Pre Production for a Computer Game.

My game is Refugee Ralph, it will be a 2D Platforming game in which you have to control the character name Ralph through obstacles and avoid enemies. The objective of the game is too guide Ralph who is a Refugee from Syria all the way to Germany/France to seek refuge there. Along the way you collect family members to join you to seek refuge. The level system is that each new level is a new country leading to Germany/France until you finally reach there. Collecting the family member ends the level. The main enemy in the game is Border Patrol who will stop and arrest you if they catch you and then end boss will be German/French Borders.

Finance:
You could use many different techniques to finance your production; you could use: Self financing, meaning you completely finance yourself, the advantage of this is that you won't have any debts at the end of it as you didn't borrow any money and the disadvantage is that having lack of funds could mean you don't complete your project to the standard you originally wanted it.

Another finance technique is Crowd Funding with sites like Kick-Starter, the advantage of this is that people won't have to feel pressured to donate large sums of money and instead you can rely on lots of small donations as long as you do a good pitch and the public deem your product worthy chances are people with fund you and the disadvantage is that sites like Kick-Starter take a 5% cut of your overall total, meaning you won't make all your money you need.

Time Constraints:
Time Constraints are a thing you will have to factor in during your project. These are the most common constraints:

Time: For instance if you only have 24 hours to create a game; this will force the team to come up with a plan and stick to it throughout the event to manage their time better.

Team: You will have to get to know your team if you haven't already, you will also have to make use of their strengths and try and train their weaknesses to get the full potential from your team.

Personal: If you have any personal problems such as family issues you will have to factor them within your work time. For instance if you are in a critical time of development and a personal issue becomes apparent then it could have a massive effect on development.

Personnel:
Animator: Being responsible for the portrayal of movement and behaviour within a game, making best use of the game engines' capabilities within the platforms' limitations. I will be manning this role with my game The skills I would need to have is experience in creating games and having a fair amount of experience with the game engine.

Audio Engineer: Creating the soundtrack for a game, including music, sound effects, character voices, spoken instructions and ambient effects. I will be using this role too, to create atmosphere in games one of the main thing needed will be sound to give off a certain emotion.

Level Editor: Defining and creating interactive architecture for a segment of a game, including the landscape, buildings and objects. I will also be using this because I will need to design the levels or countries in my case to portray a certain culture that a country has.

Equipment & Facilities:

The equipment I would need is a computer that is powerful enough to run Game-Maker, I would also need some peripherals such as keyboard and mouse to control the design of the game, a Games Design Program such as Game-Maker or Maya and finally some storage for the game whether it be a hard drive or high storage memory stick. The availability of these of these things will not be a problem as I already have all of these things. The costs, depending on the quality of your keyboard and mouse and also your hard drive or memory stick could be up to £100+.

Concept art is one the materials I would use, having a basic idea of what I want to create in-game later.

Here is some Concept Art for a MMORPG I play called Runescape3. This is for a NPC enemy called Varago.

The materials needed for a game would include concept art to demonstrate new ideas, a storyboard/animation to present the story to the team or things such as the assets, sprites, backgrounds, music. Audio, examples of the games music and SFX and Graphics, what the game looks like. Also some 3D modelling would be needed to be designed as a basic idea almost like concept art to demonstrate how to NPC would move around and if it fast or slow etc.

Contributors:

To help make your game seem more authentic most people will hire professional voice actors or have experts on a certain topic to help recreate things from a certain time peroid such as using guns from the era the game is set.

Codes of Practice:
The codes of practice in the gaming industry are enforced by the Video Standards Council. They are in charge of PEGI Ratings which are a way of rating games so that they are played by the right age group. They are also in charge of how games are supplied and sold.