Articles about industry - Nasty Rodent - Page 2

Question 1

What is the difference between pre-production and the discovery phase?

Accepted Answer

Discovery asks whether the game is worth building and what it is; pre-production decides how it will be built and how much it will cost. Discovery is the cheapest, most portable early stage; pre-production turns those answers into a production-ready foundation. In practice the two overlap and many teams run them as one phase. The distinction matters most for producers planning budget: discovery is where you can still cheaply stop or pivot, while pre-production is where you commit to a schedule. Keeping the line visible protects your lowest-cost decision point.

Question 2

How long does the pre-production phase take?

Accepted Answer

There is no fixed duration — it scales with scope, from a few weeks on a small title to nearly a year on an ambitious one. As a general guideline, pre-production tends to take 10–20% of the total project timeline. The more useful answer is to tie its length to a milestone gate rather than a date. On many mid-core and AAA pipelines, pre-production concludes with a successful vertical slice review — proof of the core loop and the production assumptions before the team scales into full production. If your calendar runs out before the gate is met, treat that as a scope signal, not a reason to enter production unprepared.

Question 3

How much should we budget for the pre-production phase?

Accepted Answer

It depends heavily on scope and studio model, and there's no single industry figure — but as a rough planning anchor, many teams allocate something on the order of 10–15% of total development cost to pre-production, covering a small senior team, prototypes, concept art, and planning. From our experience, money spent validating the concept here is the cheapest risk reduction in the whole project. Underfunding it rarely saves money; it relocates the cost into full production at a higher rate. The practical move for a producer is to fund pre-production to the point where the vertical slice can be built and reviewed — that single deliverable de-risks the far larger production budget.

Question 4

What deliverables do we get out of pre-production, and how iterative is it?

Accepted Answer

The core deliverables are design pillars, a Game Design Document, validated prototypes, concept art and an art bible, and a production plan with budget and schedule. These are living artifacts — expect several rounds of iteration on the pillars and prototypes before they stabilize. Iteration is the point, not a delay. The GDD is meant to evolve, prototypes are meant to be discarded, and the art bible is refined until the visual target holds across multiple assets. A pre-production that produces no discarded work usually means the team wasn't really testing anything.

Question 5

When can we move from pre-production into full production?

Accepted Answer

When the vertical slice passes review — a near-final-quality section proving the core loop, the art target, and the production plan are real. On most mid-core and AAA pipelines, that gate — rather than a calendar date — is the clearest signal the team is ready to staff up and build. A clean exit also means stable pillars, a scoped schedule with contingency, and a risk register stakeholders can see. If the vertical slice surfaces problems, that is the gate doing its job; fixing them now is far cheaper than discovering them after content production has ramped.

Question 6

Who owns the documents and concept art created in pre-production, and how is it protected?

Accepted Answer

In a standard outsourcing engagement, the client owns the deliverables produced — GDD drafts, concept art, prototypes — and that portability is one of the main reasons to run a discovery or pre-production engagement at all. We sign an NDA early in the engagement, before any material changes hands, with IP transfer formalized through the service agreement. This is exactly what makes an early-stage engagement low-risk: you can validate a concept with a partner and still decide to build it in-house, continue with the same partner, or take the work elsewhere. The deliverables are yours to carry forward.

Blog - Page 2

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Vendor Onboarding for Game Art Outsourcing: 8-Week Protocol That Prevents Milestone Slippage

In-House vs Outsource Game Art: How to Make the Right Call for Mid-core Projects