Chapter 227: The Road to Game Development

Chapter 227: The Road to Game Development

With Mei Yue needing to spend time learning about the relevant aspects of starting a company, and Xia Yuan having just released her debut album, everyone could now fully dedicate themselves to the development of Cloudy Journey.

Many people might not know what the general process of creating a game looks like. So, let our professional planner, student Mei Fang introduce the newcomers to the process:

First, colleagues from the marketing or operations department conduct market research to understand the current most popular game genres. They write evaluation reports and present these genres to the boss and the higher-ups, including gameplay introductions, user profiles, market competitiveness, payment situations, etc.

Ultimately, by using professional data like DAU (Daily Active Users), MAU (Monthly Active Users), and ARPU (Average Revenue Per User), they aim to convince the boss and the higher-ups that choosing the above genres for the new project will surely lead the company to great success and result in enviable year-end bonuses.

Afterward, the boss and the higher-ups will actually play the corresponding games based on the research results, estimate development costs, assess their development team’s capability to handle such a game and provide the project team with a certain budget. This puts pressure on the project leader.

The project leader of the development team is usually the lead planner. After the lead planner confirms the game genre desired by the boss, the planning team repeatedly plays various games of the same genre and prepares new game materials to create a project proposal. After several rounds of adjustments, the game production begins.

The lead planner sets up the basic gameplay system framework, the lead programmer starts coding the underlying architecture, and the lead artist establishes the art style and guidelines.

During this process, the planners serve as the middle platform, continuously delivering requirement documents to the programmers and artists based on the content requirements set by the lead planner, gradually refining and optimizing the game’s content.

This process involves numerous adjustments, trial and error, and occasional complete overhauls. Sometimes, the boss might review the current version and provide feedback. If the boss is not satisfied, the team goes back to iteratively optimize until the product passes review, marking the completion of the first phase of the game’s development cycle.

The above is a fairly standard game development process, often appearing more like an idealized flow.

In reality, game development might look like this: the boss plays the top 10 or top 20 game from the bestseller list, likes it, and calls the project leader to say, “Let’s make a game like this, but better.”

The project leader works on it for a while, and the boss occasionally adds input: “This game is also good. Add this game’s gameplay, that game’s graphics, and yes, I want this game’s theme.”

This behavior is common among bosses who genuinely want to create games. However, bosses who are solely focused on making money from games have even simpler ideas. They call the project leader and...

“Hey, this game is really popular right now. Let’s make a reskinned version. I think it’s quite simple and should be doable within three months.”

Most of the painful torments Mei Fang experienced in his previous life when making games came from project leaders not having firm determination for the project, constantly changing gameplay, and his boss who would have everything redone with a single comment. These actions severely demoralized the team.

However, without market validation, no one can guarantee if a certain approach is wrong, or if their game is definitely going to fail. So, arguments over such issues are common.

Fortunately, Ximilu Studio didn’t have these problems because everyone was united around Mei Fang.

The planners were Mei Fang and Zhang Ming, and all of Zhang Ming’s free time was under Mei Fang’s guidance. Although he was only doing some execution work on data tables for now, he was doing it quite diligently. Occasionally, he would also discuss some gameplay ideas with Mei Fang and would always try to understand the intentions behind Mei Fang’s designs.

In his previous life, Mei Fang often mentored new planners when he was the lead planner. This was a work skill he could never forget.

Meanwhile, the lead artist Guo Yun was completely obedient to Mei Fang’s demands, striving to understand and fulfill his ideas. Occasionally, her own creative input would even surprise Mei Fang in a good way, showing her ability to think independently while staying aligned with the project goals.

As for the programming aspect, the main people in charge were Lin Youxi and Mei Fang himself, but there wasn’t much to say about this area.

A professional planner with programming knowledge, who never proposed unrealistic demands and maintained consistency—after more than ten years of working together, what else needed to be said about their level of mutual understanding?

Under Mei Fang’s leadership, Lin Youxi quickly produced a simple playable demo package, which was released early the next morning for everyone on the team to try out.

Xia Yuan first looked at the bun in her hand, examining its external structure, before realizing the meaning behind Mei Fang’s words. Immediately, her face also turned a bit red.

But instead of running away, she teased Mei Fang, poking his back, “Ah Fang, you get so talkative with just a little touch. You’re too sensitive, haha...”

“...”

...

Xia Yuan hadn’t even played for a few minutes when Lin Youxi suddenly spoke up from the side:

“Yuan Yuan, don’t just slack off. Do we have any finished game music yet? The demo has no progress on your end.”

“Oh, right... I’m working on it. I should have two tracks ready today.”

Xia Yuan leaned on Mei Fang’s shoulder, speaking close to his ear, “Fufu... Today, I’ll show you what I can do.”

Translator's Notes:

Dragonbones and Spine are both software primarily used for creating 2D skeletal animations for video games. ↩︎

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