Game Testing All in One (Game Development Series)

The project plan is a suite of documents that the producer uses to estimate costs, track progress, maintain the schedule, and estimate profitability.

  1. Manpower plan. This is a spreadsheet that lists when all the internal people connected to the project come on board, and when they finish up. Here is a drastically simplified version:

  2. Resource plan. This spreadsheet lists all the external costs of the project and when they will be incurred. The external costs appropriate to the preceding manpower plan might look something like this:

    ‚  

    January

    February

    March

    April

    May

    June

    Total

    3 DevKits

    10000

    10000

    10000

    		‚   ‚   ‚  

    30000

    2 Debug Kits

    		‚   ‚  

    1000

    1000

    		‚   ‚  

    2000

    Art Tool #1 (2)

    		‚  

    5000

    5000

    		‚   ‚   ‚  

    10000

    Art Tool #2 (4)

    		‚  

    1000

    1000

    		‚   ‚   ‚  

    2000

    Bug Tracking Tool

    		‚   ‚  

    5000

    150

    		‚   ‚  

    5150

    ‚   ‚   ‚   ‚   ‚   ‚   ‚  

    Composer

    		‚   ‚   ‚   ‚  

    5000

    		‚  

    5000

    Voice

    		‚   ‚   ‚  

    5000

    5000

    		‚  

    10000

    ‚   ‚   ‚   ‚   ‚   ‚   ‚   ‚  

    Total Ext Costs

    10000

    16000

    22000

    6150

    10000

    54150

  3. Project tracking doc. This is usually a Gantt chart generated by the producer using project management software. Each department head supplies a list of tasks, along with the people assigned to them and how long they think the tasks will take. With this information, the producer can see if the project is on schedule, what the critical path to completion is, which resources are overloaded, etc.

  4. Budget. This is a spreadsheet of all the costs associated with the project. Line items will include the following.

  5. Internal personnel costs (salaries of people applied to the project)

    1. Hardware costs

    2. Software licenses

    3. External contractor fees

    4. Engine royalties

    5. IP acquisition costs (license fee)

    6. Marketing & PR costs

    7. An overhead multiplier that applies fixed costs (building rent, utilities, travel, personnel benefits, etc.) to the project

    8. Profit-and-Loss (P&L) statement. This is another spreadsheet that the publisher uses to estimate the profitability of each project. The projected lifecycle sales estimates from the sales team are compared to the costs from the preceding budget to determine if the game will make enough money to justify the investment.

  6. Development schedule. This table breaks out the stages of development, with significant events along the way:

    Event

    Date

    Concept phase

    00/00/00 - 00/00/00

    Start preproduction

    00/00/00

    Start development

    00/00/00

    Milestone #1

    00/00/00

    Milestone #2

    00/00/00

    ‚ (Additional milestones) ‚

    00/00/00

    Alpha

    00/00/00

    Beta

    00/00/00

    Localization deliverable #1

    00/00/00

    Pre-submission (console only)

    00/00/00

    First submission (console only)

    00/00/00

    Second submission (console only)

    00/00/00

    Code freeze

    00/00/00

    Release to manufacture (RTM)

    00/00/00

    Shelf date

    00/00/00

  7. Milestone definitions. Here, the deliverable for each milestone is specified in detail, along with the date it's due.

    Milestone

    Date

    Milestone #1. General description

    • Deliverable #1

    • Deliverable #2

    • Deliverable #3

    		‚  
    ‚  

    00/00/00

    Milestone #2. General description

    • Deliverable #1

    • Deliverable #2

    • Deliverable #3

    		‚  
    ‚  

    00/00/00

    Milestone #3. General description

    • Deliverable #1

    • Deliverable #2

    • Deliverable #3

    		‚  
    ‚  

    00/00/00

    Etc.

    Etc.

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