Name: Industria (Parte II)
Uploaded: 2016-01-11T18:56:21.071Z
Duration: 8 min 39 s

The next business model is the developer or publisher.

This kind of enterprises combine a few activities.

Thanks to their great economic power they can publish games made by other

traditional developers, but they also develop games.

It's the case of huge enterprises such as Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Capcom, Konami,

Activision, etc.

In this model sometimes these enterprises acquire and purchase other developers,

which they add to their creative and business structure.

They are enterprises very powerful economically, they get the

financing for the development of their own video games or others' from their own resources.

The exploitation model is based on the sale of own and third-party video games,

either in physical or digital format.

They have also adopted the new exploitation models derived and

permitted by the digital download.

It's the case of DLCS or downloadable contents,

and micropayments and early access.

Also lately these days there is the trend of launching special editions,

reeditions of old titles, remasterings,

various titles compilations and derived merchandising,

with the objective of getting the maximum profit they can.

Although these enterprises are focused on consoles and computers,

they have also gotten into the mobile phones sector.

There, they also use the company's typical exploitation models

such as free to play or Freemium.

The independent developer is another business model, which although it has existed

for a long time, lately it has been extended as a phenomenon

with increasing relevance in the industry. It consists on enterprises or development

studios that make video games without a Publisher's influence.

They are small or very small,

and in some cases they even externalize a part of the development.

They usually work in small projects and

have little experience as an enterprise.

As they don't have a Publisher they look for alternative ways of financing such

as subventions, credits and own funds.

A very common option is the creation of collective financing campaigns

also known as crowdfunding.

The financing can also be completed using the video game's

early access.

Finally, they can look for external capital inversions from other private

entities non-connected to video games such as business angers,

although this can take them off some independence.

About their exploitation model, they are based on digital download

trying to reach as much platforms as they can to get to more users.

It is very common using techniques and models such as free to play or freemium.

Most of them publish for mobile devices,

as it is cheap and affordable.

Another option are digital distributors such as Steam,

which have options to self-publishing video games.

Apart of the business models we've seen until now,

there are other activities inside the video games industry which

also are an important business

although they aren't directly related to the video games creation.

On one side we have the physical stores which sell games in

physical formats,

and some of them allow the online purchase of the same type of product.

We also find the digital distributors,

which are web environments in which people can buy games in digital format,

such as the previously commented Steam.

Peripherals industry also has its importance,

from headsets to keyboards and mouses especially made for playing.

All of them especially designed so that they can be used in video games.

Another little industry derived from it is the merchandising products,

especially on the most popular games.

Finally, other business models with increasing economical impact are the ones from

online communities in which users provide contents on the video games.

An example of them is YouTube, with a great amount of users that comment

and make video games' guides,

or the platform Twitch dedicated to allowing games' broadcasting.

After analyzing the different business models,

let's go and briefly analyze the costs of making a video game.

Making this kind of product is very expensive, and this is basically

because there is a lot of people's participation during a lot of time.

Here we have some examples which don't include the posterior inversion on

marketing and publicity.

Both GTA and Halo are super productions

and their budget is similar to the cinematographic productions'.

The other two examples are of casual games,

which although their cost is a lot less, also need great amounts of money.

Most of a video game's development cost is used on paying the

salaries of the human staff that is working on the development.

The amount of staff can variate as projects can be very simple

or very complex.

A small team would be around 8-10 people, and the bigger

studios and projects teams can be formed by more than 300 people.

Also, the development time is also a key factor which makes the process more expensive.

Even if the game is simple, the minimum development time would be between 6 months and 1 year.

But for more complex games it can be up to 2 or 3 years.

Apart from these costs, we must take into account there is an infrastructure which needs to be paid:

offices, computers, licenses,

permissions, translations and dubbings to many languages,

age classifications depending on the regions variety, etc.

Next we will talk on a key department in a

development studio and on the used methodology.

To begin, the studio's size can make the organization variate making it

wider and hierarchic or compressed.

Basic departments are the following ones:

Direction and management where internal organization tasks are made.

Programming, where the whole code, the tools or the game engine

are generated.

Design, in which the game concept is created and the engine implemented.

Art, in which the scenarios, characters, animations and interphases are created.

Sound, in which they create,

edit and implement music and sound elements.

Development process has 3 differentiated phases,

in the preproduction phase the conceptualization and design of the video game is generated,

usually accompanied by

some prototype indicative of the product's creative direction.

There also begins the confection of the different

work teams that will take part on the next step.

This new stage is the production phase, where setting of the initial design

all the video games' elements, such as art, programming, sound, etc.

are developed and progressively put together implementing design.

In the post production phase the product can be modified or adjusted.

In many projects this phase can include the realization

of new contents or expansions and the maintenance and management of the player's

activity,

as in the case of many games focused in online experience.

Concerning the development methodology, frequently

an agile software development methodology is used.

Contents to generate aren't created lineally,

but in small work units.

These small work and content units are done in short and closed

periods, and next they are evaluated and posteriorly corrected,

discarded or approved so that we can go on.

The objective is being efficient and agile,

and quickly detecting elements or parts that aren't working properly.

We will finish this unit commenting on some relevant aspects of the development

process and its methodology.

While managing so much people during so much time and dealing with so much information,

it is very important to make an appropriate and detailed planning

of what we are going to do, and how are we going to do it.

This forces adapting to the accorded calendar to avoid that modifications

or errors make delay accumulations inside the development process.

This way,

having a documentation which includes this planning is essential.

Also, this documents must be functional, presenting the information in a

clear and concise way so that it is easily comprehensible.

Video games are something that has to be done in a team, it is necessary to work in a team

and to integrate everybody's abilities and sensibilities.

Developing video games imply a lot of work and determination,

as there is a lot of pressure to go on with the planned calendars

and getting the desired finishing levels.

Occasionally, especially in the phase in which the game must be finished,

there are periods of maximum pressure

in which there are needed more hours and resources than the usual, which are called crunch times.

Industria (Parte II)

Diseño de videojuegos

Meet the Instructors