The number of people depends on the phase of the project.

At Mattermost, an unexplored junior, we asked the question, “When developing a game within a company, how many man-hours do you spend on what?” The question was asked by tokoroten, and he talked about a lot of things. It was a pretty interesting conversation, and it would have been a shame to let it drift away, so I’ve summarized it here.

-  - Horizontal is time, vertical is number of people. - In the first phase, the project is compact, with 1 planner + 1 programmer, or 1 planner + 1 graphic designer, etc., and runs for several months. - Game companies often have a number of guys making small prototypes behind the scenes. - When they say, "Let's make the next one," they can bring that kind of project to us. - Some cases are continued by individuals without sending them out to the company. - Related [[collective soul (soul having a collective soul, i.e. the soul of a person or thing)]] [[Brave30]] [[ACE OF SEAFOOD]]

• Once a small number of prototypes and image boards are completed, we will gradually add personnel.

  • When the development phase starts, start by modifying the prototype to solidify the gameplay.

• Once the gameplay is solidified, a decision is made to approve continued development (for this demo, we will work super hard).

  • Once the decision to continue development is made, a budget is set, and the company moves into the volume phase using surplus in-house personnel and outsourcing.
  • The physical battle to represent the game begins.
  • Adding personnel and building assets at once, while combining them with various storylines.
  • The number of staff members shown in the staff roll is the number of staff members at the peak during this volume war.

• Continued Development Approval Process (realistically, there are two or three different ways to go around this)

• Once all the assets to represent the game have been created, the personnel for the physical quantity are transferred to another project.

  • The original core members remain.
  • QA team joins and debugging work
    • Often a part-time job for students and freelancers.
  • Bug fixes by core members

• Once the bugs are removed, adjust the release date and release (for the consumer version)

  • Many times it is like delaying a release by six months in order not to coincide with the release of a major production.

• Game development is subject to large fluctuations in personnel demand.

  • One company cannot absorb the wave, so there is a cooperative development company
  • After the game is released, the core personnel will be released as well, so to prevent this, DLC will be developed to buy time until the next proto development.
    • Related open world.

- I was blind to the fact that the number of people changes depending on the phase of the project. I only had an image of a quantity war. - This fits well with the Conquer phase / Divide phase of [[Divide After You Conquer]]. --- This page is auto-translated from [/nishio/プロジェクトのフェーズによって人数が変わる](https://scrapbox.io/nishio/プロジェクトのフェーズによって人数が変わる) using DeepL. If you looks something interesting but the auto-translated English is not good enough to understand it, feel free to let me know at [@nishio_en](https://twitter.com/nishio_en). I'm very happy to spread my thought to non-Japanese readers.