You go to your local video game store, retrieve a copy of the game you want, and pay for it at the cash register. You take it home, open it up, and wedge the cartridge into your game system. You play it. You like it. You want to play it more. But while you're playing, do you ever wonder what effort and manufacturing went into the creation of this game, and this cartridge? Most people will say no, because they're too busy trying to 'beat' the game, that they don't stop to think about it.
Creating a game is more complicated than normally thought. It takes many long months to design, create, and manufacture a single game. The average game creation time is a year. However, there are games that have taken longer than this, such as Super Mario World for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Super Famicom in Japan), which took three years to perfect.
Every game is made by a creative team of game experts. This creative team should consist of game designers, sound effect designers, computer programmers, and video artists. These people work together to create a solid and wonderful plaything for everyone. It doesn't matter what the game contains, the team must work as one. They perform many steps in order to create a fine game that the public will enjoy. We will get into these steps later.
How does the team create a GOOD game? How do they make smash-hits? The team, made of adults, NOT children, should know what the public wants. Games such as Super Mario Bros. 3, and Mega Man were games that struck a chord with people. Many teams took advantage of this information, and created other games with the same type of basis, like RPG (role-playing game) and Action. However, if you created a game where the basis did not have a large amount of popularity, such as Thunder and Lightning, little profit can be made by these games. Looking to the public is where the profit shall come from.
In order to show steps, we will use a selected game as an example. To show the steps, we will use Legend of Zelda as a firm example of how the game is actually created.
How does a creative team make a game? First, they select the basis of their game. Will it be a platform game, like Super Mario Bros. 3? Will it be a karate game, like Kung Fu? Will it be a puzzle game, like Tetris? Many ideas are plotted on paper in a design meeting, and one idea is chosen for the game they will make. In our case, an Action-RPG is chosen.
Next, what will the game be about? Will the hero save the damsel in distress? Will the character have to find out his real identity? Will the hero save his planet from distressful aliens? All the questions are answered in the design meeting. In our case, the hero will save a damsel in distress.
Next, the team must create a story to flow with the game. We have chosen an Action-RPG where the hero must save a damsel in distress. Now the story may go like this: "Many years ago, Ganon, a power crazed wizard, entered the land of Hyrule, and turned the lands from good to bad. He also captured the Princess of the land, Zelda. Her grandmother, Impa, searched carefully through Hyrule for a hero, and found only one who was worthy of the task. His name was Link." Once the story is created, other points of the game are viewed, such as rules of the game.
After all this has been done, the creative team figures out whether their game will be an arcade game, a home system, like the Nintendo Entertainment System (or Famicom in Japan), or a handheld system, like Game Gear. Legend of Zelda will be on a home system.
What's next? You've looked over the game type, the game subject, the game story, and the game's platform. Next, we must check over one of the more important things: the graphics. What do the graphics look like? Are they lifelike? Are they cartoonish? Are they both?
To create full graphics, the video artists start by creating a bunch of drawing on storyboards. On the storyboards, the artists draw and label pictures that show the movements of the characters. The labels will tell about the characters, their movements, and what they can do.
But how do you get the graphics from paper to the screen? There are two ways possible of creating images. One is converted graphics, where the video artist uses a mouse to create pictures on-screen. The other way of creating graphics is digitization, where hand-drawn pictures or photographs are converted into computer signals. Models may also be used in digitization. The model(s) will dress up as the character they play. They will walk on a treadmill, and perform the movements that the video game character will make. A video camera will tape the actions. The tape is played on an RGB monitor (which is like a regular monitor, but shows pictures brighter and sharper than usual). The artist then takes some frames from the video and inserts them into the video game.
It may take up to 10 frames to show when a character walks one step. The character is not actually moving, but frames flash before your eyes so quickly, you don't notice.
Backgrounds are also be made with either digitization or converted graphics. Occasionally, both of these may be used. A background might even be many images showing at once.
There's also the matter of sound in a game. The same method used to record CDs is used to record video game sounds. If an actual person's voice is needed, a person simply speaks into a microphone. The voice is recorded on digital audio tape (DAT). For sound effects, the company can buy different sounds already on tape, through a huge library, or via a sound catalog. These sound effects are DAT-recorded as well. From the DAT, the sounds go through a synthesizer. It translates the sounds into a code the system can read. All this information is stored on a chip will is inserted in your game cartridge.
Programming is needed to make a game run. Your home system is only capable of doing what it's told, and when it's told. It requires directions, so a computer program is created for the game to run properly. It can be written in many languages. The most popular are C++ and Assembler. These are complicated versions of BASIC.
It takes about 250000 instructions in the computer program for an entire game to run. A single movement may take 100 instructions. It takes close to seven months to write a computer program, and if there is a problem, or something hasn't been done the way it was intended, the instructions must be changed.
A separate program may be used for sounds, and for graphics. They can be stored together on a chip, found in your game cartridge, or as separate chips.
Once the computer program is completed, it is burned onto chips, which will be inserted into every game cartridge that will contain this game.
Finally, a test team plays the game for a few weeks to check for bugs (bad actions found in the game). If the game is approved, many sets of chips are made, and sent to a factory, where millions of copies of these chips are produced.
The chips are assembled into those little cartridges, called game paks. The game paks are inserted into protective sleeves, and packed into boxes. Little books, called instruction booklets are also created before manufacturing time, and are inserted into the boxes with the game paks.
[NOTE: The manufacturing procedures mentioned in this article apply only to games manufactured in cartridge format. CD-format games are done differently, but the way the creation of the game progresses follows this outline similarly.]
Now that you know how a video game is made, you'll know that every time you see graphics, every time you hear sounds, every time you read the storyline, you'll know who and what made it possible.
