Producing Games (ePub)

Computer games are big business - tens of billions of dollars are spent annually by the worldwide video games market. The cost of producing video games has ballooned to beyond $20 million dollars in many cases, and team sizes are quickly growing past 100 team members. At the center of this storm is the producer - one person who transforms the money, the hours spent by the team, and the latest technology into a work of art that millions of people will call fun. This book will dig deeply into the role of the producer and expose secrets of game production that stand the test of time: how to build a great team, how to plan a major game development project, and how to pull the development team toward the vision of a great game.--Author ("e;Mr. Mike"e;) is veteran game developer who has collected hard-won secrets in production, business development, studio management, and game technology. Book brings to light over 17 years of game development experience - so that producers can avoid common pitfalls and mistakes and succeed from the start.--Potential FOREWORD from key game personality - has contacts at THQ, Microsoft, EA, Sega, Valve. McShaffry's first book's Foreword was written by Warren Spector - Role Playing Game luminary (developed Toon). --Book will discuss the effectiveness of the latest development practices such as SCRUM (a lightweight management framework that has garnered increasing popularity in the software community due to its simplicity, and proven productivity over large teams) - so that producers can create winning production systems.--Coverage of MediaWiki and Microsoft Project as cutting edge scheduling and communication tools to employ while producing games - so that producers can achieve powerful results with common tools.--Best Practices and Gotchas exposed, including insider game studio finance tips not found elsewhere - so that producers can create solid working budgets and emulate successes of predecessors.