Outline of the basic roles and practices in the games industry using 'The Business and Culture of Digital Games'

One invaluable source of information about the roles and practices with the games industry was the book: ‘The Business and culture of digital games: Gamework/ Gameplay’ (Kerr A, 2006, Sage Publications ltd). The book outlines several different areas within the games industry including key roles in a production team, production cycles and other general figures for designing games. Obviously due to the age of the book (printed in 2006), the figures are probably not quite accurate now as production values have spiralled massively.

To understand the practice of production in a games company, there are two different institutions which dominate that process:  Developers and Publishers.

Developers are the actual producers of the game and concept. However the Publisher moves hand in hand with Developers as they are the funding behind each operation. Because of this arrangement, 3 types of development companies have emerged:

First-party developer – Fully integrated into the publisher to develop games in house

Second-party developer – Contracted by publishers to create games or concepts

Third-party developer – Independently construct projects to sell to publishers

The basic production process has several stages. A general plan of how long production cycle for the average console game, and how the team might expand in members across each stage of development was described in the book as:

 5-15                Design                                                      3 Months

                         Prototype                                                  3 Months

15-25               Pre- Production                                      6 Months

25-40               Production                                               9 Months

                         Beta Stage                                                 3 Months

                                                                                                                                [Source; Torc interactive, Page 80]

A big issue before at pre-production is negotiation between the publishers and developer. This can take many months due to the developer wanting to receive a good share of royalties and intellectual properties.  Unfortunately the big problem is that for small developers is that Publishers will often push hard and present a poor deal:

‘’Look like you got an incredibly good deal the agent or publisher owns everything, owns the technology, owns IP, even though you have designed it yourself…effectively you have nothing, no assets in the organisation… you have just got the ability of the staff in your organisation. So you are a newbie and you are just glad to get a deal you tend to be asked to sign your life away and if … no-one else is competing for you then what are you gonna do? (Former employee of a publisher)’’

[Page 81]

While hard to explain via text, Aphra Kerr uses a clear and concise diagram to demonstrate some of the other processes taking place during each stage of Development:

Moving away from the traditional practices between the publisher and developer, Aphra Kerr uses information gathered to discuss the conventional roles within a development firm. Those Core roles are:

Producer

Associate Producer

Lead Level/Game Designer

Level Designer (4)

Lead Programmer

Engine Programmer (4)

Game Programmer (2)

Lead Artist

Concept Sub Artist (2)

Modelling Sub Artist (3)

Animation Sub Lead (2)

Texture Sub Lead (3)

Lead Audio

Engineer

Lead QA

QA

 (Torc Interactive, communications, 2004)

                                                                                                                [Page 88]

Game Designer – establish the look and feel of the game, designing core gameplay mechanics, levels, characters, environments and storylines.

Artists – 3D and 2D assets, lighting and cameras, and FMV sequence design

Programmers – animation, physics, AI, tool development, scripting and back end programming.

Producer- the producer’s job is mainly about managing the core elements of the project including scheduling and hiring. Often they will have to monitor other on-going situations which might influence or affect the project.

Quality Assurance – includes intense play testing and study of the intended ‘final product’ to make sure that it has little or no faults when released.

                                                                                                               

Of course, many larger companies use much more extensive and diverse teams – with more precise spins on those roles (Oblivion: World Artist), or create entirely new roles specifically for a game (Resident Evil 5 – Director).

Pulling back from the two key roles to look at the larger picture when it comes to production, The Business and Culture of Digital Games: Gamework / Gameplay, briefly outlines the basic statistics of game development across several platforms – including Console, Handheld and Pay Monthly games.

Console games - High cost, but with little or no service costs after production. On average take 18 months in production with average team size at about 12 – 40. Currently hardware oligopoly of Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft

Handheld games – Expensive, but little or no service costs. On average development takes 9 months with a team size of between 12 – 20. The market was monopolised by Nintendo however recently Sony and Apple have entered the market recently and created an oligopoly.

PC – They are less expensive to produce than Console and handheld games. The average development takes about 15 months with a team size of 12-15. The market isn’t concentrated like Handheld and console games.

Massively Multiplayer Online games – Very Expensive, with on-going costs. The massively multiplayer market has an Oligopoly of EA, Sony, Microsoft, NC soft and Vivendi.

Various different media have created Mini-games on platforms including on the internet, mobile phones and digital television. They each take a small team, cost and development time.

When it comes to the retail of any game, it is here where negotiations earlier in the project might alter a developer’s share of the profit, but in general the cost of any game is funnelled at a similar ratio into different organisations. Here is the general division of a games cost and those which benefit from it.

Console                                   Sony, Nintendo                                  10

Manufacturer                             Microsoft

Developer                                   EA, THQ                                          20

Distributer                                 Centresoft                                        5

Retailer                                        Wal-Mart                                      15

                                                                                                           

Consumer                                                                                         50 euros

It was interesting to see that the manufacturer of a console and retailer takes a sizeable chunk of the overall price – and perhaps explained why many ‘indie’ games are often PC and sold online. By doing this they can keep the cost for the consumer low but remain ‘better off’ with 25 euros now being able to fund the developer. But, as with the Tale of Tales indie developer, many chose to try and cut the publisher out of the picture – generating even more profit. In doing this they can raise the profit per game from around £5 to double that (or more). The Path, a Tale of Tales key game, is priced on their website as about $10. By having cut out the publisher, retailer and Manufacturer (PC games do not have to pay the ‘console’ manufacturer (which often explains why PC games cost a chunk less than console games).

However this is understandable considering how a console game costing 2 million dollars would have to sell around 250,000 copies to generate a profit for a Development company using that above structure.

Clearly the practices of the games industry vary in nature. Many Publishers will drive smaller developers into deals which force them to take far less than they should for the production of a video game. However in being unbiased towards Publishers, given the high cost of production and long-time needed they shoulder much of the risk should the game fail, being the ‘purse strings’ of the industry. Although, it is more than that in a way as Publishers roles include general time management and often the advertising behind the game – as was the case with Blue Castle and Capcom.  However, that said, one issue many have with working with the publishers is that should the game be hugely successful, developers are often forced into a situation whereby they have to keep making sequels and ‘spin offs’ (Bungie are an example of this). Other issues include the stifling of creative freedom, which has had consequences in the industry – including the forming of Lionhead Studios. Furthermore, many emerging games companies will stray from the commercial side of gaming to produce innovative games that are not forced sequels and mean that they get a fair share of the profits. Tale of Tales is a good example of this kind of Games Company.

‘‘As for the space marines, game development is schismatic. The developer ecosystem is varied and complex, but for our purposes we can discuss just two: those I call the AAAs and the Super-Indies. Two very different species, each catering to gamers and dealing with innovation differently.

‘AAA developers make games that often involve space marines. They have publishers and appear on Best Buy shelves. From them you rarely see a lot of innovation: if Guitar Hero was popular they make DJ Hero. If Wii was popular they make Move and Kinect. There is innovation in this space, but it’s often not the kind we usually define as “innovation,” or even the kind we like: control schemes, pricing models, social aspects. As far as traditional, less-Tolkien-fewer-space-marines innovation goes, in most cases AAAs take a single innovation and run with it, often to the point of absurdity. They may not want to, but AAA developers are beholden to corporate overmasters who are risk-averse and believe in doing what’s best for the bottom line. And the bottom line is that this model, while restrictive, is successful.

Super-Indies are something new. Spawned from traditional garage developers, they combine great talent, extraordinary networking, cunning marketing decisions, and the availability of digital distribution to make a living in a space where historically they couldn’t have. Their games are often smaller or simpler than commercial titles, but often much more innovative. A Super-Indie studio may be composed of a single savant doing all the work, or a team spread far flung around the globe. They may have never heard each other’s voices. Super-Indies don’t usually have publishers, define themselves fiercely by their freedom to create, and produce games like Minecraft, Sleep is Death, AI War, Solium Infernum, Love, Immortal Defense, Revenge of the Titans, Amnesia, and so on. We see a lot of uniqueness in story, in gameplay, in settings, and in mechanics here.’’

http://www.igda.org/culture-clash (M. Sakey, 2010, the future of cost)

Information sourced directly at points from The Business and Culture of Digital Games: Gamework/ Gameplay and also from their sources (each referenced in the post at relevant points).

Tale Of Tales and Activision - Website and 'The Path' analysis

Activision (Website)

Activation’s website first greets the user with a nationality selection screen. Immediately it is apparent how global the organisation is. After that screen disappears, two bars at the bottom and top of the screen appear and outline the content they contain. This is what the final screen looks like:

                   

The centre screen contains two different games artwork with a ‘featured game’ video trailer running automatically. This could be so that the website is working at both a visual and audio level to entice users to explore their products. Looking at placement of objects on the page, Activision succinctly advertises around 10 + products on their home page. Furthermore due to the varying nature of art styles and the video playing in the centre of the screen, it is almost crystal clear to users that this is a games company website.

The content contained in the home page includes details of over 10 different game brands and then the expected categories like Contact us or about us. When games are selected, it brings up a sub screen which includes a small amount of information and promotional material for that brand/game.

The Activision website, while expansive in covering every game developed/ published by the company, is somewhat ‘formal’. What is meant by formal is that no information about production or other details other than promotional materials and images for aesthetic purposes. This is likely due to Activision being the publisher to many studios, but not actually developing games as a whole often. Because of this, the developers will likely post much more information about each game on their own websites – leaving Activision to entice users into those websites.

Tale of Tales (Website)

One aspect of the website of Tale of Tales which struck me was that it was how it contained the same content as Activision’s site, but with far less ‘flashy’ and superficial features like flash script. This is likely to be an indicator of difference in funding for website design but in general I would say that it suffers slightly from this. Had I not known it was a games developer’s website, it would have felt as if it was book publishers due to no real indicators of intention from anything on the site other than the ‘covers’ of each game they have made. However due to the art-style being similar to those of book illustrations it is not clear they are games. Once those images are clicked, unlike Activision’s website which branched off into different subsections of the same site, Tale of tales has clear websites designated to each of their games.

One thing which is unique about how tale of tales presents themselves is how they lay out everything that has been done production wise. From the troubles to the successes, all of it is included in a ‘Post Mortem’.

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Tale of Tale’s games are very unique in several different ways.  They often do not give specific targets for their players. In ‘The Path’ the player can select a character and after the loading screen, they are placed in the forest. The words flicker up saying: ‘Go to your Grandmother’s House. Stay on the Path’. There are no indicators of where the character’s Grandmother lives, other than the path and there is no HUD (Heads up Display) to aid the player. An atmospheric selection of light music and sound effects are the only audio but this changes effortlessly depending on what the character does. In my first play-through, being used to playing conventional ‘rules and targets are absolute’ style games, I chose to stick to the path and keep walking. The game lasted around 15 minutes and I was given the rank of D. The game revealed in the final statistics that there were hidden rooms, secret items and a chance at confronting a Wolf. I had done none of this because I had stuck to the Path. Did this mean that the game was expecting the player to stray from the path? Or was it trying to break the conventional rewarding those who stick to the rules? It seems like it is a mix of all of this as the presence of a ranking system means that straying from the path has rewards but giving the ‘stick to the path’ line at the start of play immediately sets a conventional player on that path.

Nevertheless, continuing with gameplay, I chose another character (Ginger) and set off with the intent to explore and find these hidden items. The game play experience was almost immediately different. The music changes, with hints of the eerie singing drowned out by a number of other darker sounds. A heartbeat begins when the Ginger runs too much and several transparent shapes immerge on the screen. One of these included animal footprints. Having seen the ‘Wolf Met: No’ on my previous statistics, immediately my playing style became much more guarded. I chose to stray from the path not as much as I was planning to; keeping close enough to be able to return in-case the wolf appeared. In a way, the path had become a lifeline, like a shield or place of safety. As items were found confidence grew to the point where I had strayed so far I couldn’t find my way back. Wandering for around 5 minutes exasperated, a girl running through the forest appeared in the distance. In confronting the girl there was no dialogue, she led Ginger away until they were back at the path. At the time I considered her a clever method for the developer to keep the player from being frustrated if they are lost, something no ‘good game’ should allow a player to be. But instead of disappearing into the forest once more, she stayed with my character to a point. If Ginger approached her, they would hold hands and the player could lead the two around. Often the girl would stop and look at things along the path. At one point having stopped playing, the two girls played ‘Pat-a-cake’ on the spot. It is little touches like this that had made that character something beyond just a ‘help’ to the player. I did not finish this play-through but I already had many questions about the game. Does leading the girl in the forest to your grandmother’s house lead to a different conclusion? Is there more to her than you see (a metaphor for the Wolf)? If not where is the wolf? And what do the items mean?

Tale of Tales games are clearly ‘’computer games’, in that you play and explore a 3D space, but they are not if you relate it directly to a conventional ‘game’ such as Call of Duty or Blur. Tale of Tale’s games are all about visual and audio interpretation of stories. They have delved into classical tales of Salome, Sleeping Beauty and in the Path, Little Red Riding hood. The developer aims to raise different questions in each player’s minds about what they are playing. The player might see The Path as a simple ‘collect’ game and take no heed to the audio and visual atmosphere, or as an annoyance due to the lack of indicated direction, adversary or competition. This is likely to be the reason why Tale of Tales boasts the positive of innovation, but lacks Mainstream appeal. Games are considered to be polished, but deliberate pieces which present the player with a clear challenge (be it a ‘Boss’ character, general enemies, lack of funds or even other players) within an environment of rules and rewards. The player gets a feeling of achievement or storyline at the end. Call of Duty and all of Activision’s games fit in these boundaries. Tale of Tales games focus on giving the player freedom, both in play and interpretation of what they feel they have to do. In my case, I felt as if I needed to stay on the path, but on my second play-through I set my target to stray and collect.

Comparison between Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Dead Rising 2 Development processes

While both of these games can be considered ‘AAA titles’ they do have areas in which the production has differed.

Beginning at the ‘start point’ of pre-production and establishing what, when, and how the game is made, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion differed greatly from many games including Dead Rising 2. This is due to a combination of aspects. Firstly unlike Dead Rising 2 which was being produced for a current generation console, Oblivion was decided as a Next Generation game which would deviate from its predecessor, Morrowind. This had a knock-on effect of the publishers setting a deadline which coincided with the release of the next gen consoles – four years from then. Blue Castle on the other hand had a very conventional deadline process due to designing a game for consoles which not only are already out, but also are well known to both the publisher and themselves. Furthermore, while Blue Castle worked closely with Capcom on the conception of what Dead Rising 2 should be, Take 2 had a much more relaxed approach as the publisher of Elder Scrolls, simply leaving them to produce a ‘’fantastic product’’.

Another crucial difference between the two was in the general approach to production. Dead Rising 2 was working with the solid foundations of the first game, while adding different features to the gameplay and trying harder to achieve where the first fell short. Elder Scrolls, on the other hand, had to reimagine itself by introducing an entirely new artificial intelligence into the game, on top of any changes to the physics and gameplay engines. Additionally they were developing for consoles and PC’s not yet even made so there were issues with creating both the hardware for the developers to work on and creating a game which could be viably played on these hypothetical computers. One such issue which had arisen from this situation was when Bethesda’s demo machine fried a week before the demo showing at E3. If they could not fix the machine, then there would be nothing at the show which could physically play their game.

Nevertheless, the two games did share some methods in terms of the manner that their design teams carried out jobs – especially when it came to gathering source materials from real sights and cultures. Blue Castle games carried out extensive customisations to push what could be physically put together as a ‘combo weapon’. They visited Las Vegas and gathered experiences with the ethos and lifestyle of that area – before transferring it to their work. Likewise at Bethesda, sources would be gathered from various areas both first hand and through web resources. The different teams would experience what they want the player to, transferring it directly into their work. I would say that in that which was shown during the Resident Evil documentary, Capcom in that instance didn’t go out and do that extensive level of primary research. This just highlights how even the smallest changes can alter the approach to production (Resident Evil – Just Capcom, Dead Rising 2 – Capcom and Blue Castle). Although that said, Resident Evil outshone both Oblivion and Dead Rising 2 with a Hollywood production level Pre Visualisation stage.

At the post production level of development, Bethesda and Dead Rising 2 worked in two powerful but different ways. Bethesda had to produce a stunning demo and trailer that would raise the exposure of their game. At the point of production, viral advertising was not the media powerhouse it is today so this was a crucial advertising point which they had to get right. This was achieved as the game received critical success and several ‘Best at E3’ awards.

Dead Rising 2 took a different approach, using three ways to raise awareness. The first was at game expos with various merchandise and freebies based around their ‘Zombrex’ campaign.  The second method was the Tape it or Die mock blog, which was powerful viral method to gain a small cult following which would undoubtedly spread the word. The third way was through content released prior to the launch of the game in retail. Dead Rising 2: Case Zero was a small sequel released on Xbox live marketplace. For a small fee players would get a chance to experience a slice of the final release. This technique had not been used before, with mini games associated with games occasionally released (Fable 2’s Pub Games) but never a small but full section of game. Of course this was a sign of how the post production marketing stage has evolved in the few years since Elder Scrolls: Oblivion was released. An obvious example of this can be seen by examining the ‘versions’ of two games released globally. At the initial point of release, Oblivion was available on PC or Xbox 360 and the game could be bought as a limited edition or normal. Dead Rising 2 was available on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The game has 5 versions globally; Standard, Zombrex, Zombrex (European), Outbreak and High Roller. Each has a varying degree of merchandise added on at a cost.

As can be seen, games production incorporates many different roles and practices. But this doesn’t mean that the production process remains the same – even from two high production cost games like Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Dead Rising 2. There is the ever present publisher/ developer relationship which has sank many unknown productions, the tight deadlines and high production costs. All of this and more, have begun to be noticed by just scratching the surface of the games development process.  Nevertheless looking at the relatively under covered (and somewhat terrifying) topic of games production just yields more interest – at least from a personal perspective.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion development

The Bethesda team that had worked on Elder Scrolls Oblivion was comprised of around 60 staff working for around 4 years on the title. At the initial point of production, the team was designing a game for next generation consoles which didn’t even exist at that point. The documentary doesn’t outline specifics in terms of timeline like the Resident Evil or Star Wars documentaries did, however it covers several key design elements.

Artwork

For the art production at points small teams would go out and source texture from various places. Sourcing was seen as an important tool and the team would often use images from the internet and books to back up the shots and information picked up from their ‘expeditions’.  In addition to that, the team was left to make many different concepts that could then be picked or used by the production team. The art team also worked on some of the textures for towns and cities in Oblivion.

‘Forests’

It wasn’t positioned into any particular slot in the production team or timeline but again like with city and general design, attention was specifically allocated within production to forest and foliage design. With vast expansive forests making up a significant volume of the Elder Scrolls map, team members were assigned to acquire first hand sources of various trees, landscape shapes, rocks and general plant life.

Artificial Intelligence

The artificial intelligence was potent and meant that the non-playable characters (NPC) would continue on a routine whether or not the character was ‘there’. Furthermore creatures in dungeons could be programmed to follow paths that varied as they traversed the dungeons.

Dungeon Design

The dungeon design set up was much like a snap grid system. Sections of dungeons could be added at the end of earlier sections. The designer likened the process to working with a Lego set. On top of those elements Loot for the players to pick up, creatures and traps all had to be added.

Testing

For the quality assurance (QA) of just the demo shown at E3 it required many hours of play by the QA lead. In the lead up to this it was reported that around 100 ‘bugs’ had to be ironed out.

Animation

An area which the documentary does not cover too extensively, the animators would often go out and extensively test or experience what they were going to animate. In the case of the horse and horse riding mechanics, the lead animator would spend weeks studying horses up close and riding them to make sure that she had a firm understanding of the movements of the animal (and the rider) before manipulating her rigging.

Vocal Recording sessions

The vocal recording varied in location. Some was done at the offices, while for more celebrated voice talent (Patrick Stewart, Sean Bean, and Terrence Stamp) the location would change, with Terrence Stamp’s session taking place in London. For some of the characters, the design team would write detailed notes for the actors, as was the case with Patrick Stewart. For the choice of vocal actors, the producer was given a list by the publishers but for the most part Bethesda went with suggestions from the team.

In total the video game, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion has over

 9000 objects

1000 programmed NPCs

And 50 hours recorded dialogue (which fills half of the disk space).

Production of Dead Rising 2

The production of Dead Rising 2 began with the producers at Capcom writing the script for the game, before passing it over to the developer Blue Castle games. An iterative process then began between the two where they would each re – write elements and pass it back until they were both happy with the outcome. Like the Resident Evil 5 game, Capcom outlined their interest in creating a game which really symbolised the American culture and the whole Zombie ethos.

Beginning with general design, each team member would go off, work on a different element, and return to collaborate with the rest of the team. One element of character design which emphasise was heavily placed on was the design of the protagonist, Chuck Green. Given the positive feedback from fans about Dead Rising’s Frank West, Blue castle and Capcom decided that Chuck Green had to be fundamentally different from Frank whilst signifying American culture and being instantly recognisable. The design of Chuck went through several iterations until they were happy that players could instantly recognise the character at a glance.

Beyond character design, the next element was the Zombies, and fortunately Blue Castle could work with several remnants of Zombies from Dead Rising, while adding more animations and characters. The production team visited and studied the whole Las Vegas culture, and created Zombie ‘mug shots’ that typified the stereotypes of Vegas life (Gambling, Exotic dancers, etc). On top of the work with the Zombies, one of the most symbolic aspects of the Dead Rising franchise was the ‘Psychopaths ‘. In Dead Rising 2 this was one of the most important design elements, and for each character a particular focus was chosen. An example of this is the chef Antoine who represented Gluttony.

Much like the way that the production team visited Las Vegas to find inspiration for the Zombie design, several members of the design team were assigned to the construction of tools. With the combo weapon system being a series first, the team spent a lot of time designing possible weapons before physically producing the objects. They would source these objects from anywhere and everywhere to experiment. Of course adding to the weapon roster increased the workflow of the animation and design team, with the final weapon count being a staggering 300 weapons. 50 of these were Combo weapons and amongst these were those which were removed or not chosen.

A unique situation that had arisen from the collaborative work between Capcom was the sheer size of the operation on a global scale, with production taking place across 4 areas: Osaka (Capcom Headquarters), Vancouver (Blue Castle), London (Marketing Europe) and San Francisco (North American Marketing).  

The marketing of Dead Rising 2 was extensive, with 2 different styles used. The first was the Zombrex campaign, which included pens, syringes and posters all following the slogan ‘Prevention is better than the cure’. The other element that Capcom’s marketing team explored was viral marketing, starting with a suggestion by Blue Castle to create an on-going blog which explored the lives of a character in the universe of Dead Rising 2. Capcom loved this, creating Tape it or Die.com, a blog where four characters explore the combo system using suggestions from fans. These four characters also appear in the game as a hidden Easter egg.

The production of Dead Rising 2 was unique for Capcom as they had to build a relationship with an outside publisher. However due to the respect that Blue Castle had for the Dead Rising brand, Capcom trusted them immensely. Of course there was the need for translation, but in some cases a universal understanding was forged. One of the production team stated that: Makin games is a global language; while in Capcom the general consensus was that this method of making games was much better than ‘the old way’. This old way was ‘Created in Japan, Sold in the West’ and it created a gap which the producer at Capcom described as ‘Un natural’

Another interesting late addition to the production process was the inclusion of Co-operative gameplay. This caused a whole host of additional problems late in the post production process, but was an addition that was necessary due to fan demand.

Introduction to Contextual Studies

The seminar this morning introduced the Topic of the next 7 weeks contextual studies – and this is; Roles and Practices within the games industry. My initial understanding of this phrase is that it describes the possible job roles and how they are undertaken in various environments within a games company or production structure. This was proven to be roughly correct as the lecturer Mark Wickham showed  two documentaries which outlined the production processes of ‘Star Wars episode 3: Revenge of the Sith’ and ‘Resident Evil 5’.

Just looking at the Resident Evil 5 documentary, all areas of production were covered. Considering the size of the games company Capcom and their series Resident Evil, the pre-production stages were important. Beginning by combining their international and other branches in Los Angeles, several criteria were formed in those early meetings, including the overall theme of the game and style of presentation (a Hollywood style of unfolding story). Furthermore an onus was placed on experimenting with new technologies. Given these base thoughts on how the production should flow, the decision to base the production in California was made.

The next stage that was taken was the bringing in both Conceptual artworks (taken from a company outside of the Capcom design team) and Actors to base the vocal and physical look of the characters in game. In addition to this a freelance director was hired, who had made his name in advertisement commercial directing, before moving on to directing professional films. The next step that needed to be made was outlining the story and gameplay.

This process is often known in the industry as ‘Pre –Vis’ and refers to a pre visualisation of the end product. Capcom made two distinct ‘Pre-Vis’; a basic virtual gameplay simulation and a Video storyboard. The video storyboard used the ‘body’ actors of the characters to emulate the actions of the virtual Pre Vis, but with a bit more freedom, while the facial/ vocal actors acted out the script. Both methods were then combined, replacing the video characters with the actors and the additional script readings. This gave an approximate recreation of the director and production teams’ outlook of what they wanted the product to be.

However, since it was just an approximation, the next step was to implement Motion Capture so that the animation/ programming team would have characters which moved realistically. The director on the shoot remarked that working with motion capture gave a way that he could get the best out of the performance as he could focus on getting the movements of each actor perfect. The motion capture aspect of production was exhaustive, with stunt men hired to act out the action scenes, actors trained to use objects the way their character used it (for example the actor playing ‘Sheva Almaar’ had to be trained to use a handgun left handed), and the smallest movements were recreated to the best possible outcome.

Having finished the motion capture sequences, the director was then trained in using a ‘Virtual Camera’. This instrument allowed the director to control the camera movement in the game world – in a similar process to filming an action in real life. With this, the cinematic sequences were finalised except for two aspects – Facial Motion Capture and Soundtrack. The facial Motion Capture was achieved through the use of motion capture sticky points, which together in specific places on the face would pick up facial movement and usual sound capture methods. By having separate facial/ Vocal actors to body actors meant that the work was a little more difficult but never the less the syncing was not an issue as the facial and vocal actors were the same.

The method which was used for the recording of the soundtrack was through the use of a recording stage, used by 20^th Century Fox, a live orchestra, a composer and conductor (both of which were famed in the industry). Other vocal talents were enlisted to highlight an African theme, and they were recorded in an external location which had a more intimate recording studio – allowing the Composer and Conductor to perfectly recreate their vision.

From the Resident Evil documentary it was made clear just how important all of these various job roles are and how much work is needed to make a top quality game from pre-production to post production. The extract Mark showed from the Star Wars ‘Under a Minute documentary further amplified this. Some initial stats shown at the start were that in a minute of film in the climactic battle sequence of Star Wars episode 3, it took:

1185 frames

910 artists

And 70441 man hours

These stats are so huge that it can seem terrifying and this was not including the huge branching mind map of contributors to the scene that was shown a couple of moments after. The roles and practices within any industry are important let alone the games industry so this will be an important area of study.
The first task of my contextual analysis is to look at the production to two different games. I will probably use games such as Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Dead Rising 2 which offer a making of documentary as a basis or starting point.