Previously on the New Tales devblog...
So now that we’ve covered the prototype and pre-production, it’s time to talk Production!
Okay so now we know what we want to do, so let’s do it? Not necessarily that simple. We need to come up with a comprehensive roadmap that allows us to see how much time it should take to make our game, with the correct order of events. Perhaps not super exciting to most, but shoutout to my fellow excel lovers!
How much will the game cost?
Do we need to hire more people? Will we need to hire external contractors?
When do we need them to join?
When can we expect the game to ship?
What is the best marketing strategy?
Once we’ve tried to predict the answers to these questions, we can start *really* making a game. Let’s go!
This process is essential to make sure that we have a chance to make a second game (Fading Echo: Two??). It’s not as simple as calculating everyone’s salaries; we have to factor in the cost of: renting an office, electricity bills, licenses (Maya, Photoshop etc), croissant breakfasts, team building etc.
When building the studio, we knew our best chance of success was to focus on a few key elements and build a great team in-house, and then rely on contractors who can join us for select periods of time.
As an example, we couldn’t afford to build both an Environment Art team, as well as a Character Art team. As our game is SO focused on the different realities, we decided it made more sense to go for the first option. That meant we found some incredibly talented artists that could help us take the characters from concept to reality, without adding fulltime headcount.
This is just one example, but it also applies to Narrative, Audio (Sounds + Music), VFX and more!
Once we figured out what support we needed, we also decide when it best makes sense for them to join us. For example, it’s much easier to make the music of the realities once we have some visual references in-game, so we knew we wanted to bring in our composer a little bit later. On the other hand, we needed a writer very early on, to help ensure the game we were building made sense.
At the end of the day, we need to ensure we are staying a-float. I’m not shore I know what to say about this one? We just need to make ship happen. Okay, okay sorry.
In order to market the game, we need to know when is a good time to release it. This requires not only looking at how much time we think it will take to make the game, but also what the market looks like at the time. For example, when is GTA VI coming out? Let’s avoid that porthole window!
One does not simply … make great games without marketing. While we refine exactly what the game will be, this is where we figure out who are target demographic is *hint* It might be you .
We do many workshops to assess what aspects of the game we think are the most important and which kind of players best match so we can begin to create our social media pages and marketing strategy, to ensure we are able to share our game with the people who will enjoy it most.
Rumour has it that the Producer who wrote this blog originally wrote a 57 page book but it was deemed “too much information”, so don’t hesitate if you have more questions, drop them in the comments, as I’m sure she would be willing to join your “COLOUR CODING IS LYF3” club 🙂
– The Emeteria Team