GAME ASSET DEVELOPMENT PART 1

(Business Behind the Design of Game Assets)

When we talk about Games, it can be a Game which can be played on a Computer, Console, Video Player or Mobile by a user. These Games are further categorised into different genres based on their gameplay interactions rather than  visual and narrative differences. Some of the more common Genres of Games are:

1. Action Games
2. Action-adventure Games
3. Adventure Games
4. Role Playing Games (RPG)
5. First Person Shooter Games
6. Platform Games
7. Simulation Games
8. Racing Games
9. Real Time Strategy Games
10. Turn Base Strategy Games
11. Sports Games
12. Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs)
13. Stealth Games
14. Survival Horror Games
15. Board Games
16. Puzzles Games
17. Rhythm Games
18. Educational Games
19. Serious Games

The above list is by no means complete or comprehensive. Chris Crawford notes that, “the state of computer game design is changing quickly. We would therefore expect the taxonomy presented to become obsolete or inadequate in short time.”

In any genre of video game, Game Assets are the “things” that go into a game. Some examples of Game Assets are: 2D Sprites, 3D Models, Missions, Levels, Areas, Voice, Key Framing and Motion Capture, Sound Effects, Music and Special Effects and anything else presented to the User. In summary Game Asset are everything that contributes to the visual appearance of the game.

To understand the topic of Game Asset Development  we are going to take the example of a Dragon Character Design for a RPG (Role-Playing Game) Playable on Computers and Consoles. We have to understand at this point that Developing Assets for Computer/Console Games and Mobile Games are completely different altogether in regards to budget and marketing strategy.

Console Games      Mobile Games

Before starting to develop the design of a Dragon Character Game Asset for a RPG we have to understand the subject from its Cultural History, Mythology and Old Fables.

Typically the concept of Dragon originates from two different places. One is of European Origin, commonly called Draco, which have features of a Lizard, bat like wings, four legs, breath fire, guards treasures and are able to fly.

Second is of Asian origin which does not have wings and resembles more to  a snake and are able to fly. Asian origin dragons often symbolises Luck and strength. They also represents Yin\Yang, as  Yin represents the Dragon and Yang represents the Phoenix. Beside Reptiles they come in Turtle form and sometimes in Fish form.

The european dragons are shown as bad guy most of the time while the asian dragons are shown a good guys most of the time.

The Designers developing the Dragon Design also need to do research and development on present day Dragon Character Concepts for the Existing Products such as RPGs  and Movies. For example the designer should go through the Dragon Characters present in Games like:

Skyrim

Dragon Age

Final Fantasy

Drakensang

Divinity

Diablo

Fable

Dark Souls

Skyrim           Dragon Age

And Hollywood Movies like:

Lord Of The Rings Movies

Dragon Heart

Reign of Fire

Harry Potter

Alice in Wonderland

The designers also need to go and check Real World  References from Dinosaurs, Lizards and Birds.

Being a designer, a very small percentage is of drawing and a huge percentage is of understanding and the mental game you have to know to create the designs.

Game Development can be categorised into three different categories mainly based on budget available for a project.

1. Triple A Game Development: The triple A’s normally have around 50 million to 100 million for development costs only.
2. Regular Development: Regular Development have around 5 million to 50 million for development costs.
3. Indie Development: Indie Games have 100K-5 million for development costs. For Indie developments marketing cost is almost not-existent.

In this case we are considering only Console Games/PC Games and not Mobile Games as they are a completely different Category and Market altogether. We can talk about them in my next article in detail. Understanding the Biggest Game Development and Smallest Game Development projects will automatically make us understand the business of the Middle category, so we shall restrict our discussion to Triple A Game and Indie Game development only.

Let’s consider a particular triple A game which needs 100 million for development and another 100 million into marketing is dumped by the publishing company. That’s a 200 million budget for the game.

For these kind of games to break even, you need to sell through 5 million copies, i.e. not just push the copies to the warehouse but to sell these number of copies directly to the consumer’s hands. That means the publisher has to invest a lot of money in marketing to create a consumer base of that scale. For this kind of sales these big publishers need to hit a big range of demographics. In order to sale 5 million units you have to target massive amount of people, which means your age group and your sex has to be wide. So for example they have to target 15 yrs old to 55 yrs old with both male and female audience base. Now to cater to this entire bandwidth a designer has to make sure that their designs for the game cater to someone who is 15 yrs of age as well as one who is very mature at 55 yrs of age and all the people between these age group loves and are comfortable with the designs. That brings in a lot of factors into play, which generally makes most designers to shy from experimental designs as they try to play safe. Suppose the designer created something which alienates either of the younger or older age group then automatically the consumer base shrinks.

On top in case of Triple A Developers they have to go through a lot of Marketing Channels, namely Developers, Warehouses, Distribution Centres, Stores and last but not the least the Consumers. Everybody takes a cut of the income, which significantly reduces the margin of the Publishers.

For Indie Developments, marketing is almost non existent. They do a lot of viral type marketing. sometimes a publisher may pick them up, but in general their marketing cost is quite low.

In case of an Indie development  suppose of a 1 million dollar development cost and 100k dollar marketing cost.Now if they sell 50K units they break even already. Sometime for Indie companies their margins are much higher, as might not go through a lot of marketing channels to their consumer base. Now this means you can push less units to get it back and from design point of view that means the core audience group can shrink and therefore you can target more specific audiences. For example if in case we are targeting hard core gamer audiences aged between 25 and 45, they also has a lot spending power and they are willing to take chances with new games which are not mainstream and new in the market.

Why almost every other game that comes out in the market almost look the same at least in the Triple A Scenario. Designer always want and like to work on new stuff. But lets get to howcome the Triple A games are almost similar.

In general it happens that 90% of the design remains similar and 10% of the design is new. So if you are designing assets which are so similar then where does the money goes in a Triple A development? Let’s find out.

In a typical Game Production Pipeline we have:

Concept Artist

3D Modeling Artist

Texture Artist

Animation Artist

VFX Artist

Sound Artist.

All these guys who are working on a Triple A Game, are highly talented and so highly paid. These guys can create assets which are really good in quality. If the designers stick to similar designs the artists down the pipeline have the time and energy to create assets which are better in quality and give users/players more real world like experience within the game. Since the design of the Assets are already proven in the market, there is almost absolute surety of success of the game if the new version has better looking versions of the same characters, and better graphics.

Now let’s consider the case when 50% of the design remains similar and 50% of the design is new.  In this case starting from the Concept artist everybody in the development pipeline has to invest more time in creating the look and feel of the new characters as well as other assets for the game. If we take the case of the Dragon character, previously the concept artist would have taken 3 to 4 days, now he would need 2 to 3 weeks to finalize the design and pass on to the 3D Modeling Artist. Similarly the 3D Modeler also will need more time to create the 3D Model, as he has to start everything from scratch. So previously if the Dragon character was taking 1 month for development, it will take somewhere around 2 to 3 months for the newer version for development. We are talking about 1 asset here, when this kind of changes are expected from all the assets, we can imagine the amount of budget needed for the development of the entire game. Which in turn makes the whole thing very risky.

How to overcome problems like this? What if the client expects something new in the game, but still does not want to go overboard in terms of budget and time. One good way to tackle this problem is to create thumbnail sketches of the character before creating the full fledged Concept art along with a write-up describing the character. Typically the Concept artist will create a thumbnail of a Dragon character which is almost similar to the characters which are making good in the market. Then a second thumbnail, which is entirely a new concept and does not match to any prototype and a third thumbnail, which is pretty much similar to the existing Dragon characters but say it will have 8 legs instead of 4 legs or it will be double headed. Instead of having 2 horns this variant will suppose have 8 horns. Technically we can say this one as a Kitchen-Sink version of the Dragon Character, which can be presented to the client to increase the options to choose from for the final design of the character. Along with the thumbnails if the client is made aware of the effort and time needed for the development of each type of design, he will be in a better position to decide what he should go for. Does he wants to go for 90-10 formula and play safe or does he wants to go for the 50-50 formula and take the full risk or does he wants to play somewhere in between.

There is one more thing the designers should keep in mind while developing the concept arts. They should create the Character Design in Context. Suppose when the designer is developing the Dragon character it should look like a dragon, for example one cannot consider a design with rabbit like body with wings to be a dragon because the pop cultural reference for a Dragon completely refutes something rabbit like to closely resemble a dragon.

In these kind of situation years of experience of the designer comes in handy to develop a character which does not contradicts the present market standards to lower the risk, yet it is unique in its own sense and stands out among all the Dragon Characters created till date.

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Written by 

Dhruba Jyoti Bora