TECHNOLOGY
How video games are made
Last Updated: Monday, September 13, 2010 | 8:38 AM ET
By Peter Nowak, CBC News
Video games
CULTURE & HISTORY
- History: The evolution of video games in Canada
- By the numbers: Profiling Canadian gamers
- Photos: Top 10 Canadian-made games
- Video: What's your favourite game and why?
- POV: What's the greatest game series ever?
- Video: How video games are made
- Audio: Video games in Ontario
- Audio: Ubisoft opens in Toronto
- Timeline: How video game music has changed
- The changing state of video game music
- The growing field of video game composition
- Q&A: Author Tom Bissell on his book Extra Lives
- Why can't Hollywood make a good game movie?
- Video games in the Middle East
BUSINESS & ECONOMY
- How video games revitalize cities
- The battle over provincial subsidies heats up
- Businesses using games to train workers
- Virgin rolls the dice on video games
- Ad spending moves into games
- Using games to influence an audience
SOCIAL
- Video: Women in games, with Ubisoft's Jade Raymond
- Games as social networks
- The thorny issue of online anonymity
- Why games aren't yet inclusive of gay people
- Social networking games on the rise
HEALTH & LEARNING
- Schools using games as teaching tools
- Does video game addiction exist?
- Mind games take aim at brain decline
- NASA, Army using games to recruit
- Spongelab's biology video games
FUTURE & TECHNOLOGY
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Given the growing similarities between movies and video games, it's easy to think the two are produced in the same way. But, as the attached video shows, that's not the case.
Video game production is, as many people in the industry refer to it, "controlled chaos." Films generally start with pre-production where scripts are written, actors are cast and sets are built, then move to shooting and production, ultimately finishing with the editing, music and effects of post-production.
In video games, all of those steps happen at more or less the same time.
The staffs of Ubisoft Montreal, EA Montreal and sound studio Wave Generation — who have created such games as Assassin's Creed, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, Mass Effect 2 and Army of Two: The 40th Day — explain how.
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