Planning for Media

Introduction to Planning for Media

For this module we are tasked to create important documents for the creation of a game project.

The game is to be made by our own design and created according to a brief from a publishing company.

We were presented with 3 different hypothetical companies, each with their own requirements and budgets.

This first lecture denoted the importance of planning a project and the first steps to take when doing so.

Project Idea

For my assessment project I chose to pick the Publishing Company "Flight Fund".

Flight Fund Brief:

"Open to all-genres. Looking for diverse main characters from a range of backgrounds, great stories, and family-friendly experiences. As a cultural fund, the Flight Fund won’t offer help with marketing or any additional staffing."

Based on the brief provided given that the budged amount is rather limited I thought on types of game that would be relatively cheap to produce.

I had a few ideas but chose to do a Visual Novel type of game.

In terms of mechanics it is relatively simple however in terms of content it had to be well thought off and appealing to players.

There are many Visual Novel types of games out there, some with great stories just waiting to be explored.

Base Idea for A1

The game – MISC GAME INFO

Single Player, Visual Novel/Point and Click, Narrative, Investigation Elements (puzzle mini games, journal)

Narrative Murder Mystery (Fantasy?)

Compelling Narrative
Investigate the demise of your loved one
Search for clues
Puzzle mini games
Journal System

Visual Novel/Point and Click

Protagonist mother dies and it is ruled as a suicide, they investigate and start discovering their late mother’s “secrets”, unravelling a whole side to her that they were not aware of, ultimately leading to the cause of her demise.

It is a story about discovery, dealing with grief and LGBTQ+ themes.

TEAM

Lead Game Designer

Narrative Designer (pre-production)

Lead Programmer

Lead Artist

Additional Artist

Lead Sound Designer (Part-Time)

QA 1 (Part-Time)

QA 2 (Part- Time)

Research

To research on the process of how to make a Visual Novel I went through many forums looking for answers to some specific questions.

I needed to understand how much the word count of a visual novel translated into hours of play time, what influences this and so on.

From the word count I could do a rough estimation of how long it could take to write so I could further estimate at which development stage I should initiate other tasks.

In this research I went through many online forums on websites that focus on discussing visual novels and cross referenced the information relayed on each of them.

One of the online forums I searched for information was the Winter Wolves forums, they produce many Visual Novel type of games with LGBTQ+ themes mixed in the various genres they work on.

The most direct approach when looking into the development process was joining their Discord channel and ask directly questions regarding development, time frames among others.

After having a rough idea of the process is when starting looking better into the team and respective salaries of each team member keeping in mind in reality how feasible it would be and what each person's role would be in the long term of the project.

I had set out that I would aim at a 12 month production time. For which I could calculate how many people of each role I could keep working full time on the game project.

To help me estimate labor costs I used the website Glassdoor, which is a website where people can self report their salaries, roles and companies they work for at such rates.

It was a decent tool to have keep in mind the lows, highs and average salaries of each role I needed in my team for the game project.

Resources:

On visual novel making

Winter Wolves Forums: https://www.winterwolves.net/

Fuwanovel: https://fuwanovel.net/2015/01/a-guide-to-making-visual-novels/

Two and a Half Studios: https://www.twoandahalfstudios.com/2020/02/the-beginners-guide-to-visual-novel-development

How to Design a Visual Short Story: https://madwomb.com/tutorials/GameDesign_UnityVisualNovel.html

Salaries reference

Glassdoor: https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/index.htm

Further working the idea

The original idea had many changes, I questioned the viability of the story, given that it is a Visual Novel I need to make it interesting for the player.

I looked at the current offer of Visual Novels (VNs) on steam to try and pinpoint common themes and what makes VNs stand out from one another.

The most common theme is romance, visual novels aren't played only for its story element but the possibility of following romance subplots with characters, some having this element as its central point. Many don't stray from regular locations and I wanted to run from that rule.

I changed the concept to include romance subplots turn it into an adventure to make it a more interesting to explore.

To make the player want to explore and discover more of the world I opted to set it into a futuristic world, where things don't function directly the same as the modern world and the more the player examines the clues during the puzzles they can piece together how this unknown world functions.

Mainly finalizing the concept of the Visual Novel was probably the first best step into working how to plan the development process.

With this new mostly final concept I was now looking into assets for a visual novel, roughly estimating quantity of areas based on story, planned subplots, characters and so on.

I still wanted to have budget in consideration when working the features, I tried to plan it in a manner that would still leave funds to allow for unforeseen circumstances including have to undergo extra 1-2 months of production and/allowing under-estimations in the budget.

A1 - Project Plan

I set up a project plan in a word document to include the general outlook of the game and other details of the game.
This includes the structure of the team, hardware/software requirements and a rough asset list of the elements of the game and a breakdown of the budget based on initial research.

A2 - Game Pitch

For the presentation pitch I reworked the plan for the project to include a rough development timeline based on what I have looked into earlier. I also adjusted the budget breakdown by looking further into what each hardware/software costs for the adjusted development cost and time frame for when it is necessary. I accounted for office costs as I thought it would be beneficial.

Updated Project Plan

Upon consultation I reworked the scope of the game and made some changes to make it more doable within the time frame.

Reduced the intended duration of the game from 7-10 hours to 5-6 hours.
Added 2 extra months for post production as suggested in the presentation and separated production stages
Changed the release price from £20 to £15
Adjusted team structure, removed Quality Assurance (QA) part time positions for a QA contractor.
Accounted for more Hardware/Software requirements
Reworked the budget breakdown and included sources (Financial Research)

Financial Research

STAFF

Lead Game Designer/ Programmer – Angela M Ceroula (£40,000/year - 14 months – £46,666) [1]

Narrative Designer/ Writer – Jann Herrera (£35,000/year - 8 months – £23,333) [2]

Concept Designer/ Lead Artist – Jennifer Mizutani (£32,000/year - 11 months – £29,333) [3]

Additional Artist – Neil Villefort (£30,000/year 10 months – £25,000) [4]

Sound Designer (Short-term) - Dassa Thorton (32,000/year 3 months – £8,000) [5]

Quality Assurance (Contract) – Game Tester Lionbridge Game Studios (25x300min - £1,000) [6]

Voice Acting (Contract) - OMUK (4-5 hours voiced content – £20,000) [7]

[1] £31K - £54K/yr https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/london-c-unity-developer-salary-SRCH_IL.0,6_IM1035_KO7,24.htm

[2] £33K - £43K/yr https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/london-narrative-designer-salary-SRCH_IL.0,6_IM1035_KO7,25.htm

[3] £31K - £47K/yr https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/london-concept-artist-salary-SRCH_IL.0,6_IM1035_KO7,21.htm

[4] £30K - £47K/yr https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/london-2d-artist-salary-SRCH_IL.0,6_IM1035_KO7,16.htm

[5] £33k - £42k/yr https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salary/Electronic-Arts-Sound-Designer-Salaries-E1628_D_KO16,30.htm

[6] https://gametester.gg/developer

[7] https://omuk.com/ // https://omuk.com/equity-deal-for-uk-voice-actors/

Staff:

Full Time: £124,333.33

Short term: £8,000

Total: £132,333.33

Contractors:

Voice Acting: £20,000 estimate

QA: £1,000 (25 testers x 300min)

Total: £21,000

HARDWARE/SOFTWARE

Production:

GitHub – Free

Trello – Free (10 boards per workspace)

https://trello.com/pricing

Figma – Figma Pro £11/mo per editor

Figma Org £40/mo per editor

https://www.figma.com/pricing/

Google Docs – Business Standard £10 (per user/month, one-year commitment 2TB Storage per user)

https://workspace.google.com/intl/en_uk/pricing.html

Discord – Free

Engine:

Unity (Free until there is a revenue or funding of over $200k (£165k) last 12 months)

Pro 3 seats: €5,631 per year excl VAT - £4,897.35: £5876.82 inc VAT 20%

1 seat: €170 per month excl VAT - £147.85: £177.42 inc VAT 20%

https://unity.com/pricing 22/11/23

Software:

Art:

Adobe Creative Cloud (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere)

Individual

1 year - £656.21 inc VAT

Annual Monthly - £28.48/mo inc VAT(first year; 56.98/mo inc VAT) £341.76 - 12 months
(Offer starts on 18 November 2023 and expires on 24 November 2023.)

Monthly – £85.48/mo inc VAT

Business per license

1 year - £943.06 inc VAT

Annual Monthly - £50.57/mo inc VAT (first year; £78.59/mo inc VAT) £00 - 12 months
(Offer starts on 18 November 2023 and expires on 24 November 2023.)

Monthly – ??

https://www.adobe.com/uk/creativecloud/plans.html

Programming:

Rider (Jet Brains) Individual License

Yearly - first year £119.00; second year £95.00

Monthly – £11.90

https://www.jetbrains.com/rider/buy/#personal?billing=yearly

Audio:

Pro Tools

Artist - £8/mo (exc VAT)

Studio - £29/mo (exc VAT)

https://www.avid.com/pro-tools/comparison

FMOD

Licensing – Development Budget Under $500k (£400,120)

Fee: Free or $2,000 (£1,600.48)

(Free Indie License available for developers with less than $200k revenue per year, on a small (under $500k) development budget.)

https://www.fmod.com/licensing

Audacity – Free

https://www.audacityteam.org/

Reaper

(You get 60 days of evaluation free, with full functionality, and no strings attached. All license purchases are final./ A new license includes free upgrades through REAPER version 8.99. There is only one version of REAPER. The license price depends on how you use it.)

Discounted $60 - £47.94

Commercial $225 - £179.77

https://www.reaper.fm/purchase.php

Writing:

Twine – Free

https://twinery.org/

Hardware: Computers supplied to staff to work during production, others.

Up to £1500 per person for computer equipment.