No Graphics Needed: The Process

[RaychelSnr]

Let me preface this article with a huge disclaimer. I do not know the methodology EA Sports or any other video game company uses to turn out large-scale video games. This is all an educated guess and a hypothetical situation.

Now that we have that out of the way, let me take a look behind the curtain and imagine how the development process works.

Let's start, of course, right after the previous version of Sports Title X has come out. In this case, let's call it Snider Football 11, which is created by Snidersoft. We are now a couple weeks removed from the release of the game, and it's time to start working on the next version. Part of the team will work on the patch(es) for the previous release and come back to working on the next version at a later date -- but we planned all that out ahead of time so we can move on to the next version.

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[Eski33]

For an educated guess, sounds pretty realistic. I don't think the developers for the games we play today get enough credit for the hours that they put in.

The thing that always amazes me about developers of sports games, how do you re-invent the wheel every year? The primary rules don't change.

Take football for example. You have 11 on 11. Scoring doesn't change. The rules rarely change. Football is football. What amazes me is how developers can take the same game and do whatever they can to keep it fresh and new feeling outside of the updated rosters.

[HealyMonster]

Nice article Mike!

Im wondering, it would seem like a bigger development team = less "innovation" based on what your saying since it seems like a development team can get crowded quickly. Is that right? Like it seems like when determining what actually "goes into the next game", a lot of people are there with in put, and a smaller dev team would be able to centralize ideas and essentially "get to work sonner" and with a more direct objective.

[The GIGGAS]

Re: No Graphics Needed: The Process

Nice article Mike!

Im wondering, it would seem like a bigger development team = less "innovation" based on what your saying since it seems like a development team can get crowded quickly. Is that right? Like it seems like when determining what actually "goes into the next game", a lot of people are there with in put, and a smaller dev team would be able to centralize ideas and essentially "get to work sonner" and with a more direct objective.

If I were to make a guess, I'd say that the direct objective is determined before any programmer/artists are brought in. In my head, I see it like this:

people like Ian meet with higher ups who determine the big plan
Ian meets with workers, informs them of the plan
the workers suggest features
Ian and the higher ups decide what gets cut and what doesn't, based on the budgeting idea

So I don't know how big of an issue a large development team is on the planning side. I don't have any experience of that, seeing as the NCAA credits has more names than the building access internal page of my company (or at least, I assume so).

[hairguy258]

Re: No Graphics Needed: The Process

good day,,,,,,,

[Randiesel75]

Re: No Graphics Needed: The Process

Mike, I'm curious as to you decision to write on this topic? Do you entertain ideas to start a small development team or is the purely written for a topic you have great passion for?

[The GIGGAS]

Re: No Graphics Needed: The Process

Mike, I'm curious as to you decision to write on this topic? Do you entertain ideas to start a small development team or is the purely written for a topic you have great passion for?

I'm a software developer for a small company in Southwestern Virginia. Mostly I write about what I know. I want the gaming community at large to better understand what goes into making the games we play.

[Airmaxpenny1]

I would love to know the development process for NBA 2k10. I really want to know how all those bugs plagued the game after the first month of release.