14 July 2011

MGDA: Part 0, Foreword

(MGDA means "Making a Game: the Direct Approach" and it is a series of blog posts meant to educate people to learn how to make a video game professionally.)


I want to start off this series with a blog post that explains a couple things.

So far, I've gotten a basic layout figured out and roughly organized, so typing this out should come out rapidly.

Firstly, I needed a way to identify which blog posts are related to this series, so I made a short acronym for this series. Its MGDA and it stands for Making a Game, the Direct Approach. After the acronym will be an indication which part is in question, starting with this being part 0. This is all just to make it stand out better in the archives for future readers.

Incase you're new here, I'm making a series of blog posts, that explain how you can make a video game from start to finish, using crystal clear steps and all the needed details to make you understand what it takes to make a game and be succesful while doing so. This is aimed for both beginners and experienced game developers out there.

 
It is also aimed for both solo developers and teams of developers, since I will cover both of these cases, also explaining the social side of developing a game in a team or how to do it all alone.


Here are the parts planned for this series.

  • Part 1, Start Phase (aka Idea Phase)
  • Part 2, Design Phase
  • Part 3, Pre-production Phase
  • Part 4, Pipeline Phase
  • Part 5, Testing Phase
  • Part 6, Publishing Phase
  • Part 7, Support Phase


Do note, this series is aimed for making a game with a serious intent and commitment. Its does not focus on "prototyping" or "making a game on the run" style of game development. It focuses on a strong design and good organization, which is how the professionals do it in the video games industry.

This method ensures that the game you create will be of high quality (granted that you design and organize it properly), which is always a good thing. This does come at the cost of being only flexible for major changes only up until the pre-production phase, after which radically changing the design can screw things up. Due to this, the design phase may be a lenghty one depending on how much research, refinement and complexity your game requires.

Dont neglect making a good plan, proper design will pay off greatly as you actually start building the game. This is especially important and useful for large and serious game projects. Small projects can benefit from good planning as well, so I highly recommend it.

I'd also like to mention, that while my blog and this series does focus on video games, this type of plan-of-action is pretty much suitable for creating any type of project. This series does focus specifically on video games though, so don't worry about it, but keep it mind for any other projects you might start.

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