From the idea to the video game

Between having a good idea and managing to turn it into a video game there is an abyss. And between publishing it and ensuring the studio can continue working, even more so. Catalonia has a network of incubators, accelerators, universities, and aid programs that attempts to reduce this gap, as well as a professional community that allows studios to look for partners, publishers and investors. But money continues to be one of the major bottlenecks.

"The most common mistake is confusing making a good video game with building a company. Many teams start by thinking exclusively about the product, which is obviously fundamental, but too late they ask themselves questions about who their audience is, how they will reach them, how much it really costs to finish the game, or what will happen after the launch," explains Joan Francesc Bañó, executive director of the incubation program GameBCN.

Getting a publisher interested in the project can provide resources and market knowledge, but it also involves sharing risks and control. Development is a collaborative effort that usually begins with a small team and a prototype. Before investing major resources, pre-production serves to verify if the idea is viable: it is necessary to define the team, time, budget, and platforms, test the mechanics, and develop the project's "bible"—the Game Design Document. The process is iterative: testing, detecting problems, modifying, and testing again.

Conxi Pérez, CEO of RolldBox Games, explains the initial phases of the process: "To begin with, every project needs a very important pre-production. You have to carry out an initial ideation: what is the concept? What genre are we talking about? Which market are we targeting? Obviously, we look at what is on the market, how what we want to create fits in, and what positioning we want to give the video game". Pérez recalls: "In the end, there is a selling price that limits the budget you can dedicate to it. You have to crunch the numbers to see that everything fits with the different profiles and with what you want to focus the game on".

Pre-production culminates with the vertical slice, a demonstration that faithfully reproduces the main features and the experience of the final game and which can serve to present the project to a publisher or to seek funding. "It is also essential to do playtesting from the beginning and integrate all the feedback we can. Any pivoting costs money and, therefore, it is necessary to advance as much as possible any adjustment that needs to be made", explains Pérez. And he warns: "Normally we work a lot on the mechanics before entering the artistic part, which requires many resources and is expensive to redo. This is where a lot of money can go".

Showing the project well is key to finding funding. Bañó considers that "the ideal is to start early to understand the market, identify which publishers/editorial houses can fit and build relationships, but you must go into a negotiation when you can already demonstrate with a vertical slice what is special about your game". A good demo opens the door, but it is not enough: "Afterwards there must be a company and a business plan behind it. Increasingly, it is also more important to be able to demonstrate market signals: community, wishlist, metrics from a demo, prior interest from players, or any evidence that reduces uncertainty about the project and the risk of the investment".

Once pre-production is overcome, the longest phase arrives: converting the prototype and the initial design into a playable product. Programmers, artists, and designers work in coordination to build the systems, characters, settings, objects, animations, and levels that make up the experience. Sound—effects, voices, and music—also contributes to giving the game identity and reinforcing its atmosphere. It is a stage in which one must balance ambition and resources.

Just because a game is "finished" does not mean it is ready to reach the public. Before the launch, it undergoes quality assurance (QA) testing, in which programming errors, performance issues, and unexpected behaviors are sought. Issues are corrected and re-checked, and aspects such as difficulty, controls, or performance on different devices and platforms are also adjusted.

Finally the release arrives. The video game is distributed and it is the players and the specialized critics who will evaluate the result. But, in the current digital industry, publishing it is less and less an end point and more of a new beginning. Studios can continue working on the game with patches, updates, fixes, and new content.

In a global market where hundreds of new titles arrive every week, getting the public to discover them is a challenge in itself. Festivals, social networks, media, gaming communities, and marketing campaigns are part of the work. "It is common to underestimate marketing, communication, and distribution: today, launching a game on Steam does not mean that people will discover it," comments Bañó. A good review, therefore, does not guarantee sufficient sales to recover the investment.

The sustainability of the studio also depends on what happens after the first project. Bañó explains that "the studios that have the best chances of consolidating themselves are those that, while developing their first game, are already building assets for the second: an IP, a community, a technology, a stable team, commercial relationships, or market knowledge". And he synthesizes it like this: "The success of a game does not guarantee the sustainability of a studio. The true test is what you are capable of building based on that success".

Between the small studio looking for money to finish its first project and the company capable of moving hundreds of professionals lies the majority of the Catalan industry. Pérez highlights, in this environment, the importance of leadership, communication, and adaptability: "It is a very changing environment and we must have a lot of flexibility. Those of us at the head of studios and teams must know how to lead in an environment that is constantly changing, be very flexible and adaptive, and maintain a good atmosphere, because we are managing a creative team. And it is fundamental to know how to work as a team, communicate with each other, and give each other feedback to be able to learn together. All of this requires a capacity for constant learning".

But the growth of studios also requires capital. Bañó identifies "a structural funding problem" and calls for more resources "in the space between the idea and the market: financing prototypes, vertical slices, production, marketing and internationalization". The goal, he points out, should not be just to create more small studios, but to ensure that some can grow to become medium-sized companies, internationalized and capable of generating their own IP with global reach.

Beyond materializing projects, building an industry consists of ensuring that, when a game ends, there are still resources, talent, knowledge, and opportunities to start a new one. "The next leap for our ecosystem should not only be making better video games, but ensuring that companies and IPs are born in Catalonia that will continue to have value and international recognition twenty or thirty years from now," concludes Bañó.