Brendan Davies Product & Operations Builder
Studio Independent production

Building a game means the disciplines collide.

Systems architecture, product decisions, visual direction, testing and scope all have to survive contact with one another.

01 / How it is built

Three overlapping disciplines.

  1. Systems

    State has to hold.

    A game is a system under load. State, timing and transactions have to stay coherent when the player does something unexpected.

  2. Production

    Scope has to survive.

    One person cannot build a whole world at once. The useful move is shrinking the unit of work until the real constraint is visible.

  3. Product

    The picture has to decide.

    Art direction is not decoration. If the shot does not read, the product decision is not finished — keep, change or kill from evidence.

02 / The game

A game, built under constraint.

Too much world, then a smaller unit of work, then a failed picture, then a structural correction. The next move came from what the frame actually showed.

A red industrial machine travels through layered red and charcoal scenery with the interface hidden.
The first world

01

The first world asked for too much.

The first prototype generated a large 3D world. It proved the idea, then asked one person for environment, animation, navigation, collision, lighting and testing all at once.

A dark industrial machine and route partially merge into a black and grey staged environment.
Wrong unit of work

02

The whole world was the wrong unit of work.

A staged 2.5D approach kept the main machine realtime 3D and used layered scenery for depth. That was the right reduction. The first framed shot still failed: machine, route and background merged into one dark mass.

Industrial travel frame with layered scenery, so each plane of the shot can be seen separately.
Readability

The shot still did not read.

The layers had to be visible as layers before the picture could carry meaning.

High-contrast silhouette of an industrial machine and a contact object on a constrained stage.
Silhouette

Before adding materials, the silhouette had to work.

Shape and scale first. Finish later.

Current authored travel frame with clearer separation between the machine and the environment.
Evidence

The next decision came from the evidence.

Keep, change or kill from what the frame actually shows.

The same habit applies to operational systems: shrink the work until the constraint is visible, then build around it.

03 / Continue

The game is one practice. The work is broader.

Current professional work lives in the Pavilion. LinkedIn is the direct route.

Pavilion Work LinkedIn