Game Production Stages

I talk about all of the stages a game's production goes through, including the names of those stages and what their purposes are.

[@HeadsetHistorian]

This has quickly become my favourite KZbin channel, really shines as what youtube was originally meant to be.

[@v44n7]

indeed

[@blacksheep1337]

No memes or bullsh*ts. Just real talk about interesting things i also already love this guy

[@stuartmorley6894]

I put my son to bed, sit down and the first thing I do when I know he's asleep on the monitor is load up this channel. Tim's voice and topics help me to finally relax after another hectic day.

[@thomaskadlec1925]

Absolutely, very refreshing.

[@FirstLast-tj4nl]

100 Percent. This is KZbin to me.

[@TheCoolerMaz]

I literally sent a mail last night to a publisher asking them what stages they define and are looking for in a project when looking to partner with an indie. Incredible cosmic timing, thanks Tim, much appreciation as always.

[@timseig4200]

Honestly, as a former game dev hobbyist you have single handedly brought me back to messing around and prototyping stuff.

[@aNerdNamedJames]

Damn, "horizontal slice" is a brilliant coinage

[@HMBreno]

Great overview, Tim! I have a question regarding game production: Early access is becoming a common practice among companies, and recent successes like BG3 highlight some of its advantages. I'm curious about how this practice affects key stages such as the horizontal slice, alpha, and beta. From your perspective, what are the notable advantages and disadvantages of it? Do you foresee early access becoming a standard industry practice, or do you think it's only viable under specific circumstances? In sum, I would like to know your opinions about it. Thanks a bunch!

[@shiggydiggy6847]

Makes me want to hear all the horror stories about the non-technical people from the publisher or whatever seeing incomplete stages with placeholder assets and thinking this is what the final product will look like.

[@jade93000]

yeah or when games leak and people think the debug footage is what the game is gonna look like😂

[@GiacomoVaccari]

Test rooms Prototype Beautiful corner Vertical slice Horizontal slice Alpha Beta Ship Patches DLC

[@colin-campbell]

As an uninformed person, a lot of the test room information seemed to be catered around first/3rd person games. What do test rooms look like for isometric games?

[@CainOnGames]

For an isometric game, a test room would include how much distance a jump covers, what various cover objects exist and what angles they provide cover for. There would also be radii for things like how far the player can walk in 1 second, run in 1 second, see NPCs, and where fog of war begins.

[@colin-campbell]

@@CainOnGames nice one thank you

[@watergames8449]

@@CainOnGames I love your work

[@watergames8449]

@@CainOnGames I mean about a vertical slice : )

[@TorQueMoD]

Oh, I've never heard of a beautiful corner, but it totally make sense. Great video as always!

[@IAmMarvel1]

Idc how many views this gets. This is such important knowledge gives good insight into development. Never stop doing what you do please.

[@kibels894]

Alpha? We call that MVP now, ship it.

[@Fattouch]

You got me opening my notebook and taking notes like I'm in class😂 I'm trying to join the video game industry as a project manager so rhis is very helpful, thank you!!!

[@TheConsuI]

Its so cool that I can watch and listen to a video from an incredibly awesome guy, who is responsible for my favorite video game series of all time, thank you Tim Cain.

[@redwaters5826]

Great video, Tim! really addressed one of the curiosities i long had about game development, thanks.

[@dapperdab4530]

Pal, thank you. I've wanted to get into indie development for so long. But honestly, I'm nowhere. At the time of writing, I have nothing to present, because I've been playing around in the engine, making this, and that, and then saying, wait, this dosent look like a game. Then I restart to try and make a finished product immediately. I didn't know how to structure a games development, and because of it I couldn't make games. While writing this it's 11pm, and I have work tomorrow so I'm not jumping right into the engine after watching. But in the morning I'm exited to make a gray box run around a room with a gun

[@schitzoflink8612]

I learn so much from this channel. Thank you Tim!

[@romulino]

Amazing like always.

[@C.S.Argudo]

Gotta thank you Tim for being my morning affirmations lol

[@IBETHISNAMEISTAKEN]

Just wanna say you're incredible for making these videos, they're a great resource. And also thank you for making Fallout etc.

[@croan123]

Teams who worked on Starfield need to watch this immediately.

[@UlissesSampaio]

DLC: Horse Armor!

[@lrinfi]

An oldie, but a goodie. Yeah.... Don't ever try to pass off "cosmetic items" and/or things that should have been in the game to begin with as DLC, please. Players know better and up and comers who perhaps don't know better soon will because players are looking out for one another whether the industry is or not. Must be where Tim gets the impression that some video producers are publishing PSAs. In fact, some are. (Bless 'em.) The "most profit for the least effort" mentality is where some are coming by the erroneous idea that "the devs are just being lazy". It's not the devs. It's the "Great Vampire Squid" and its insatiable appetite for profit at the expense of all else that is at issue.

[@lockekosta9014]

Thank you so much for this video. I will be bookmarking and sharing this to hopefully make my life easier and get more of the indie industry on the same page for these things. :D

[@DamianReloaded]

I love this insight into the industry of making games. Very appreciated. Thank you.

[@DamianReloaded]

Gave the transcript to chatGPT and it summarized the nine stages for me: Test Rooms: These are individual levels or rooms designed to test specific game features in isolation, such as combat, stealth, and dialogue. Prototype: A playable version of the game designed to test all features together, even though it may lack final art. Beautiful Corner: A small, visually impressive area used to showcase the game's visual direction to the team or publisher. Vertical Slice: A complete section of the game with all features, nearly all final art, and intended to represent the final game's look and feel. Horizontal Slice: All game areas are playable but not yet completed, allowing testing of player progression, connections between levels, and order of play. Alpha Stage: All areas are playable with all content in place, but the game may still be unbalanced and contain bugs. Beta Stage: All content is in place, and this stage focuses on bug fixing, balancing, and optimization. Ship: The game is officially released. Post-Release: Includes patches and downloadable content (DLC) to fix bugs, balance the game, and add more content.

[@Natiza1]

Very interesting. A nice add-on to this video would be to explain the advantage and issues linked to independant/crowfounded games who have to offer very "early access" to pleae their audience, and this even if the game still is in early pre-alpha stage

[@Dark_Kevlarian]

I'm not like...a mathematician or anything Mr. Cain, but I'm pretty sure you listed 10 stages unless one or more of these are grouped. =) 1. Testing Rooms 2. Prototype 3. Beautiful Corner 4. Vertical Slice 5. Horizontal Slice 6. Alpha 7. Beta 8. Ship 9. Patch 10. DLC I mean this is perfectly spirited jest and by no means am I serious! I love the content, have subscribed, and can't wait to learn so so much more from you! Thanks for giving us your insight and remote leadership in game development. There's so much "how-to" content out there that it starts to feel a little overwhelming and confusing sometimes; your content feels much more grounded and solidified. It's incredibly refreshing!

[@Rekettyelovag]

When I created my 1st level for a game I went through these stages w/o knowing these stages exist. It just happened naturally. As I understood horizontal slices have more internal use, helps the colleagues to have a broader understanding of something to facilitate collaboration on design fore example, while vertical ones are more like "demos" or statements for someone outside of the core like marketing or management. As for alpha and beta versions, I learned it way easily: Alpha is feature complete, beta is content complete. Question for you: What do you think about TDD (as an experienced dev/boss/producer/etc.)? It is proven that it works better than no tests or tests later approaches but still very few dev practices it. Is it because it is too hard to learn and master? Or because it seems slower than fixing a rapid prototype into production code?

[@PowerfulWizard]

Beautiful Corner or Potemkin Village feels like every triple A game these days

[@muzboz]

Great run-down. :D

[@dominikdalek]

I'd add first playable (FP) as a combination of test rooms (a.k.a. ZOOs) that informs what should go into horizontal slice (HS).

[@niwm]

Great video like always, Tim! (Also, that papa bear shirt... 😳 )

[@Shadowstorm5400]

Hi Tim I was trying to write a design document for a solo project I’m working on and was wondering if you had any examples of how to properly write a specification that might be given to a programmer or an artist? Also are there any pitfalls to avoid when writing specifications?

[@omensei3777]

Hi Tim, Really love the videos! I play them all the time on the way to School. I was wondering, what sort development methodologies do Games typically follow, whether it be Scrum, Agile, waterfall, etc… and how effective they are when it comes to developing and organizing games. Thanks!

[@SCARaw]

Rushed release is your final stage Tim, i played all your games, you can't fool me

[@alejandrovaldez7538]

I Just started playing Fallout (the first game) my lord this game was awesome top tier, i consider FONV one of my favorite but i wonder how it would have been with Tim Cain in the team, i hope they make a next Fallout game (five or New Vegas 2) with him having elements from the first game it would be a master piece!!. God bless you man, your work prevails and it still the best fallout of the franchise.

[@svekl]

Thank you for another great video Tim! I'm not working in game industry but love your every video both as software developer and gamer. May I propose a topic for some future video? Just a thought experiment, interesting to hear your ideas on that if you have any. What if you were hired to make another Fallout game and you agreed? Every single decision is up to you, no time, financial, technical or any other limitations. What it could be? What genre? What RPG system if any? What stylistic? What game engine? Where story could happen geographically? etc

[@Obumbro]

Hi Tim! Thank you so much for all these videos. Fellow game dev here with a question. How much documentation on how deep do you expect for documentation to be at for the different stages of production? I have seen both too little and too much but wondering where you stand on this. Thanks again for sharing your experience with the world!

[@tobiasnilsson6646]

Love this channel! Thanks for the insightful talks. My question: What's your take on tutorials, skipping, "in--game" vs separated from the main game etc?

[@crazyleo-ca]

Amazing video as always Tim! Could you make a video evaluating Role Playing Game Servers and Game Modding in general? Take a look at Rockstar Games’ acquisition of FiveM recently for example, do you think that’s good or bad for modders?

[@leakingpear]

Hi Tim, very helpful video (like all your videos!) thanks! I was wondering where demos fit into the process and I guess more specifically how you've gone about managing two somewhat divergent projects while still maintaining momentum on the main game? Whether it's for public release (steam nextfest has somewhat revitalised that) or for trade shows. I'm a programming lead at a mid sized studio and it's something that's had quite negative effects on morale due to how much time pressure and diverting of attention that it's causing and I feel like it might have been helped by better preplanning.

[@atridas6086]

First time I hear the term "beautiful corner". But is the same thing to what we called "diorama".

[@spellweavergeneziso]

Amazing content Tim. This video was like from the outer world! (You see what I did there?) We're currently making a game similar to how Fallout and Outer Worlds takes on story telling and multiple branches so these videos really help. Thanks. 💜

[@danitbelle6136]

Hi Tim...! This isn't really my area of expertise, but I find your content quite fascinating. I was wondering: how do you feel about the current trend to have games in early access or open beta, and how do you think that affects how some games are developed? Cheers!

[@ProfessorKuka]

Hello Tim. Game developer from Italy and great fan of your work here. I would really like to hear you answer to one of these three questions (you pick the one that interests you the most). - Do you think Game Design could be used as a tool to explore life and reality itself? If so, how? - How do you self-evaluate yourself when in a leading position (lead developer, director, producer)? - How creatively important is for a game designer to keep themselves interested in topics outside of game development (history, literature, anthropology, politics, etc...) in your opinion? A little more context on this comment if I may. I'm proposing these topics not only out of personal interest, but also because they are very relevant to the lead game designer of the project I'm working on, who is also a great friend of mine. Since my friend is a great fan of your work too and his birthday is getting closer (18th November), I thought to propose these topics to you. Were you interested in one of them, the resulting video would be a great birthday present for my friend! 😄 Thank you for the amazing content you put out on the channel!

[@alexeygofman6719]

Thank you!!!

[@r3m1]

Thank you for mentioning optimisations also comes from artists. Sometimes the art team guys do crazy stuff and rely on coders to magically make it work. And when the game ships, the code team takes the blame for "bad optimisation" 😆 It can be a nightmare during production as well, as badly optimised art will slow down tools and pipelines, create all sorts of issues, and ruin the team's morale ("How the hell are we going to make this work!!?")

[@kieran8266]

Thanks, this is a great video

[@RealKeithernet]

Hi Tim, I’m interested in learning about how you handle telemetry in games. How do you learn how people are playing your game so you can balance it and or make other fixes? Thanks!

[@RazielIgor]

I was calling what you call Horizontal Slice an Alpha. It's the game that is not feature complete yet, but you can test the completed features. And when it's feature complete but not balanced and bug fixed, it would move onto the Beta stage, which you won't add new features, just bug fix and balance the game.

[@futursoup9007]

thank you sir 🌚

[@DBROstalos]

Thanks Tim!

[@Mackinstyle]

How often does a game ship and the beautiful corner seems embellished in comparison? Over ambitious goals or whatnot.

[@legoyodascream]

Can you talk about the creation process and lore of dwarfism in Fallout? Also if anyone wants to get butthurt in the comments, it will probably come from someone who isn't actually one IRL. Most people appreciate representation and you excited it tastefully.

[@HexY------]

Hi Tim I was wondering about your opinion on solo game development. I know this question is nothing new. But most of the time, the people answering are either making money from selling courses or are people who don't really have the experience. seeing the success of games like Minecraft Ultrakill, Stardew Valley, Kenshin Undertale, etc., knowing the competitiveness of this industry If someone has the artistic and technical skills, what should they be doing?

[@ambrant7422]

Hi Tim! Thanks for spreading your wisdom and helping me start the day on a high note! I wonder what you think about pacifist playstyles and how much implementing one costs on development time? Slightly sillier question (that I think i already know the answer to): have you ever thought about going back to some of your older works (Arcanum or Fallout in particular) and releasing a "Director's Mod" that cleans up the bugs or implements features you couldn't get to work? Not necessarily that you'd do it, just if you ever think about that stuff.

[@Stratocaster42]

Excuse me Tim but you can't go around wearing a shirt like that and not expect us to fall in love. 😂 papa bears are my favourite thing. Okay I'll behave now 🫢

[@mRahman92]

In terms of "patches", after the initial ship. Couldn't that be worked around with by having soft or smaller releases? Let's say you release the game in Australia first. It sells well, but it still has some issues and some content that had to be omitted due to time constraints you still want to include. With the nest release, say the EU and NA release, can have all of that worked out and included, and also resold in AU with the "best seller" or "Gold" edition. Good old expansion pack. I remember I used to own a SNES cartridge of Super Mario World + Super Mario All Stars. Not quite a "console expansion pack", more of a complication. I guess the updated GBA version counts then.

[@MotorbreathChannel]

While sir Tim was explaining the concept of a 'beautiful corner', this is what was running through my head: /watch?v=KwjIEnYnFEU

[@BigAbuelaEnergy]

Hi Tim! As someone who’s exploring designing minimal tabletop RPGs (with d6-driven rulesets inspired by solo game books like the Fighting Fantasy series from Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson) do you have any experience designing pen-and-paper rulesets? If it helps to compare against video game RPG systems to stay on channel topic, feel free to take that angle 😊 thanks for being an inspiration, for digital AND analog creation!

[@brent5368]

Like that secret area in oblivion with the mace of doom

[@alienizedgodzilla]

Hey, Tim. I am not sure how else to reach you, but I heard about your expert chocolate palate in the Mantis interview. I was wondering, what are your thoughts on Endangered Species 48% Cocoa Milk Chocolate? Personally its my new favorite. My old favorite was Scharffen Berger milk chocolate but they've gotten harder to get ahold of and were always much more expensive.

[@CainOnGames]

I liked that bar. I reviewed it on my chocolate blog here: chocolateihaveknown.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/endangered-species-milk-chocolate/

[@arcan762]

More specifically alpha basically just means internal testing (people on the team, or within the wider company), and beta is external testing (getting consultants to give opinions, focus groups, times when anyone can try for free). These are clearly defined terms in regular software dev, that get twisted a bit in game dev. I find saying the difference between alpha and beta as being "idk it kind of feels like an alpha at this point I guess?" is vague and subjective, as everyone can have their own idea of whether the game is at the alpha/beta stage or not based on that, and in reality there will always be things that are not implemented fully or in the way designers wanted (due to time constraints). But I suppose neither of these really mean anything now in the age of agile, early access, and day one patches.

[@SlyI42]

I think you only forgot "Early Access" which is half of those stages all together, open for players and usually not for free lmao.

[@TheodoroDML]

Nice shirt

[@josephpurdy8390]

Throughout normal game play in Skyrim. There are a series of quests that unlock certain areas. That are intended for a specific quest later on. However, its still possible to explore, and get access to those areas on a single play through. The decision to not restrict quest options. That permits access to normally unaccessible locations. Bethesda seemed to adhere to this design philosophy.

[@kieran8266]

I always imagined a horizontal slice would be an entire _mechanic_ realized as opposed to an example of _all_ the mechanics working together in a single area. So it could be fully realized combat, fully realized crafting, building or base customization, etc.

[@lemontop881]

Do people still call the ship stage before patches "going gold"?

[@CainOnGames]

They do.

[@GoobNoob]

4.9k views 13 hours ago

[@danielvelkov116]

Tim, have you ever thought about making a fallout 2 sequel with AI generated quests and storylinrs

[@SolearGnG]

This seems traditional, but what if your content is not static, like randomly generated voxel world, like Valheim for example..

[@CainOnGames]

Then the publisher would want to see examples of each stage, e.g. a generated beautiful corner or a generated vertical slice

[@SolearGnG]

@@CainOnGames Then I guess for those games the game needs to be in a pretty advanced stage before it could be shown off. Like, the first time I've seen Valheim, they had 3 biomes alrready, with the building and exploration mechanics already in place. I was thinking a lot on this game concept that is basically a pirate valheim. I really like the idea of randomly generating a map, with POIs being scattered and discoverable.. It feels lie thnough that game development of a game like that would need a slightly different approach to the classical model.. In any case, this was an interesting video, thank you!

[@Spootiful]

Sorry to post something irrelevant to this video, but could I send you some material related to gaming, games, and game design that has drawn targetted harassment my way over the past few years? Consdering the amount of experience and *PASSION* that you (and a few others have) I'd rather speak with you than those more "famous" or "wealthy" *cough, cough* I've talked to a few lawyers in order to try and reassure myself that I have no legal worries and so far it's looking good, I've reached out to a few others as well. Who knows how it'll end or where it'll take me. Someone seriously has an irrational bone to pick with me. Sorry to be so brash and bring something like this out of nowhere, but it's something I've been dealing with since late 2020.

[@Kilakilic]

Could too much planning ruin the creativity and exploration of the ideas? Seams that working straight ahead without knowing where you will end is more interesting.thanks!

[@JE-nt6ix]

From the perspective of a solo indie developer: too much exploration will kill your productivity. For the one interesting mechanic you dredge out of the greybox void, you will also have made a mess of systems that may or may not be relevant and require cleanup or a history lesson to understand. My first project became a giant mess of half baked ideas (which was fine because I was learning/implementing tutorials) but the stress from thinking it might actually be a finished product at some point was killing me. I would never work on a game that does not have a clear understanding of its mechanics, goals, a narrative outline if relevant, and a thesis that can always be referred to when the vision gets hazy. I've still found time for interesting revision and exploration while also heavily planning the production of Last Dissent: Lockdown - the game that no longer has a youtube channel. Thanks Google.

[@cmdr.jabozerstorer3968]

Is Alpha equivalent to Post-Production and is Beta where QA is done, or is that also done in Alpha? Open BetasEarly Access can be different though. BG3 for example did rewrite a character and ge a new VA in for their full release adter feedback from Early Access.

[@fredrik3880]

New game after new game has disappointed me. So i went back to play a few games i thought were good for their time and then i moved on from them. Bloodlines blew me away. Compared to new games the difference is vast. Then Oblivion, and oh man what a world they crafted. The new games arent one tenth as good. It is a travesty. Why do you think this is? Fallout and Arcanum nothing has captured my imagination like those but ive enjoyed 100s of games. The weakness also applied to outer worlds which i find boring and unatmosperic.

[@mr-turtle-m8118]

first