resources
agile manifesto – seems to be a core document – to be doing agile you need to buy into these core rpinciples, might implement differently or use any of the varieties of agile, but they should all use these core principles – http://agilemanifesto.org
mike cohn’s site – http://mountaingoatsoftware.com
lisa crispin – wrote book on agile testing - [...]
Archive > January 2010
notes from agile worlds conference in SL
Careers, QA, Testing
creative side has to play a lot of games to be able to do competitive analysis and feature comparisons, if you want to go into that you need to have a protfolio that shows off your creative ability, need to stay current on industry news – read gamasutra and game developer magainze regularly
producer side – [...]
pitching to publisher
most don’t accept unsolicited pitches because of potential lawsuits over content – so set up a meeting
ask the publisher to sign a NDA (most won’t sign because they might already have a game in development with certain features of your game)
pubisher may ask you to sign an NDA in case they mention their own future [...]
developer & publisher relationships
ch5 in textbook
publishers are very selective because games take much time and money to develop
they might hear hundreds of pitches and there’s usually a pitch process that you have to go thru
publishers can also send out their own RFPs requesting specific information – maybe they wnat gameplay elements or a schedule and budget draft, rarely [...]
agile development in the game industry
scrum is a type of agile development
agile = develop product using short iterations so you can fix problems while they’re small
everybody involved (on the team) knows what’s done, what needs to be done still
ned early and often communication
a lot of team mentoring and support
have a working game at the end of each iteration – and [...]
Team Stuff
lots of team members will be young, not have a lot of experience as employees or as team members or as professionals
producer
as the team manager has to do on the job training on some basic work skills
have to keep lines of communication open so you can hear about and address problems
have to get a lot [...]
pitching your game
gonna make a lot of different types of pitches – to venture capitalists, to the IP holders, to assistant producers who act as screeners, to marketing guys who need just a low level pitch with a little detail, inside your own company to get a greenlight for your idea…
need an “elevator pitch that’s a minute [...]
music & sfx
gotta decide on a mood you want to create
music not needed till later in game production but leave time for feedback and correction
time for people to get cut scenes made if you want them to have music, music for trailers or marketing demos
musicians charge by the minute of music – can cost up to $1k [...]
voice over and music – also starts with preproduction planning
gotta start planning for these in preproduction
voice over shoots can get really expensive
need to make a lot of decisions about how much voice over, what qulaity you need, file naming standards, how you will localize
can have a spreadsheet of lines to be recorded – gotta give the voice over artist context so they know hwat [...]
localization – starts in preproduction
has to be part of preproduction planning if company wants to do simultaneous ship with multiple language versions
make sure no text is hard coded – that includes dates and currency symbols
voice overs will need to be done in multiple languages or subtitles
store text files with text someplace obvious
make sure text is on a separate layer [...]
