Game Development
Game Development
Game Development
Abstract. Start-ups and game development are trending topics. There are established methods for both, but these are not suitable as such for starting game
companies developing their first commercial game product. In this paper, a design for a series of accelerator programs, targeted for the first-time game developers, and an accompanying research approach are discussed. The goal of the
approach is to combine quality research with relevant, imminent results, which
help game start-ups to raise the success probability and lower the investors
risks. Initial ideas of the accelerator design are presented to activate discussion
with other researchers and practitioners planning or doing similar experiments.
Keywords: game business, lean start-up, start-up accelerator, game development
Introduction
During the last few years, entrepreneurship has become a mainstream trend and there
are now start-up accelerators not only in traditional start-up hubs like Silicon Valley
but in almost all major university cities around the world. Similarly, game development as a hobby and as a career choice is gaining interest among students with background from computer science to art and more humanistic disciplines.
As mentioned, there is a wide variety of accelerator programs like Y Combinator1
and Seedcamp2 to name some of the most well-known ones. However, only a few
accelerators targeted to starting game developers exist, although the needs of a starting game company differ from the needs of more traditional start-ups. For example,
monetization, marketing, and distribution as well as the product life-cycle all have
specific characteristics in the game industry. A game start-up usually targets to a
single, well-segmented, intangible game product whereas traditional start-ups nowadays concentrate on service concepts or wider product lines.
This paper describes our research approach and initial ideas on a game-specific accelerator program. In this paper, we raise a discussion on the following topics:
1
2
http://ycombinator.com/
http://www.seedcamp.com/
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Although computer and electronic games origin decades ago from basements of the
universities and the existing studies on various aspects of computer games is exhaustive (see e.g. Smed & Hakonen 2006), the research on computer game start-ups and
game business is, to the authors knowledge, rare.
In the following, we will first shortly present three perspectives on game development and use these to state the motivation for this research. Then we will present
different game production concepts from literature in order to understand the product
development process of games and how it differs from traditional software development. It is followed by a brief discussion on the domain of software start-ups and
challenges faced by the game developers.
2.1
Hakonen et al. (2008) identified three perspectives for making of computer games:
Humanistic, Construction and Business perspectives. The first perspective addresses
how games affect gaming communities, players, and society at the large. The second
focuses on the building of the game with a technical point-of-view. The last one concerns the economics of the computer games including e.g. productization and competition strategies.
We use this division as a baseline. However, as our approach is more pragmatic,
we narrow the scope of the perspectives and rename them as 1) Game design, 2)
Game building, and 3) Game business. These perspectives are not separated; instead,
they are highly intertwined as presented in Figure 1. The first, Game design, address
actual design issues such as control mechanism, gameplay, story, artistic style and
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Game
Design
Game
Business
Game
Building
Game production
Computer game production differs from more traditional software product development in that a game production process often includes several multi-disciplinary areas
such as game and story design, graphics design and implementation, sound engineering and level design (Mkil et al. 2009). A few scholars have discussed about the
generic game development models, e.g. Chandler (2006), Larsen (2002), and Manninen et al. (2006). In the following, we will review the models of Manninen et al.
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(2006) and Chandler (2006). Manninen et al. (2006) divides the creation of computer
games into six phases:
1. Concept phase in which the conceptual design of the game is drafted.
2. Pre-production phase consists of creation of a working prototype. The objective
of the phase is to plan, test and evaluate everything possible.
3. Production phase contains all tasks, from programming to graphics and sounds,
and integration needed in game creation.
4. Validation and testing phase includes functional testing as well as quality assurance of gameplay, user interfaces etc.
5. Launch phase consists of releasing the game and supporting activities.
6. Maintenance phase includes bug fixing and upgrades development.
In comparison, in Chandlers (2006) generic model has only four phases: Preproduction, Production, Testing, and Wrap-up. The two models are very similar. The
former, however, emphasis more post-release activities. Hakonen et al. (2008) compared these two models to a general software product development model by
Hohmann (2003) and noted only minor differences. They stressed the natural cooperation of several disciplines in game production which is rare or non-existent in a
software product development.
Electronic games, however, have one clear difference: the users are seldom able to
choose which desktop software they use, unlike game players who do not have to play
games that they do not like. Furthermore, in addition to the requirements of being
easy to use, the games are required to challenge the users (Weinschenk & Barker,
2000). That is, the game is required to be both entertaining and challenging; we call
this simply as a fun factor and address its design later in the paper.
2.3
During the last years, the software start-up practice has been revolutionized mainly by
two business development frameworks: Customer Development model by Steven
Blank (2005) and Lean Start-up methodology (LSU) by Eric Ries (2011). These tools
aim to create manageability and measurability into the start-ups; they are meant to
change the way products and companies are built and launched. We will quickly present these methods and refer interested readers to Blank (2005), Ries (2011), and
Cooper & Vlaskovits (2010) for further details.
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Customer
Discovery
Customer
Validation
Customer
Creation
Company
Building
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Ideas
Learn
Data
Build
Measure
Code
This paper describes initial thoughts on how a game startup can be helped to build
their first game product by taking steps to approximately right direction. We see that
there is an opportunity to successfully combine the systematic investigation methods
of academic research with hands-on learning-by-doing activities to construct relevant
guidelines for the first-time commercial game makers. The goal of this endeavor is to
1) give game startups better chance of success with their first game products, 2) make
work of investors who finance these start-ups easier and less risky and 3) simultaneously do high-quality academic research.
We propose a research approach where a suitable start-up accelerator design is developed through a series of real-life game startup accelerators, which are analyzed
using qualitative and quantitative case study methods. The scientific data and results
are used to iteratively improve the design and ultimately make it scalable and to be
used more broadly. Lean principles are utilized in this research by testing the design
as early as possible and by adjusting it based on participant feedback.
The planned steps to achieve the research goals are listed below:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
First draft of the accelerator design and adjustments based on the interviews
of the game companies;
First batch of the accelerator analyzed as a case study;
Adjustments to the design based on the first case study;
Second batch of the accelerator analyzed as a case study; and
Dissemination of the research results as a pragmatic handbook and a permanent accelerator program.
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Accelerator Design
The inspiration for the design of the game accelerator is the LSU methodology. It is
widely field-tested in business software start-ups, but less applied to game start-ups.
There are only a few early ideas and experiences outside the academic field (see e.g.
Vining, 2011; York, 2012).
4.1
The main LSU principles do not carry over to game projects as such, but need to be
reinterpreted for the game development domain. Thus we briefly discuss how these
principles are reflected into game development.
Context LSU is meant to be used when developing something new under the
conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is not the case in all game projects, as some
aim for the replacement game market, i.e. essentially copy an existing successful
game concept by modifying it without major innovations. Thus, we require that the
game concept involves something new that is untested in the targeted game market.
Another factor that increases uncertainty is the lack of experience in the team. This is
why we prefer first time commercial game developers, as we expect to generate the
highest benefits for this group. To emphasize: in order to maximize the achievable
benefits of LSU process we decided to exclude game clones and me-too versions of
the games, as well as experienced teams.
Minimum Viable Game (MVG) The development should as early as possible aim
for a minimum playable game that implements the core game mechanics leaving out
everything else. After this point the game should be kept playable at all times. However, a major challenge in using minimum viable games to test hypotheses about the
gameplay is that games are holistic products and it is not trivial to know what contributes to the players experience and what can be left out of the game. This is different
from minimum viable business software products, where validating a customer need
can be simply done by adding a feature to see how the customer values it.
Build-Measure-Learn The loop works similarly in game production than in plain
vanilla version of LSU. It should be noted that the scope of the LSU loop includes all
three areas Game Business, Game Building and Game Design whereas the traditional Play testing frequently done in game development only focuses on Game
Design, i.e. finding the fun factor.
Validated Learning Testing in LSU must be done scientifically, i.e. experiments
are designed for a specific purpose and metrics are chosen to measure the outcome of
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4.2
The key activities in developing a game and making it commercial are the approximately the following:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Build the fun, i.e. finding the customer value, is the cornerstone of a successful
game. This is, as any creative design work, difficult to do in a strictly forward process. The Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics (MDA) (LeBlanc, 2008) model captures
the nature of game design: mechanics are the rules of the game, dynamics is what
happens when the game is played and aesthetics is what the player experiences, the
fun. The aesthetics is the value that is sought after, but the designers can directly only
affect the mechanics. A common way to deal with this is to use game testing and
prototyping extensively in game design (Schell, 2008). However this differs from the
Build-Measure-Learn loop in LSU since the prototypes are typically tested by the
game developers themselves, not the intended customers. Furthermore, this design is
strongly guided by the vision that the developers have about the game; it is more
about realizing an anticipated customer need than learning what the customer needs.
Finding the customer and eventually the market early is one of the fundamental
principles of LSU. When developing games it is crucial to understand what audience
the game is targeting. This affects everything: what the game should be like, how the
game should be monetized, marketed, distributed, what is the size of the business
opportunity, etc. However, new game development teams tend to ignore this question
and simply develop the game for themselves, or even worse, to everybody. Early
analysis of the game audience will be highlighted in the accelerator and possibly
validated using LSU methods.
Monetization is more complicated than just setting the price and selling the game.
In many game platforms, and especially in mobile gaming, monetization is done increasingly using the free to play model with small monetary micro-purchases during
the game play. This model requires deep understanding on what the player tries to
achieve in the game and hooking the micro-purchases directly to this. This is an example of how tightly Game Business and Game Design are connected.
Growth of a business can have three different drivers (Ries, 2011), all of which are
applicable to game businesses: sticky-, viral- and paid engines of growth. In sticky
mode the growth comes from keeping the players as long as possible and generating
revenue either via micro-purchases or some subscription model. In viral mode growth
relies on players bringing in new players via some social media connections or multiplayer game mechanics. Third mode, paid growth, simply means more traditional
marketing driven sales. Depending on the case, only one or all of the growth engines
can be involved. Using viral and sticky engines typically entail decisions that are
suitable for validation by the LSU loop.
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As we have chosen the lean start-up method as the guideline for our first accelerator
trial, we will choose the participating game projects so that they maximally fit the
lean start-up sweet spot. The accelerator aims to teach the business aspects of the
game production to technically skilled participants. In practice this means that the
teams are inexperienced first time commercial game developers, however they have
sufficient skills in coding, game design, media production and other needed development skills. This is to ensure that the focus of the accelerator program remains on
developing the Game business aspects, not learning basic development skills. The
games are small enough that playable MVGs can be built in reasonable time, that the
game play testing can be organized with reasonable effort, and the development platform allows fast development and publishing.
In the first accelerator trial we aim at six teams since it is manageable, leaves room
for one or two teams dropping out and yields enough cases for the research. The duration will be approximately two months which should be enough for releasing several
sequential minimum viable games, and force the teams make decisions on critical
business issues in addition to developing the game.
The teams will be supported by weekly mentoring session by seasoned experts on
various topics in Game Design, Game Business, and Game Building. At the end of the
program the game projects will be presented to investors to get their opinion if the
projects are easier to evaluate or more mature compared to a normal first time commercial game project.
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Our intention is to start the research activities and the first round of the program
during the year 2013 in Turku, Finland. We will run and develop the accelerator design simultaneously with the research activities, which will provide us objective data
on the program results. We expect to publish a more detailed description of the accelerator design on the end of the year 2013.
As mentioned, most of the work will be done in the Turku region. The region is
fertile for this work since there are currently lots of enthusiastic game development
hobbyists, but only a few, small professional game companies. Turku is a fast growing game development site in Finland. The authors are heavily involved in the game
development training and the start-up development activities in the area. Finally, we
encourage other researchers and practitioners with same kind ideas to consider our
thoughts and, if the concept seems sensible, boldly adopt and adapt the accelerator
design in their own experiments.
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