GAD

Activity 2.12

Activity 2.12
Game Design Pipeline
Background: You are a game designer/developer for a large game design company. You
have been assigned the task of creating and managing a game design team to produce a
new 2D video game. In this activity, you will complete a Gantt chart to help you manage the
production pipeline of the game in order to meet the product deadline.
Materials:

MS Excel or other spreadsheet software

Lesson:
1. Open the MS Excel folder entitled Gantt Chart Activity and locate StudentCopy.xlsx. The
spreadsheet contains a list of the major development goals, team members, and the
schedule of workdays. You will find rows to illustrate the planned versus actual status of the
different tasks of the project. There is a color legend representing the different team
members.
2. Your task is to complete the Gantt chart by filling in each cell with the correct color to
show when each team member is assigned to work on his or her part of the project.
Remember that design team members could be working on several different projects and
you may not require their participation on this project every day. You are to schedule team
members by filling in the planned fields not the actual fields.
3. Consider these steps when coding the chart. You have 10 weeks to complete the game.
Pre-production: Includes the idea, planning, sketching, and storyboarding.
Production: Build the levels including programming, art work, and characters. (Takes
the longest time [at least 6 weeks] to complete), add sounds and titles.
Post-production: Produce, Market, and ship the game (Not counted in the chart).
Questions:
1. Explain what criteria you used to calculate the amount of time you assigned to each
major goal when you developed your Gantt chart.
2. You are a game producer working on a 2D video game and you are responsible for the
overall project. One of your team members has become ill and will be out of work for
several weeks. What are some possible strategies you could try to keep your project on
time?

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Activity 2.12