Pre-Production

Pre-production sets the tone and the pace for the rest of the project. Any shortcuts you take in this phase will haunt you later. It is vital to plan everything now. The process of planning together with the development team becomes a habit, and makes it easier to change the plan when emergencies arise. In pre-production, the producer must plan every aspect of production, post-production, and beyond.

Design

Before you can do anything else, you have to know what it is you're planning to make. In the film industry, producers start with a script and then develop a storyboard. In our industry, we have to start with a detailed design document. (At least, that's the way it's done in the West; as we will see, Japanese companies work differently.) The design has to describe all the game's features in sufficient detail, so that the technical people and the art director can estimate how long it will take to implement.

However, you can't simply set your designer to work on writing a document, then reach over his shoulder, grab it, and ship it to the technical director and art director. Before getting firm estimates on it, you need to make sure that this design will be acceptable to your marketing people, salespeople, and company executives, and, if it's a console game, your console manufacturer. Consensus is vital in the early stages. Especially, plan on making sure that this design is acceptable to your licensor.

Licensor Issues

Many successful games today are licensed games—games based on an existing intellectual property, be it owned by an external party or by your company. If you are developing a game based on an outside party's property, you have to include that party in the process early on.

The final approval is the most important, of course. It should go smoothly if you've been getting approvals in earlier stages. You don't want to spring a previously unseen, now-finished game on your licensor!

We made the mistake of not involving Columbia Pictures early in the development of Ghostbusters II for the NES in 1989. We just sent our contact the finished game, expecting an automatic signoff. He was not happy, and although he did approve the game, it could have been a disaster.

Another close call: Activision had created the early Alien and Predator games under license from Twentieth Century Fox in the late 1980s. When Dark Horse Comics came out with Aliens vs. Predator, we got the rights to do games based on the combined license.

Activision went through some dramatic changes during the interim, and we inherited the projects long after the license had been acquired; the producers who had started the ball rolling were no longer with the company. We had sublicensed the rights to Japanese publishers, who funded development on the SNES and Game Boy. Then, we would take the finished Japanese version, localize for the United States, and release domestically. The problem was that the Japanese developer (like most game developers in Japan) was not in the habit of writing detailed design documents to begin a project. After repeated requests, they delivered an outline, which was taken to Fox for approval. That wasn't easy, because the document raised more questions than it answered. Eventually, we got approval to get the Japanese versions released. However, when we wanted the American versions approved, there was a whole new battle to fight because the game had changed significantly since the outline was submitted. The games ended up not being very good, and sold well only because of the license.

Throughout this near disaster, the bright spot was Fox's formalized approval process. They developed a standardized form that would be used for each approval submission. The form indicated whether the material being submitted was code, packaging, manual, or advertising materials. The form indicated whether the approval sought was for text, visuals, or functionality. In addition, the form had spaces where the approver could indicate reasons for denial, or comments about changes that were needed for approval to be granted. If your own licensor doesn't use such a formal approval process, you should work one out together.

Internal Licenses

Sometimes the intellectual property belongs to your own company rather than to an external party. In such cases, there might be someone in your company who is the brand assurance person—the keeper of the flame for that intellectual property. Work with this person the same way you would work with an external licensor. Set up an approval process together; plan for the stages at which approvals will be needed, and schedule accordingly.

Technology

You have to trust your technical people and their ability to estimate the time it will take to accomplish the tasks. They have to create a detailed task list, based on your detailed design document, and plan for whatever learning is required to implement the game's features. If you're using acquired technology, have your team look at the documentation and talk to the people providing the technology. Is it well documented? Are their people going to be able to support it adequately for your peoples' needs?

On Shanghai Second Dynasty, we knew that we were going to have to implement online play, but our external developer, Quicksilver, wasn't going to do it—we were going to have in-house staff take care of that portion, because then the technology would be compatible with the rest of our online game servers.

One little problem we didn't anticipate was that the programmer who had created the online technology would be leaving the company before getting to this project. In addition, "online gaming" had become a buzzword, and numerous game-related dotcoms were trying to convince us to put our games on their sites. The hesitations and negotiations cost us a week at the end of the production. A week doesn't sound like much, but because of that week, the game was not on the shelves over the Thanksgiving weekend.

Marketing

Marketing will be crucial to the game's success, so you have to work together with your publisher's marketing staff to get them everything they need. Moreover, they have to be sensitive to the fact that once you have planned the project, any changes they introduce to the plan have to be reasonably small, or else the schedule will change. Develop a good line of communication with your marketing people. Patiently educate them on the process.

Demos

One of the most significant marketing needs is the demo disc.

It's usually desirable to release the demo before (not after) releasing the game itself. Therefore, work out a schedule with the marketing department and the technical director. With marketing, figure out when the demo needs to be ready, and what needs to be in it. With your technical director, make sure that the plan is feasible.

A reminder: we're still talking about pre-production planning here. We're talking about the planning stage, many months before the game itself (or the demo) will be ready.

Marketing folks often don't plan and create on the same type of timetable that we do—their lead times are much shorter and they're not engineers, so they just don't see things the same way production teams do. It sometimes happens that, after agreeing on a demo spec and schedule, someone in marketing requests changes to the demo—invariably, changes that can't be implemented without affecting the schedule.

The best you can do in such a case is to patiently reiterate that the demo will contain what was previously specified and agreed, and that it will be delivered when previously specified and agreed. Any major changes to the specs and the timing of the demo might have serious repercussions for the release date of the game itself. Sometimes a producer has to be a teacher as well as a manager and communicator.

The demo will also have to meet requirements set by magazines and/or by the Webmaster of your publisher's Web site. Find out what those requirements are well in advance. Usually, the demo has to be limited to a certain size, because there will be other demos on the disc, or to keep download times to a minimum, or to fit within server limits. Find out in advance what these requirements are so you won't experience delays—and expect those requirements to change if too much time elapses.

Also keep in mind that demos have to go through quality assurance just like everything else. Work with your QA people to plan for the demo, and then see if you can get the same testers to work on the final game.

Material for Magazine Covers and Previews

You might also have to provide material for magazine previews and even cover art to your marketing team. Cover art has to be very detailed, and will have to allow space for the magazine's title and feature blurbs and insets. When marketing asks you for graphics for cover art, ask them to get a guideline sheet from the target magazines; all magazines have this ready at hand. Specifically, you need to know the image size requirements and the appropriate resolution in dots per inch, so that you won't lose any time redoing the artwork.

Not only do you want your image on the cover, you also want screen shots inside the magazine. You will want covers and pages in other magazines too—and no two magazines will use the same image.

You also need to be prepared to have editors visit your team, watch over their shoulders while they create the game, and interview your programmers and/or artists. You might even have to fly to the magazine's office and demo the game yourself. Demands for this type of thing typically happen at the most inconvenient time. Be ready. Plan for it.

Strategy Guides

If there's going to be a strategy guide for your game, it needs to be on the store shelves on the same day as the game itself—which means, again, the issue will come up exactly when the project can least afford it. Your lead designer and/or writer, and your art director will be needed for this effort. Find out in advance about the lead times for making strategy guides, and plan them into the schedule.

Trade Shows

When preparing your schedule, circle the dates of trade shows like E3 and the ECTS and figure out how advanced your game will be on those dates. It sometimes happens that the game will not yet be showable, or that the company will not need it to be displayed at a particular trade show. However, if the game is going to be showable at E3 time, you need to plan ahead for the team to do whatever work is necessary to prepare an E3 demo.

Voice and Acting Scripts

You need completed scripts before you can even schedule studio time. Recording sessions are expensive, so you must make a solid estimate of how many days you need to spend in the studio.

Thus, you can only plan for this once the game is far enough along that you can be sure you didn't miss any crucial scenes or lines. Consequently, timing the studio session into the schedule is a tricky balance. Do it too early, and you might need pickup sessions later. Do it too late, and your ship date might suffer.

Voice or Acting Talent

Add into the schedule when you want to have your studio session. Then, work it backward—before you can have a studio session, you need the talent lined up. Before this can happen, you need auditions. Figure out how long those will take, and plan them in. Before you can have auditions, you need to know who your characters are and what their lines are. You have to be able to describe the character to the talent agents so they can describe them to the actors.

Studio Sessions

The studio session itself probably won't be very long—a few days, usually. Plan into the schedule when you need to start looking for studios, when you need the studio time, and for your engineers to be there. Your engineers probably won't be doing the actual recording (unless you have your own internal studio facilities), but they need to be there to provide technical guidance on formats and documentation of the recordings made. Then, after the studio session is over, your engineers need to get and process the assets, and deliver them to the production team in the required formats for the main SKU and for any ports you'll be making. Work it all into the schedule.

Executive Greenlight Reviews

Pinpoint the dates in the schedule when the project will hit critical decision points. When the game is at first playable, alpha, and beta, the executives will need to look at it so they can determine if it's on track.

Sometimes, market changes will mandate modifications to the plan. This is what these reviews are for. If you don't plan for them in the schedule, the change requests are likely to come anyway, but at less convenient times. It's better to know in advance.

Console Manufacturer's Approval Cycle

If you're making a game for Xbox, PlayStation 2, GameCube, or Game Boy Advance, then you have a contact at Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo. That contact is someone with whom you need to develop a relationship. Discuss your plans and generally keep your contact in the communications loop. Get approval for the game's concept early on, in pre-production. In addition, make sure that your technical folks and your QA department have the console manufacturer's technical requirements.

When your game is looking pretty good and robust, ask your contact if he is interested in seeing it. You want the console manufacturer to be enthused about your game.

Don't wait until the last minute to submit your game to the console manufacturer for final approval. Pre-submit if possible. Familiarize yourself with the criteria for approval; check everything you can beforehand.

In final approval, the console manufacturer will nearly always find something for you to change or fix. Figure that you might have to submit three times, and plan accordingly. The manufacturer's representative can probably tell you how long each submission will take—maybe two or three weeks. It's possible that it'll take even longer—talk to your contact, ask about horror stories. You'll hear plenty! Keep your QA lead apprised of your communications in this regard.

The "Box & Docs" Process

Printed materials take longer to manufacture than discs do. It makes a lot of sense to create the box and the manual early in the production phase. However, the creative department usually is under the supervision of someone else, not the producer, and they probably have to get to this at the latest possible date. As for the manual, you might want it written at the last possible minute to incorporate any last-minute changes resulting from QA testing. This, like the studio sessions, is a tricky thing to time. Work with your marketing counterpart to plan this into the project as best you can.

Operations

Work with operations (the folks who get the product manufactured) to make sure that the timing is known. Manufacturing lead times can vary depending on time of year; in September-October, all the game publishers are trying to manufacture at the same time. To make sure that your product gets put on operations' schedule, you'll have to convince them that your schedule is firm.

Shipping lead times have to be taken into account too, if you need the product to hit the shelves by a particular date.

The Quality-Assurance Cycle

Don't short-shrift the QA cycle. If your QA manager says it'll take six weeks, then you must allocate six weeks. Don't forget that QA will also have to approve the box and docs (including the system requirements, for PC games), the demo, the international versions, and the ports. As much as possible, you want the same testers involved on each.

International Versions

Simultaneous shipment worldwide (also known as "sim-ship") is always the goal. It's attainable. Plan it into the pre-production phase. The moment you freeze the script, send it off to be translated—maybe even sooner. Record the localized voices at the same time you do the domestic voices. Prepare the localized title screen graphics or logo as soon as the domestic title screen logo is frozen.

Original Equipment Manufacturer Versions

On Shanghai Dynasty, we received late word that we needed to make an OEM version. The business development person who had made the deal told us it had to be 100MB, with no redbook music, and that it should not require a CD in the drive. He didn't tell us any of the other important details: that it needed to be delivered as a zip file, that the game would be pre-installed on the hard disk, that the zip file would be on a rescue disk, and that it had to be done in two weeks or the deal was off. We found out all of that when we contacted the OEM customer. You can't predict everything. The best you can do when a new situation arises is to gather all the information you can and adapt your plans accordingly. As long as you have developed good planning practices and aren't already running behind, you're in a decent position to deal with new situations.

Ports

Asset packs are important for the porting process. When your art staff is finished creating everything, have them make a graphic asset pack—organized and documented so that the port team can easily make any new versions needed. When your tech staff is finished making the game, have them make a complete backup, with all files and path structures, and detailed instructions about how to make a build. Document all compiler switches, and provide information about what compiler to use. Make it easy for someone to pick up the asset pack and make a build of the finished game. After making the asset pack, unpack it onto a fresh computer and test it.