Example:
I've taken the example and expanded upon the modelling area. I don't understand the production pipeline of games in great detail and seeing it simplified into this style unfortunately doesn't do much for me, so i'm going to look into some stages of the development pipline during pre production, production, and post production.
The Phases of Production
Ideation:
Ideation is the starting phase that occurs before pre-production, where the intial concept is first brought into existence and starts to be developed upon by a small group of people within the team, normally the higher up members like department leads and studio heads.
Brainstorming, storyboarding, mindmapping, and many more methods help in this phase
Pre-production:
Pre-production is an initial planning phase of game development, which focuses on the creation of core concepts and writing intial design documents, that detail the future game. It's similar to ideation, however it's much more detailed and in depth, trying to create a solid idea for a game to take forward into production.
Key game pre-production steps: Core concept
What's your target audience?
What are the key gameplay mechanics?
What are the pillars of your game?
The central/core gameplay mechanic is what you're banking on. This is where your players should find the most enjoyment, and where your game either lives or dies. you should desribe all major features about it.
Prove that there's market
"No serious publisher would sign a without running a marketing test against it first. The publisher would want to see advertising metrics and early-stage engagement metrics, early monetization, etc. Check the install costs vs target geography as well." (Room 8 studio)
Figure out game progressions
The video game pre production process requires game designers to outline the game economy, events, game mechanics, and how you will introduce new mechanics. Think of metagame, key numbers, monetization, and gameplay.
Create prototypes
Prototyping is an important step in pre production, where designers, programmers, artists, and level designers, all create a basic look at the gamplay features of the game.
You need to test the experience your game provides with test sessions. Before prototypes happen you should think about what they need to show to accomplish their goal of showcasing the game. Do the characters appeal to the target audience? Is a given mechanic or a level fun? Does a level look worse than the others? which colour scheme or UI works best for the majority of testers? These are the type of questions that may be precise enough to improve your game.
Plan your pipeline & team responsibilities
Identify key positions and people and plan their workload so that everyone will be productive when they come on board for the production phase. Outline the responsibilities of each and how they will interact. Game pre-production pipelines must be well defined and must be follwed as closely as possible by everyone. It also takes quite a while to adjust to pipelines, especially if you haven't used them before or people are new to the industry/team.
Question everything you do
It's good to check over things before you finalise them to make sure you are happy with it. Constantly deconstructing and reconstructing is useful when coming up with ideas and also when creating art, code and other parts of the game development process.
Set the project timeline and iterations
Timelines are important in the pre-production stage in game development. This creates a structure around which your team can follow and plan along side when creating their content. Timelines can be adjusted as necessary as long as you keep to a schedule and keep your team informed and on track.
Create documentation
Before production begins, you should have at least the core of the Game Design Document.
Plan for QA
Create a thorough test plan, with cases that QA will work with from the 1st week of the production stage. As the importance of pre-production in game development lies partly in creating a work plan for all team members, make sure you also plan ahead for the QA team.
Production:
Production involes all stages of development of assets, sound, code and other pieces needed to make the game as well as putting the game together.
Post production:
Post production is focused around the marketing and testing of the game as well as debugging and the creation of monetization content and other post launch content as well as patches to fix the game.