Hello

I am a student currently doing Digital and Interavtive Games and my current Assignment is a spread sheet I need to fill out, I am finding it hard to find the right information to help me fill out the Spread Sheet so I thought I'd come here and see if anyone who has already developed an Application or Game in general could help me with a bit of the information I am looking for.

The pictures I have provided are the basics of what I need to do, I am having trouble places the right jobs in the right order, how many weeks does it usually take on the one job, what happens once that Role (i.e Artist) is finished and the 12 weeks aren't over? I have been on this for 2 days and I don't know about the rest of you but I can't seem to wrap my head around it.

If you could help I'd be greatly appreciative, I am not asking to fill it out for me but a good bit of direction would be nice.

Depends on the projects.

Usually different groups are most active at different times. Designers and concept artists are busiest at the beginning. Designers tend to have their biggest crunch right about the time main development is going full speed; then their work load drops quickly and they go mostly idle and start on the next project. Similarly, QA doesn't have much to do at first and usually doesn't get fully staffed until the game is playable and approaching feature complete. Models need to be mostly fleshed out before animators can begin their rough blocking out. Audio usually doesn't have much to do until animations are complete since audio usually ties in directly with animation events. Localization and certification and legal verification also need to fit in the schedule with time to make changes but not break anything.

Usually it work best to have a series of products lined up, so when they ramp down on one project they can ramp up on the next. Designers can answer questions about their previous game (which is in active development) while working on their new current game with the concept artists, something the programmers won't hear a pitch for until sometime in the distant future.

Juggling schedules and the needs of different groups can be one of the trickier jobs of production and management.

Most game development companies work in some form of Agile environment nowadays. In Scrum for example projects are usually developed in two week "sprints".

In mobile game development in particular you may find that you have a much smaller team or studio than in regular development. For example the sound engineers job is usually outsourced to an external company. Also the Designer on a small team like this usually wears several hats and covers the roles of producer and designer and in some cases also as artist or sound engineer.
Like frob mentions above in games development QA don't have much of a role at the start of the project. This is actually a fail that happens in most games companies and not something you usually see outside of games. Outside of games in Agile teams the QAs are responsible for gathering and writing the requirments and testing happens at the same time as development.

Also, moving this to Production & Management, since building schedules fits exactly into that domain.

Mobile seems to be only tangential to the school project.

Thank you guys!

Sorry I didn't get back to you yesterday, kinda got caught up in Destiny.. haha.

I have read bits and pieces and will be studying tomorrow so I will come back here and try out your information and see how I go with trying this assignment.

I shall return here Sunday with how I went and any following questions, just thought I'd let you know I haven't abandoned thread. :P

I am not sure about the objective this assignment seeks to accomplish to be honest.

On the one hand, if this is an introduction the concept of scheduling a project (which is fairly 'waterfall'-oriented and not necessarily in vogue for mobile development), then I would assume that trying to explain it as simply as possible would've been the best approach.

To this end, using low-level jargon (that I hardly ever hear down in the actual business) seems intellectually out of reach when it's really trying to explain simple things:

There are several types of projects, and each can get a very different timeline depending on what goal is sough after, but here are two that I find to be used often:

- Producing a Vertical Slice

A pre-production phase begins. For a pre-defined number of weeks, the team sits together to try and determine risks, and how they'll go on about doing the work:

Requirement definition & design will occur at that time, along with visual research, if any.

Then, the intent will be to hit a 'vertical slice', which could be seen as a very limited segment of your application brought to completion (when everything else is just a skeleton).

To this end, the team will go about their individual tasks (programmers will do the code, artists/ui designers will do the ui and art, etc.)

Then actual production will kick in, assuming the project is greenlit to move forward.

QA and builds will kick in at this point, and to the very end.

It is perfectly fine to assume that during this period, some artists will be off-boarded from the team and join with a new team on a different project. Most artists won't have much work to do before the end and the bulk of the work will rest on the shoulders of the developers, QAs and Producer.

- Producing a Prototype / FP

The reasoning is fairly similar, but instead of going for a vertical slice, you shoot for iterating on a prototype (you try to do 'everything' at once, or at least a subset of everything which you can call your MVP: minimum viable product).

In this approach, pre-production and production blend it together a lot more, meaning that design will overlap a lot more with actual production (design will actually change as production proceeds).

Hopefully that helps.

Hello everyone, with some of the information I have been given from you guys and a bit more talking with my Tutor I have (to the best of my understanding) finished the assignment and is now submitted for Grading

I probably should of produced the scenario, I was a I.T Manager who firstly had to write a proposal to get into the App Dev market for my clients, I chose games because well, why not? Though I agree Orymus3 I didn't quite understand what it was meant to achieve but I am sure all will open up as it is only my first group of assignments.

I thank you all for your very nice thought out responses, it was definitely appreciative.

I will definitely visit here more often, whether for help or for entertainment/lulz.

I shall see you guys around here soon!
Goodbye.