Talk:Video game development

Only computer game development?

This article doesn't deal with the development of other forms of game because there is nothing to say, really. I can imagine a development proccess in other forms of game would be "typically, a person gets an idea, makes a prototype, and then pitches it". I may of course be proven very wrong, but at this time no articles seem to exist to do this.

The reason that this does not redirect to 'computer, arcade, and video game development' is simple. That's a huge article name, and there's no way to properly break it up. Computer games and video games are fused by pure definition, however, 'computer game' usually refers to games played on the home computer while 'video game' refers to those played on a console. Arcade games are now more or less console games in a box that has a large TV, though there are of course exceptions. There appears to be no word commonly used to describe virtual or simulated games, so both video game X (e.g. development) and computer game X point to their combination - computer and video game X. From there, if anything specific to either remains, the user can navigate to console games arcade games and so on. Slike 01:38, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A few years ago, a popular industry conference for computer game developers was renamed from CDGC (Computer Game Development Conference) to GDC (Game Development Conference). While the previous example is by no means conclusive, it does point out that the industry itself agrees with this point, that "computer game" may be too limiting a term to describe the modern digital interactive entertainment industry. JamesRB 20:17, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

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Rewrite

In its original form this artilce—how should I say?—sucked. So I rewrote it. It borrows a lot from my other article, game programming, but it couldn't be helped. None of it was a straight cut-and-paste, all the content was edited to apply to this topic. Edit as you please. Comments? Criticisms? Questions? Please post them here. :-) — Frecklefoot | Talk 18:00, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

I also removed a lot of content from the "Indie" section and created a list out of it (since that's essentially what is what anyway). I put it in a new article, List of indie game developers. Perhaps it could be renamed to [[Indie game developer]] or [[Independant game developer]], but that's where it is now. :-) — Frecklefoot | Talk 19:29, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

I think the Durability and Stability articles could go as one. Xsoldier 16:31, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't see a "Durability" section. Do you mean "Duration"? That's unrelated to Stability. — Frecklefoot | Talk 16:44, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

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Peer review

This article was posted on Wikipedia: Peer review. Below are the comments from that page.

I recently completely rewrote this article, but haven't gotten any comments on it. I'd like some feedbacks on where it could be improved or expanded. It has some material similar, but not identical, to game programming (which I also wrote). — Frecklefoot | Talk 19:02, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

• It probably needs a category or two. I saw at least one typo in the thumbnail description. There are still board games being produced, and they all have game developers. — RJH 23:42, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I found & fixed the typo. :-) True, many board games, card games and other types of games are being developed. However, we don't have articles on the development of any of these. Once we do, we can specialize the titles of the articles. Currently game development is the only article we have and there is a note at the top that states it is about video & computer game development. Do you think I should move it to something like "Video game development" before we have the other articles? — Frecklefoot | Talk 21:06, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

• Many of the sections are 1 or 2 sentences. These should either be expanded or deleted. Also, some references would be good. Sayeth 16:23, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. I went back and expanded the stubby sections. Everything I stated in the article is backed up by Tom Sloper's web site, which I link to. Do you think I should move it from External Links to References? — Frecklefoot | Talk 21:06, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

— Frecklefoot | Talk 17:37, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

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Wording

"A typical modern video or computer game costs from USD $1 up to $15 million to develop."

I assume the sentence is intended to mean "one to fifteen million dollars to develop".

Yes, of course. Even for an "indie game," $1.00 is way too low if you factor in time spent and stuff like power.

I noticed your post on another game industry article. Some advice to a newcomer:

• New posts on Talk pages belong at the bottom, not the top.
• Sign your posts. Even though you don't have an account, you should always sign your posts. You can do this with 3 or 4 tildes (~~~ or ~~~~). The latter is preferred, as it also leaves a timestamp.
• If you find something wrong or unattractive, be bold and fix it. This is a wiki and that's what it's all about. :-)

Anyway, I hope you like it here and decide to stay. If so, please get a (free) account. — Frecklefoot | Talk July 5, 2005 21:14 (UTC)

Information boxes

Does any agree that the 'The Importance of Regression Testing' and 'What is an asset?' information boxes are unnecessary and confuse the flow of the article? Also, the 'What is an asset?' box is not rendering properly in Firefox (at least for me anyway). Remy B 15:15, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, I originally added the infoboxes (when I wrote the article), but this is the first objection I've heard to them. But I concede that they are very non-standard.

I used them because I couldn't figure out a way to explain the term "asset" without writing a whole article on it (it needs to be explained, but it doesn't deserve a whole article—it'd forever be a stub). I also thought it was important to point out the case where insufficient regression testing on a game caused a huge headache.

Sidebars (which is what I intended these to be) are used extensively in paper encyclopedias, but I know we're not paper. Sidebars aren't a Wikipedia standard, so I have very little backing for keeping them. However, I added them to help clarify a few terms, not ruin the flow.

Perhaps if Firefox rendered them properly you might see their utility. I tweaked the code for the "What's an asset?" box to make it match the "Regression testing" box. Did that help? Do you still object? — Frecklefoot | Talk 16:37, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

Amateur sites external links

I removed this subsection from the External links section. I'm sorry, but it's just a huge invitation for linkspam. The article says very little about amateur development, so we don't need links to several personal projects. If we ever have an article on amateur game development, I guess they can go back in. But until then, I think they should be left out:

• GamingWorld, an amateur GameDev website.
• Kobra's Realm, another amateur GameDev website.
• Game Storytelling, developing storytelling in video games.

Any objections? — Frecklefoot | Talk 20:12, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

GameDev.net is, in my opinion, much better than the above links. But I didn't do much more than a quick skim of them. They have been having some issues with their server lately, but hopefully they'll sort it out soon. If anyone else knows of links to development and programing communities that are presented as professionally and as informative as gamedev.net they should be added into articles here. --Talroth 20:56, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Userbox

I've created a userbox for those who are interested in game development. Add {{User:Scepia/game dev}} to your user page and you'll get this:

game
devThis user is interested in video game development.

- Sylph 09:51, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Are there any video game companies in australia

I'm intreseted in working at at computers, but maybe games would be as good?

so are there?

Pece Kocovski 01:19, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Check Gamasutra.com. They have worldwide game development job listings. And, yes, there are game developers located in Australia, quite a few, AAMOF. For example, the developers who created Freedom Force (Irrational Games) are located in Aus. HTH — Frecklefoot | Talk 15:00, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Making one's own games

I hate the "Making one's own games" section. I hate it. I've hated it since it was first added. It's poorly written, even though I tried copyediting it a few times. Since when is Wikipedia a "how to" site? Isn't there a how-to wiki somewhere (maybe even a sister site) where it can be moved to? It just seems totally out-of-scope for Wikipedia. — Frecklefoot | Talk 15:00, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Since no one has disagreed, I've gone ahead and removed it. It detracts from the quality of the rest of the article. — Frecklefoot | Talk 22:41, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Most of us old timers in the industry started out making our own games, I'm happy to see a nod to that in the 1980s text. Fnagaton 08:12, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Writing

How come the article doesn't acknowledge the writers? I'm pretty sure that the dialogue in MGS didn't magically coagulate out of a pool somewhere. And what's the job of a scenario writer? 154.20.135.89 06:31, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Go ahead and add that if you know what they do. A lot of that stuff comes from the game designers. Larger games may have pools of copyrighters and some games may have professional writers for storylines and, as you mention, dialog. But none of the games I've worked on have. — Frecklefoot | Talk 00:14, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

All major games have some sort of writing staff, since I guess the release of the N64/Playstation. Scenario writers are usually the ones given the credit. Problem is, I have no idea what exactly a scenario writer does (although it redirects to script writer when put in to Wikipedia). But it's I think odd that no one gives them recognition, as there are obviously stories in the blockbusters (Half-Life series, Final Fantasy series, etc. etc.). If anyone knows what they do, then they should add the information.

As I said, in my experience, the game designer(s) do all that. They write all the scenarios, the dialog, etc. (I've never heard of anyone called a "scenario designer", do you mean level designer?). This isn't so hard to imagine, given that most game designers have a writing background. For games with a great deal of dialog and scenarios, some professional writers may be hired (or used) to write additional dialog and storylines. But, as I said, in my experience, none were ever needed or used. So until someone can dig up some information on this (and I doubt anything beyond Original Research will be found), we can't add it to the article (please don't forget to sign your posts, ~~~ or ~~~~). — Frecklefoot | Talk 16:11, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Lol, no no, I don't mean a level designer, I mean a scenario writer. Like Kazushige Nojima for Final Fantasy VII or Jun Akiyama for Kingdom Hearts. You can check the entries in IMDB for a plethora of games for the scenario writer credits. There are sometimes many of them credited as scenario writers. Do they at all differ from script writers? Or are they just called Scenario Writers because so much of the game has no scripts for it, only cut scenes? 154.20.135.89 23:40, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I have no idea. Will have to wait for someone else to respond or find something on the Internet. — Frecklefoot | Talk 00:57, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Needs citations

The article needs citations. Yes, it has a references section, with two references in it, but there's no inline citations. Inline citations aren't necessarily required, but as it is know it's currently impossible to know what information in the article is covered by those two references and what still needs a citation. Unless, of course, the entire article is based on those two sources, but I doubt that. --Rodzilla (talk) 19:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I think just like you, for example in duration says "Most modern games take from one to three years to complete." but how did he now :S, really need citations --200.10.255.182 (talk) 00:18, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Woo-hoo!

Kudos to anonymous editor 207.172.69.74 who did a significant copyedit on the article. S/he cleaned up a great deal of awkward language and strange constructs. It reads much better now! Who was that masked man? — Frecklefoot | Talk 13:46, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Product manager

I removed the following paragraph from the article:

For some projects, a product manager may be employed, acting as a chief visionary. Their job is to ensure the producer and the team deliver the product that was originally envisioned during pre-production, and that the game targets the right audience, and has the right unique selling points.

I added the {{cn}} templates before removing it. The role described here sounds precisely like a game producer, though it says they oversee producers as well. Most likely this person is an executive producer, but producers are already mentioned. It was most likely added by someone unfamiliar with game development. In my 14 years in game development, all "product managers" as described by this paragraph were always called producers. I removed it pending references. — Frecklefσσt | Talk 11:52, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

When develpong games at Microsoft, they are called "Product Managers" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.37.159.196 (talk) 18:14, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

It depends on how many levels of management there is for a team. What I would call the "producer" for a project is basically the manager of the team who manages the other section leads (like lead programmer, lead artist etc.) and the person who buys the pizza before going home to leave the team working late into the night. ;) I also see no mention of the industry (certainly in the UK) famous APAC. Fnagaton 08:11, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Large-scale bias

This article seems a bit biased towards covering the large-scale, big-budget console and computer games. A lot of games are around that are freeware or shareware, are quite simple, and likely the work of one person. Commonly flash is used for such. The article really needs more about the whole spectrum. Individual one-man projects may not be 'commercially successful', but collectively they matter. The most played computer game may well be Windows Solitaire after all. 128.232.228.174 (talk) 17:43, 5 March 2009 (UTC)