1. Introduction
Creating a good video game in Roblox is easy if you have the necessary tools and a good team, although you can work alone it will take a lot of work and it will be difficult to carry out your project. In this post, I will show you the production phases of a video game, so developers can organize and produce their projects easily.
2. Method
First of all, we establish an X-ray of the state of the video game industry with the most current trends at an international level. Next, we make an exhibition of the different phases that videogame production goes through and the teams of professionals that come into play in each one; In closing, the clear link between audiovisual and computer science is proposed and how only through the optimization of the available resources in each of these areas will it be possible to reach an ideal industrial and productive structure for a cultural industry such as video games.
3. The video game production process
As a working basis, we will consider as production the process in which tangibilities are obtained and, on the contrary, in pre-production, non-tangible or little elaborated aspects should appear and that has more to do with game planning, everything that is used in electronic entertainment. known a “Conceptual design”.
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3.1 Pre-production phase
In this phase, the game is defined, the general conception with its most relevant aspects and the terms in which its materialization will take place.
Aspects that make up the video game
Genre: Genre or genres to which the video game belongs and that will necessarily mark your design.
Story: story to be told through the video game. Storyline/storytelling (what to tell and
how will you tell)
Sketches: Preliminary designs of characters, spaces,
music, settings, etc.
Gameplay: It is the essence or nature of the video game, it includes
interactivity. You define how you are going to play, what
we can do during the game and how are they going to go
modifying the environments or settings and which
it’s going to be the player’s development curve.
(Exit & Zimmerman, 2003)
This phase concludes with a first version of the Game Design Document (Bethker, 2003) in the hands of the creative team and which will be fundamental for the design of the video game and the production itself.
Elements included in a GDD (Game Design Document)
- Gender: Classification according to its nature.
- Players: Game mode (individual or group). If it is multiplayer if they are human or machine enters.
- History: Summary of the history of the game, what it is about, and how it deals with it.
- Look and Feel: From the sketches the graphic appearance is defined and game art, colors, dominant themes, musicality, 3D or 2D design techniques, camera positions, etc.
- User Interface: It is defined as how the player will interact with the game and with what mechanisms they will have to do so.
- Objectives: What are the goals of the game, according to the story of this one.
- Rules: What things can we do and how are we going to let them do.
- Characteristics: We will specify the main characteristics of each character in the game and the elements involved in it.
- Level Design: We will describe what levels, depending on the story or difficulty, we have, how they will be, how many they will be, and what difficulty and challenges will arise in each of them.
- Technical requirements: We will establish the technical requirements of the equipment that our game will need to be able to run.
- Marketing: A bad marketing study can destroy the investment of a product of this type, it is essential to draw the advertising lines for our game.
- Budget: we determine the approximate budget that we will need to bring our game to a successful end.
3.2 Production phase
The original team that has carried out the initial planning of the game is joined by the rest of the squad associated with the production of the game. It is a difficult phase due to the confluence of diverse activities. A multitude of developers from very specific fields participate in it, with clear specialization depending on the sub-phases in which they are located. This complexity makes it necessary to distinguish several stages within the production itself.
3.2.1 Game design
It is time to specify the elements that will make up the game, giving a clear idea to all members of the developer group of what they are like. The GDD is finished designing in depth all the previously specified aspects and that in the pre-production phase had only been outlined.
3.2.2 Artistic design
The design section works with elements that have to do with the “appearance” of the game itself, contents that will have an evident expression in the “physical” of the video game:
- History: the Bible is created where all the stories of the characters are collected, the world where the game takes place, their past, and the secondary characters that appear, creating the complete storyline, with all the details.
- Sound: All the sound elements of our game are designed: voices, environment, effects, and music. The sound gear starts working.
- Interface: It describes how the GUI (Graphical User Interface) and HUD (Head-Up Display) elements will be seen, through which the user will interact with the game.
- Graphics: Depending on whether the game is 2D or 3D, graphic elements such as sprites, tiles, 3D models, cameras, lights, etc. will be designed. or any other graphic elements that can be used in the game.
With these four elements, history, sound, interface, and graphics, a framework document known as the Game Art Bible is generated and in which all aspects related to the artistic “form” of our game are summarized, those elements that will make it different from others on the market
3.2.3 Mechanical Design
In this phase, the guidelines for interaction with the game, the internal rules, and the type of communication that must occur if the destination of the game is the online environment are set. The details come to life at this point with the design of reactions and behaviors that will bring each of the characters to life.
The Artificial Intelligence (AI) design of the game and the engine associated with it must occur now and, obviously, before the game engine is materialized. The Physical Engine is also designed, in charge of generating various physical aspects of the elements and of the world where the game takes place (explosions, shots, falls, etc.).
3.2.4 Game Engine
It is the most important element, and arguably the fundamental part of this process. The art and scripts of the game will never work without a game engine. In this case, the engine is Roblox
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3.2.5 Technical Design
To enjoy video games as a form of leisure or cultural industry, we need the support for which they were created, we need the computer “application” that supports the story behind the video game. That app has a clear link with the computing environment (whatever its destination: mobile platforms, computers, online games …), especially at this stage where this relationship takes on remarkable evidence, here it is similar to the production of any other software, its design it is similar, it is where the game is treated as a true software product.
3.2.6 Implementation
The mission of the implementation stage is to coherently organize each one of the pieces developed and planned so far, generating a perfect gear that requires the intended game engine for everything to work.
It is not a creative process in itself but it has crucial importance: content is finalized, details are outlined, game errors are corrected, and using, of course, the intended game engine. You can discard ideas that are good but do not fit at the end of the game and correct unforeseen events. Once the great stages in which the technical aspects end up mixing,
the artistic and the mechanical, the product can be made known … it is the launch of our product in the market. The product will begin to form part of a competitive environment, full of multiple possibilities, it will be necessary to generate in the potential “consumer” the need to consume it and this is achieved, of course, with an adequate marketing strategy that most likely has already started. to forge in the initial phases of the project, when the target audience and the possibilities of implantation in the market are evaluated.
3.2.7 Alpha Testing
During the Alpha or Code Complete tests we already have a finished product. In the development of cultural products, it will be necessary to pass, necessarily, through the period of testing the result, it will be necessary to put into practice a series of tests that show that the production circle can be concluded and what was a project has already been completed. has become a product, it can now be released to the public. A small group, involved in the design and development of the game, tests the product looking for errors or nuances that need to be corrected. One of the Fundamental aspects that must be taken into account is playability, which will be valued according to various criteria already established by the companies in the sector.
3.2.8 Beta Testing
In the Beta or Content Complete tests, all content variations are concluded (mission scenery, graphics, texts in different languages, dubbing, etc.). It is also the moment in which it is verified that, at a legal level, the contents of the game adapt to the regulations of the countries where it will be published, there is no legal unification in these contents and this should be taken into account when considering the possibilities of distribution and if our interest is in particularly complicated areas in terms of the strict legislation that fundamentally marks content, we must assess the possibility of carrying out several versions of our product.
3.2.9 Gold Master
It is the definitive copy, with this name is how the game is known that will be published with all the art content (icon, thumbnails, etc.).
3.3 Post-production
The vital process of the video game does not end with its release to the public, it will be necessary to carry out the appropriate monitoring to assess whether it is being able to exploit all its possibilities and also respond to the behavior that users have had with our product and what it can make us modify our strategies in one way or another. The marketing campaign is already underway and if so far we have not been able to close all the desired agreements, this is the time to specify new expansion formulas, possibilities in different markets, new exploitation formulas.
4. Conclusions
- If we want to develop a great video game in Roblox, we must do everything in an orderly fashion, take into account all the possibilities that are presented to us, and have a good plan.
This probably only applies to large projects with a big budget. Not always all the phases are necessary, but this structure must be clear to produce a video game.
Thanks so much for reading!
Note: If you see any grammar or spelling errors, please send me a message to correct them (I’m Hispanic and I’m still learning English 
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