stopping and starting the production costs more money. Mass production is where hundreds of copies are produced is where assemblies are used to speed up the process of the production.

Time Constraints

Time is an extremely important in the arts industry, time is important when developing and releasing. Most games development companies such as EA or Activision, release games almost every 1-2 years. it is important for these big companies to release games every year to keep their name in the market. timing the release of a game is also important this also is the same for timing the release of additional content. Most big companies such as EA mainly release their main titles during the end of the year between October and December, this will increase sales as many people will buy the game as presents for Christmas. Timing the release is also important in case of competition, two companies who are competing for sales, are Dice and their Battlefield franchise and Activations Call Of Duty franchise, both try to release their game before the other and try to keep sales consistent. however sometimes a companies game could fail in sales, this would be the ideal time to release your game as consumers would be looking for a better game to play.Deadlines are an important aspect of managing time as with anything deadlines must be met this apply s to everything during production as well as release, if deadlines are not me then this could result in the games release being rescheduled this could in turn affect sales. An example of deadlines not being met is Rockstars Grand Theft Auto 5 heists (where players would be able to participate in online bank heists with friends) which were scheduled to be released in early 2014, Rockstar promised that heists would be out in a few months once the game had been released back in September 2013, one year later and the heists which rockstar promised have still not been delivered. this is a clear example of how Rockstar lost out on sales and on players, as many players have gone to other games, rather than wait for heists to be released. this has lost rockstar potential money for other DLCs (downloadable content) from the players. Based on this, it is easy to see how important deadlines are.

Personnel
The size of the team is important as a big team will increase rate of production however costs more money to employ, it also means more equipment is needed which again will cost money. The availability of personnel is important if employees do not turn up or have problems getting to work this could slow down production, personnel could also quit the job due to stress overworking or other reasons, if someone significant to the development quits the production such as an artist or model designer, this could effect the entire game if an artist leaves his style of work would not been seen through other work that would have to be done and the style of some models wont look the same if development continues after someone has left .skills and experiences are important you should be employing people who are skilled at what they say they are, CV s are one thing however seeing work they have done is a good way to see if they are good at what they say they are.Having your development team split into certain groups would keep the development easier to handle and to organize, Such groups would be, script writing, story boarding, programming, illustrators, and more.

although personnel is needed most of the time for a production there have been some accounts where entertainment has been created by a single person the advantage of this is obvious the creator; if his game is successful  would gross all the money to himself however the disadvantages of producing media entertainment alone is, firstly that it is more time consuming alone, secondly 

Facilities

your company will have to have good facilities for production, it is important to have enough equipment for personnel and to have it working properly if there is something wrong with the equipment then production will be slowed down. Also the employees must know how to use the equipment or programs if not then the work they produce may not be as good as they may have been if the employee new how to use the program. Production equipment includes editing software, modelling software and game engines examples of these are editing software such as Adobe Photoshop. some rendering and modelling software are programs such as blender, and cinema 4D, some game engines that are used include unity 5, and the unreal engine, game engines usually can cost up to a £1000 or more especially the more recent game engines.

Materials

 Materials for production are the types of things your company will need, this links in with the facilities your company will need as well, materials are mainly software in the production in media. software needed for the production of games development include engines such as Cinema 4D,also game engines will be needed such as unreal engine or unity engine. Editing software may also be used in some media productions such as adobe Photoshop.These materials will all cost a lot of money affecting the budget. also some personnel may have to get used to the software this again will have a knock on affect on the managing time as it will take a while to get used to.

Contributors

Contributors are can be specialists in development of media, or could be the public contributing to the production this has been done in the past, where lead developers have gone into the public and hired random people for voice acting or for mmodelling Developers may see someone in public who they think would look good in their game and is the type of character they are looking for. In some cases celebrity's are used in games, this can give the game more popularity, one example of celebrity's being featured in games.

Ricky Gervais a English comedian and actor, was featured in GTA IV as himself at a comedy club in the game.Other contributors are specialists. Contributors to a game or a production could be through funding. funding's can come from sponsors or from contracts, contracts are when a company will hire you to make their game or , will fund your game idea. One example of funding from another company is with the production of the game Before a game which had only started development at the start of 2014 was on slow production,  However Facepunch studios the company which is developing the game Rust have funded the project in an agreement of a certain percentage of the revenue from the game. Soundtracks and sound effects in games can be given or bought by contributors, either by a band or found free online. 

Location And Codes Of Practice 

location and codes of practice these are needed in any production. Location is where your game is going to be based if the game hopes to have realistic landscape then a team would need to go to the location to take pictures and observe the landscape so the modelers can accurately create the landscape. this is often done in racing games where real tracks are used, developers will go to these tracks and make records of how it looks sometimes taking photos, or even getting an aerial view of the track. Codes Of Practice is the legal side of production, things such as copyright, Ofcom, and PCC. Copyright is extremely important when producing a game, companies must be careful not to breach the copyright of another game. One example of how copyright may be breached in a game is in the mobile market. The popular game CandyCrush  Tried to copyright the word 'Candy' fortunately the request was not met. however if they had copyrighted the word 'Candy' this would have been a big problem for the gaming market.
Ofcom are a government approved-regulator of broadcasting, telecommunications and other media. Ofcom decide things such as what can be shown in trailers at certain times due to children watching TV, they can also change the age rating on your game if they think you have set it to low. They can even in some cases deny sale in a country or at all, this is usually because the game is to violent or gory. PEGI or pan European game information this association controls the ageing rating used on games and decides whether or not the age rating is reasonable, if they think that the age rating your company has given the game is incorrect, you must change it to their age rating or selling the game in the EU will be banned. Examples of PEGI age ratings can be seen an games such as call of duty a popular war game which has a 18+ age rating although it is common that gamers under the age of 18 do play these games and parents do buy 18+ games for their children while ignoring the age rating, unfortunately not much can be done to stop this as an adult can buy the game and give it away. 



parts of pre-production will and would be used in my 2D Maze Game, some parts i will not be affected by but would be if I where to create the game by myself for the market.
Finance is needed for the entire production of the game, it is needed for facilities and equipment such as software, hardware, employees, and locations. I do not require finance in the making of the my game as software and hardware is already provided. However if I were to make this game without the facilities provided by the college I would need finance to accommodate Software such as Gamemaker which the full program costs £500, I would also need high end computer however i already do have a computer which is capable of running the software, although if i did not have good enough hardware it would cost around £1500 average. If I required assistance with the game production that would also cost to hire personnel, which will also cost. Time constraints is another area which in reality is not affecting the production of my 2D game, However if I were to create this game alone, I most likely would have a job which is providing income for the development of the game, however with having the job production would not be as fast as it would be if all my time was focused on the development of the game.Facilities are not needed with the production of my game as they are already provided, however in reality i would need to have update equipment such as cameras if i were to photograph or RECE a location, much of the facilities needed also links in with finance as all of the facilities will come with a cost, some examples of facilities are software such as game engines, game engines which for 2D games can cost up to a couple hundred pounds, or for a decent 3D game engine can cost up to a £1000 and more. Contributors for a production can be financially such as sponsors or contract, or celebrities or the public can contribute.In the making of the 2D game I will most likely not have contributors as, i do not need financial support to create the game, the game also will have no dialogue so there is no need for public contribution to the game. However if I were to create the game by myself I would most likely need financial support this could come from private investors, or other companies in a sponsorship. I may also hire people from the public for voice acting if I did choose to add dialogue. Location and codes of practice, I will find places to base my games setting on, locations such as parks will almost certainly influence the setting of the game. The locations I will be visiting will be free to enter and will not effect finance, unlike some places which would require payment to visit. Codes of practice does not really apply to the game i am making in reality as it is not going on the game market, however If this game where to be released on the market, the maze game would not have an age rating due to it having a passive nature to it. Copyright Infringement will apply to the creation of the game in reality and if I were creating this game as a company, I must be careful not to replicate or copy other work with a copyright place holder. This would also apply to if I were to create the game as a company, Infringement of copyright may and could lead to a lawsuit, which could damage the games production.

-Jack S