Fullerton’s chapter on Stages and Methods of Development talks about the different stages of game production. There are different phases of production that involve different lines of work, and a great image of the phases can be seen on page 424, image 13.1. The phases described in this image are the Concept Phase, the Preproduction Phase, the Production Phase, the QA Phase, and Maintenance Phase. The Concept Phase is where ideas about the game are shared, maybe there’s come art concepts and mechanics. There is also a budget associated with the game so that the developers and publishers know about how much it would cost to produce the product. The Preproduction Phase is where the prototype of the game is created. This is usually only one level or one section of the game, and is served to see how feasible the game will be. If the game is not feasible, the project is often scrapped. The Production Phase is where the majority of the work takes place. Developers get to work on designing the game and make it playable and functional. The QA Phase is where the game is tested for bugs or glitches in the game, and allows the developers to clean up their code to make a well polished game. Once the game is ready, it launches and the Maintenance Phase is to fix any bugs or exploits that the QA team might have missed.

I think this layout for the different stages of development works really well for some games, but I don’t think that all games can fall under this diagram. A lot of games have had a big focus on providing content post release, whether that be DLC, free updates, new playable characters, map changes and more. I am interested to see what the production phases would look like for a game like Fortnite, a game that is still in early access and is still getting massive content updates. Another game that I would like to see the production phase visualized is World of Warcraft or any other MMO like Star Wars The Old Republic or Elder Scrolls Online. These games have big content updates to keep the player base coming back after years of service. Would the big content updates look like smaller versions of the stages of development? Or would there be more phases of development that would fall in the post-launch part of the diagram?

Sources:

Fullerton, Tracy. Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, 4th Edition. 2019.