Unit 66-67-67: Understand theory and applications of 3D

Unit 66-67-67: Understand theory and applications of 3D

Applications of 3D

There are many different types of uses for 3D not just modelling for games, it can also be used for television and films, one of the most famous uses on TV must be the dragons from Game of Thrones. The team at Pixomondo used modelling software such as ZBrush to design the dragons but also took real life aspects like a chicken that the animators played around with and work out muscle movements. One of the most impressive things i have seen was created in the Unreal Engine 4 is an architectural walk through of a house, its shows just how photo realistic 3D modelling can be.

https://youtu.be/E3LtFrMAvQ4?t=118
3D is also used for animation for anything from television to education.



An application programming interface or API, is used for different things. In Microsoft Direct3D the API renders 3D objects, most graphic cards these days support it due to how much it speeds up 3D rendering withing windows. One of Direct3D's competitors is OpenGL or Open Graphics Library which is a cross platform and language API.

What is a Graphics Pipeline

This is what we use to convert the 3D images in the program to the 2D images we see on our screen so we don't have to render the entire thing when we can't even see it. At the start we have the bus interface which basically tell the entire pipeline what to do. The vertex processing comes next and this gathers the information on where every vertex is on the shape and converts that into a 2D position on the screen, sometimes the vertex is given a colour based on the light hitting it. The parts of the image we cannot see are then remove completely, this is so we do not have to render them when we cannot see them and is called clipping. The vertices are then made into triangles and filling in with pixels to make them whole, these newly filled triangles are called fragments, this is known as the triangle set up and then rasterization. Occlusion culling then removes the pixels that we cannot see due to other objects for example if a rectangle was in front of a square, the pixels behind the rectangle would not be rendered. A value is then assigned to each pixel that was rasterized , this is the parameter interpolation. The pixel shader then determines the final colour and texture of the pixel. The pixel engine then takes the previous 2D object and applies the fragment colours to it to create a whole object on the screen, the thing that stores all of the information throughout this process is known as the frame-buffer controller.

Ray Tracing

Rendering Techniques

There are several different types of rendering techniques, one is known as ray tracing and this provides some of the harder effects to achieve such as shadows and reflections. It creates the object by tracing the path the light takes and showing it as pixels, then showing the effects it has when interacting with objects. To the left you can see the ray tracing of a sphere as it shows the shadows and reflections. 

As you can see radiosity has been applied onto the second image as it is diffusing the light correctly whereas direct illumination has occurred on the first image. However unlike ray tracing specular reflection has been ignored.

There are several types of lighting as well indirect light is where the light is reflected off of certain surfaces in the room and tries to mimic how it would look in a real life situation. For example light bouncing off of a mirror. Local illumination is where the light is coming directly from a light source, such as the sun that just shines right down on us. To help the performance of your PC when rendering you don't always have to render the entire model for example in the picture below the sphere is less detailed based on how close it is to the camera. This can be set in Maya by using groups.

Geometric Theory

All shapes will have certain aspects to them the main ones for modelling in programs like Maya are the vertices which act as the corners of the shape; the edges, which serve to join the vertices; and the faces that fill in the gaps between them. There are also different application for these for example the edges do not have to be straight they can curve. All of these put together make a polygon which we can them manipulate into whatever shape we need for our game, however only polygons that have been triangulated may be used this way. NURBS take up less data however are extremely heavy for your computer to run in video games since the shape is defined by mathematics. They are however used in cut scenes that have been pre-rendered. Primitive objects are mainly used to start off a design you can the move, rotate and scale the shape by using the coordinates given in most 3D modelling programs, X Y and Z. X being the horizontal, Y the vertical and Z the depth. 

There are several types of modelling the first of which being box modelling, where you use a primitive object to make the rough shape of the model you want and then sculpt more detail on top of it. Another type is box modelling this is where you import a front and side view into Maya and use shapes the trace the outline and end up with a 3D model.

Constraints

There are many constraints that come with 3D modelling. You first have to consider the platform you are creating for as this will have a big impact on what you can and cannot do for example the amount of polygons per model will have to be lowered if you were creating for mobile when compared to PC. If there are too many polygons the game will become slow due to how much it is trying to render, this is also where file size comes into play. People don't want to fill up loads of space on there machine/phone with one game they often want many and if you are using large models and detailed textures to file size will increase. It will not only take you a long time to upload but will also take ages for the players to download it as well. By reducing the polygon count you can lower the file size. 3D modelling programs often have an optimisation option built in allowing the program to cut out all of the bits it knows it isn't using. There are two types of rendering time, one being real time this is where models and textures are rendered on the go, in game. This often uses the GPU and can slow your game down if there is too much information to render at any one time. The other, pre-rendering, is when the model is rendered over time, this could take a varied amount of time based on the size of the model and/or animation. Companies often use several machines to render at once to lower the time it takes to complete.

Unit 4 & 5

Unit 4 & 5 – Creative Media Production Management Project & Working to a brief in Media 

There are many different types of briefs the most famous of which would be the contractual, this is due to how often it is used in TV shows and movies. The reason it is a contractual brief is simply because the recipient will have to sign it. It is very similar to a formal brief as it will include very structured detail of everything that is required of you. I personally had to sign a contractual brief when starting my apprenticeship, it had outlined things like the length of time i would be working for, what my roles at the company would be, the pay i would be receiving and the amount of holiday I would be able to take per year. When signing one of these briefs you are locked into the terms and breaking any of them could land you with serious legal issues.

A negotiated brief is almost always changing up until the start date. Every aspect of this brief can be discussed until both parties are happy with the end result however most of the time things are left up to the employee whom is probably happy to be able to use more creativity and own initiative. The detail will most likely be very general for example "I'd like you to make me a cool website, use whatever you think best.". As you can see it is left very open to different ideas.

A competition brief is one that anybody can view and work to. All of the finished products are then normally judged and one will win with perhaps a few being runners up. All of the competition will strive to out do each other and then you will hopefully be left with the best piece of work possible. The possibility of a prize for winning will entice many people and therefore have many different ideas to choose from.

A formal brief is clear, concise and well set out. It will tell the recipient exactly what they need to do, normally in different sections. It will contain headings, sub headings, dates, addresses and quite often the companies logo in the header. An informal brief is often not even a official document, it could just be sent through a text or an email. It can even be agreed in a conversation, however this can be incredibly risky as it has no standing in court if the client doesn't give you what was agreed upon.

A commission brief is one where a large company hires an independent company to create there product for them. This type of brief is negotiable between both parties as opposed to an external party who would receive the product after its done. An advantage is that the independent company will receive the pay for creating the product and then might even get some profit that is generated by the product once it is out.

A co-operative Brief 

Similar to a competition brief, a tender is open to clients who will then have to compete for the work. The best will then be selected and then their ideas developed, and due to the competition the parties will be more motivated to create a better product however my be disheartened if they do not get the work. It can be very hard for people to earn a living this way.

A co-operative brief is, like the name suggests, a brief in which multiple parties work on the same thing. One of the main reasons this is done is because different people are better at different aspects of the work. Over the course of the work hopefully the companies will learn to communicate and work together which creates a lasting bond for the companies in the future. However if any of the employees disagree it may cause the project to collapse.


We have also been given a brief, and the first step when receiving one is to identify what kind of brief it is from the ones we have listed above. The main objectives we have to achieve are to plan and develop a story for a video game, which will be based on the game Big Trouble in Little China. After developing the story we will have to adapt it into a video game for a Windows PC. We will have to start off with 4 original game ideas and then use them to create one final game design document. This will have to be pitched before production will begin. I would say that this brief is informal due to the nature of how it is presented. It is in a PowerPoint as opposed to being on paper and set out neatly with a header, address date and title. Also in a formal brief the employer will set out exactly what they want the work to include where in this one a lot is left up to your imagination.

When following a brief there are many different skills we can develop on for example in the games industry, for example you may learn different 3D design tools and develop your skills on them from different people. There many self development and communication skills you can pick up, if the brief requires that you work in a group it will help improve things like leadership and teamwork. The good thing about working from briefs is that you will work for many different companies meaning you have a lot of chances to gain contacts in the industry. It may also require you to travel to different places to work which only adds to your experience and gives you several good aspects to add to your CV.

Fiz Presentation

Unit 3: Research Techniques for the Creative Media Industry

Assignment 3 -  Be able to Present Results of Research

Qualitative Research is when we use things like reviews or websites to help us in the design for a game. You would often look at these to see what your audience thinks of your games and how to improve on any game in the making.


Quantitative Research is all to do with figures and numerical statistics, it is a research style based around this premise. The most common figures that are included would be ratings and sales of the game, this is done both before and after the creation of a game. It is used before the game to gauge how well you think the game is going to do and is done after to see how well the game has actually done. The easiest way to do this would be by using surveys.

World of Warcraft.

Primary Data

Since World of Warcraft was originally released in 2004 there wasn't as much social media used to promote the game as there is these days. These days though there are many ways that World of Warcraft is advertised for example Twitter and Facebook. Interviews are also a way they can be promoted and in one with Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard Entertainment he said, "We were all extremely pleased with the success of World of Warcraft on its first day of launch, once we saw the numbers for the first day, we knew that we had to immediately increase capacity to accommodate the huge numbers of players joining our game. We're glad so many people are enjoying World of Warcraft, and we are dedicated to supporting a fun and smooth game experience for everyone." This shows us how closely game companies monitor things like player figures as it can directly affect what they need to do.

Secondary data

The ratings that World of Warcraft received at released were very positive, the average score on metacritic was 93 and shares great scores across several rating sites. Within the first day, over 200,000 players created World of Warcraft accounts. By 5:00 p.m., over 100,000 were playing the game. These two number were record-breaking and made World of Warcraft the fastest-growing MMORPG in history. Within a single day, all of the original World of Warcraft servers were filled to capacity, and by the end of the weekend, more than 40 additional servers were deployed to meet the rapidly growing player base, as the number of new accounts and concurrent users continued to grow.

Borderlands 2

Primary Research

Borderlands designer Randy Pitchford, when asked about if the game would offend people he replied, "I'm talking about if a design feels outlandish. If somebody can look at something and go 'that's cool because it's wild and different', then there's value to it, and if it's not the obvious thing then that's why it's producing that result, and makes it more valuable because its rare, it's exceptional." The developers of Borderlands 2 held a social media campaign for the game on Behance, they released a new promotional image each day in the weeks running up to the games release.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/776864/Borderlands-2-Social-Media-Campaign

Secondary Research

The game was critically acclaimed by almost all sources, averaging a score of 90 on Metacritic and a 9/10 on IGN, with a lot of the sources praising the games sense of humour, world structure and RPG systems. The game has around 30 hours of gameplay and has quite a lot of replayability. The current price for Borderlands 2 is $19.99 however the price at release was roughly $40. The game was released on September 17th 2012 and currently has roughly  7,287,019 ± 76,845 owners according to Steam.

The Company I'd Like to Work For: Blizzard

The Company I'd Like to Work For: Blizzard

Blizzard serve as both developer and publisher for there games. Currently they have released six major titles, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch. The company was formed in 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse, in 1993 they started producing they're own games with the Lost Vikings. The company has approximately 5,000 employees over 9 cities Irvine, Austin, Versailles, Cork, Shanghai, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei, and Sydney.

World of Warcraft

WoW's highest player base was around 12 million worldwide and has currently dropped to about 5.5 million. Blizzard has currently released six expansions on top of the base game, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Catacylsm, Mist of Pandaria, Warlords of Dreanor, and Leigon. Each of the expansions cost around £35 at release and come with new races, quests and level boosts. 

Diablo

The first Diablo was created in 1997, follwing with Diablo II in 2000 and most recently Diablo III in 2012. With a lot of people being disappointed with the third installment Blizzard released the Reaper of Souls expansion the following year which boosted its popularity. Its a role playing dungeon hack and slash, which as of 2012 had sold over 24.8 million copies. In the first Diablo there were only three classes however since then they have released up to 5, the Witch Doctor, the Barbarian, the Wizard, the Monk, the Demon Hunter, and the Crusader.

Starcraft

Blizzard have released 2 Starcrafts so far, the first coming in 1998 and the second in 2010

Hearthstone

Heroes of the Storm

Overwatch 

Music and sound for Josh

Level 3 Game Design
Unit 73: Sound for Computer Games
Assignment 2 - Creating and Applying Sounds to a Specific Game

Planning

The genre of my game is Si-fi and so we want the music to fit with this. I want to try o create a sense of exploration as well as tension whilst leading u to the bosses in the game. There are several sounds I want for my game and to help remember which one is which I will name them appropriately, for example Ship_shoot. The files will be saved as a WAV file because it is lossless format this means you wont be losing any audio quality when reproducing the recording. These days a lot of home audio interfaces offer up to 192kHz meaning you can get a high recording rate.

Creation of my Sounds

We first recorded the sounds that we needed with a zoom H1 recorder and used an audio log sheet to keep track of what we had recorded at certain times. I then imported the sounds we had recorded onto Audacity, where I edited them into what I need for example when making a laser sound for my ship shooting I had the sound of a twang against a lamppost, I then used to phaser effect to increase the stats, the most important one to increase was the feedback. The frequency was also important as it created a high pitch laser sound.

 The music I did for the game was to continue playing until the player died and so I looped it in Game Maker. For the music I used a site called ButtonBass.com and merged different tracks to create my music.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2yiX7oXISHleVhIWkZiLTQyQ21pVFNqampsYXJ3NjQxOEZn

Putting the Sound into my Game

After making the sound in Audacity you now have to put it into your game to do this you would simply right click the sound tab and click create sound.










                                                      
Then when the new window opens click the little file and add the sound that you want. You should them rename the sound so you don't lose track of it in Game Maker, you can also preview it to make sure you have the right one.

Evaluation

Overall I feel that the music and sound effects I created fit very nicely with my space invaders game. The high pitch of the music really encapsulates the Si-fi genre and adds to the feel of the game. The first piece of music was roughly 4 minutes long and was looped in game maker so it would last for the entire game. Originally I thought it might be a little too repetitive but it turns out that when you're playing the game you don't really notice the background noise. In the end I was happy with this piece. The second piece was for the title screen and was called intro_music, the idea was to has it similar to the music going into the actual game but not exactly the same. The only thing wrong with this tack is the fact that it wasn't quite in time, however I felt like this added to it even more and so I kept it this way. The next three are simply sound effects one for shooting, one for an explosion, and one for the clicking of certain buttons like the start and restart ones. The laser beam turned out really well, however the sound effect triggers every time you shoot and this is quite quick and so the noise can get a bit over bearing, due to this I had to turn in down in Audacity and re apply it to my game. I kept the sound effect for the ships being destroyed quite raw, this is because of how metallic it sounded and I wanted to give that feel the ships as well. The last sound effect was simply for the clicking of buttons and so I kept it quite simple but tried to make it as relative to the game as possible.

Link to video where the sounds have been used. https://youtu.be/wg-eMEtGgE0

Faizaan's Work

World of Warcraft

Primary Data

Since World of Warcraft was originally released in 2004 there wasn't as much social media used to promote the game as there is these days. In an interview with Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard Entertainment he said "We were all extremely pleased with the success of World of Warcraft on its first day of launch, once we saw the numbers for the first day, we knew that we had to immediately increase capacity to accommodate the huge numbers of players joining our game. We're glad so many people are enjoying World of Warcraft, and we are dedicated to supporting a fun and smooth game experience for everyone."

Secondary data

The ratings that World of Warcraft received at released was very positive, the average score on metacritic is 93 and shares great scores across several rating sites. Within the first day, over 200,000 players created World of Warcraft accounts. By 5:00 p.m., over 100,000 were playing the game concurrently. These two record-breaking numbers made World of Warcraft the fastest-growing MMORPG in history. Within a single day, all original 40+ World of Warcraft servers were filled to capacity, and by the end of the weekend, more than 40 additional servers were deployed to meet the rapidly growing player base, as the number of new accounts and concurrent users continued to grow.


Target Audience

World of Warcraft was created for the new people to MMO's and for those who wanted to play MMO's but didn't have 9-12 hours a day to spend. When WoW was launched every Major MMO out was a huge time taker that majority of people did not have the time to play. Aside from this the target audience for World of Warcraft is pretty much anyone that is able to play a computer, the easy going questing or the intense raiding can appeal to everyone.

Market Audience

At the time WoW had several competitors one of the major ones being Guild Wars 2 which is very similar to WoW in many ways it has general questing and dungeon like encounters. Some of the advertisements for World of Warcraft were very odd, for example In China there was an advert in which Blizzard had a crossover advert with CocaCola in which both a man and women morph into an orc and fight over skimpy clothing, when she defeats him she is rewarded with a chest full of Coke. WoW was promoted heavily in China due to the vast amount of people living there, it simply means that it will be marketed to more people in the range of the target audience.

Production Research

World of Warcraft was released to every computer that is able to download the battle.net launcher and buy WoW, the entire idea behind WoW is to make it as readily available to as many people as possible. World of Warcraft has always been a subscription based payment system and then a full price for each new expansion. To play the game it is around £10 a month and roughly £35 for an expansion at release, it has always been this way and probably always will. Apparently to originally create World of Warcraft it took $200 million dollars for upkeep and development of the game, which took roughly 4 years to complete.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/world-of-warcraft
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EONagej8Bu8

Undertale

Primary Data

Undertale owes a lot of its success to YouTube, as the game was picked up by many major Youtubers and the hype for it only grew from there on. They didn't use many traditional questionnaires but instead used the FAQs on Kickstarter, one of the questions asked was how long the game would be and the developer replied with 2 - 4 hours.

Secondary Data

Undertale got very good reviews all round receiving an average score of 92 on metacritic and 10/10 on IGN, with people saying "The biggest surprise of 2015, a unique masterpiece.". The game currently has roughly 2,491,632 ± 45,214 owners according to steam. These numbers are incredibly high for a simple indie game that came out just over a year ago in September 2015.

Audience Research

The target audience for Undertale is quite difficult to see as it feels like the game is targeted towards everybody however the story behind it is quite dark and the gameplay can actually be very difficult and so I would place the target audience in the age range of 15 to 30. It clearly wasn't targeted at a certain gender as the main character you play as 'Frisk' is gender neutral. 

Market Audience

Apart from being advertised on Kickstarter the main way that people were informed about this game was from YouTube the some of the major Youtubers picked up the game and it basically blew up overnight. Toby Fox the developer didn't really have a choice to advertise it here however it was probably the best things that could have happened to the game. There are competitors in the form of general indie games but none of the ones I've seen really hold a candle to Undertale.

Production Research

Since release Undertale has cost £9.99 which personally I feel is a very reasonable price for this great game. The game was originally being kickstarted and had a modest goal of $5,000. The campaign however raised over ten times this amount mainly due to one aspect of the game, the fact that you don't have to fight the enemies in order to defeat them. The final amount was $51,124 with 2398 backers. The game was released on steam and so is readily available to anyone with this software installed.

http://steamspy.com/app/391540
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1002143342/undertale

Borderlands 2

Primary Research

Borderlands designer Randy Pitchford, when asked about if the game would offend people he replied, "I'm talking about if a design feels outlandish. If somebody can look at something and go 'that's coll because it's wild and different', then there's value to it, and if it's not the obvious thing then that's why it's producing that result, and makes it more valuable because its rare, it's exceptional." The developers of Borderlands 2 held a social media campaign for the game on Behance, they released a new promotional image each day in the weeks running up to the games release.
https://www.behance.net/gallery/776864/Borderlands-2-Social-Media-Campaign


Secondary Research

The game was critically acclaimed by almost all sources, averaging a score of 90 on meta critic and a 9/10 on IGN, with a lot of the sources praising the games sense of humour, World structure and RPG systems. The game has around 30 hours of gameplay and has quite a lot of replayability. The current price for Borderlands 2 is $19.99 however the price at release was roughly $40. The game was released on September 17th 2012 and currently has roughly  7,287,019 ± 76,845 owners according the steam.


Audience Research

The game is stated to be targeted at an age range of 25 - 39 year olds I think that the main buyers of the game would range from 18 - 25 year olds due to the cell-shaded graphics and over the top violence. The majority of people that play Borderlands 2 are male, this is also shown from the over sexualise characters. I believe that Borderlands 2 is made for the A,B,C1 this includes people that have the money to spend on games however I don't think the game was made with a social class in mind due to the fact that the game doesn't take itself very seriously.


Market Research

One of the major competitors for Borderlands is Battleborn, this is mainly due to the wacky characters with different abilities and weapons considering the game modes are nothing alike. Both games however see you shooting stuff with a wide variety of odd weapons. The game was actually advertised in a slightly different way, in addition to the usual TV advertisements a four issue comic was released detailing how the four main protagonists came together in the first place.


Production Research

The game was obviously released on steam and in major stores quite globally, this is in order to get the game out to as many people as possible. According to an interview with one of the developers for Borderlands 2 the game cost roughly $30 - $35 million dollars to make.



http://uk.ign.com/games/borderlands-2/pc-94190
http://kotaku.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-big-video-game-1501413649

The Binding of Isaac Rebirth

Primary Research

The developer Edward McMillan said in an interview that the game is so odd hes unsure why people find it appealing "But I don't think many people see the themes in that way. I mean, what's so appealing about a naked abused child crying on shit? I guess the real appeal is the fact that you can play it endlessly." Personally the reason i play the second game is because i enjoyed the first one so much, the advertisement for The Binding of Isaac Rebirth I actually find quite disturbing, as you can see ion the link below.
http://toucharcade.com/2016/11/01/binding-of-isaac-beta-testers/

Secondary Research

The ratings that The Binding of Isaac received were pretty great all round, receiving an average score of 86 on metacritic and a score of 9 on IGN. The game costs $14.99 and about $10 - $15 for the DLC. It was released on November 4th 2014 has currently sold 1,789,248 ± 37,858 according to steam.

Audience Research

According to multiple sources The Binding of Isaac wasn't made with a specific target audience in mind however the game is rated for mature audiences so the game definitely not aimed at children. The story behind the game is actually based on a story form the bible and some of the aspects of the game can be quite gruesome, for example an item that you can pick up makes Isaac appear to have a wire coat hanger sticking through his head. For this reason I think that it is targeted towards ages 15 - 25.

Market Research

One of the major competitors for the Binding of Isaac is Enter the Gungeon, a very similar game on multiple levels. Both games have different characters that you can play as and see you moving from room to room fighting enemies and picking up items. Each game also has bosses that you have to fight at the end of the level. The Binding of Isaac was advertised in a very strange way, the advert was a fully animated version of Isaac running into various enemies with gameplay weaved in between.

Production Research

The main place the game was released was on steam, I don't think any hard copies of the game exist, however the game is also available on the Xbox and PlayStation store. I can't find how much the game cost to develop however due to it being an indie developer I imagine that the budget wasn't as much.

Unit 13 - Understanding the Game Industry - Contracts of Employment

Unit 13 - Understanding the Game Industry - Contracts of Employment

Contracts

Contracts are an agreement between two parties, in the game industry this is quite often the developers and the publishers. These are usually a written contract that require a signature to make the contract legally binding. There is a lot of important information that is often included in contracts, this includes benefits that you may receive with the company you work for, Inventions that you may have during your time working for the company, a confidentiality agreement and a non-compete depending on if you are high enough withing the company. Some of the benefits available are simple ones like the amount that you are to be paid or any bonus pay. Health insurances could also be included and occasionally a pension plan. There is normally one clause within the contract that states anything you create within your time working at the company automatically becomes property of the company, for example if you create the idea for a game whilst working at EA, the idea would belong to them even if they don't plan on using it. The confidentiality agreement is where the employee must agree not to share any of the companies secrets, this is mainly due to the fact that they dont want anybody to find out about anything the company may have in the works, especially a competing company, the penalties for doing so are also included. Higher level employees like executives are bound to know more about the company so to stop them from giving other companies the current information they sign a non-complete saying that they aren't allowed to work for another company for a certain amount of time.

The development agreement is a type of contract that includes the terms of a development deal, this will include several things, one of the first is the Whereas, this basically says that a publishing company and a development company will work together to make one product which is the published by the publishing company. The terms are what the developers have to work with, for example the money that the publishers will pay the developers and the amount of time that they will have to complete the game. There is also the matter of ownership of the game, in the contract it is decided if the the game(or IP if based on licensed IP) belongs to the development company or the publishing company. It is occasionally split between them, for example the publishers might own the game whereas the developers might own the code for the game. Warranties are are something that both the publishers and developers have to agree to in order not to get the other party into and lawsuits, for example the developers would have to swear that they had not plagiarised any of someone else's source code as to not get the publishers sued and the publishers have to have the right to ask the developers to make a game before they start to. The terms of termination will also be written out, this is what will happen if the deal ends before the game is fully complete.

License Agreements

A license agreement is needed when a game uses an IP that is already owned by somebody else, for example Star Wars being owned by Disney. The publishers need a license agreement before they can start production on the game, this is due to the fact that the agreement will have terms included that tell you what you're allowed and not allowed to add in your game. There are several different things that can be licensed for example maybe you wanted to make a game very loosely based on Star Wars and so only needed the rights to the characters or maybe a few story elements of the movies to be put into the game. The agreement can often be limited to certain platforms for example Xbox One and PlayStation 4, if the publisher wants to have the rights to publish on another platform. The territory is part of the license agreement that states where the game is allowed to be published, if they want it published worldwide then this normally costs more. The contract is bound to run out at some point, this is called a term, a game normally loses popularity from around 3 - 5 years and so this usually how long the contracts last. The cost for the license will be stated in this contract as well, the cost is usually paid upfront and then the royalties are based on the amount of units sold or occasionally percentage based.

NDAs and Confidentiality

A Non-Disclosure-Agreement is when one of the company tells the other information, this could be plans for future games or new technology they have in the works. The other company has to agree not to share this information, if they do then the first company can file a lawsuit against them. Some of them go into more detail than others in specifying that the party that doesn't comply must pay all legal fees. But as long as you're going to keep the secret confidential, those clauses then they won't apply. 






http://www.sloperama.com/advice/article58.htm https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/non-disclosure-agreements http://www.inc.com/encyclopedia/licensing-agreements.html
http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1577