What are the devlopment stages in game design or any software project for that matter ? Thanks in advance (looking for things like alpha .. beta .. etc)

From what little I know about software development processes, recent teachings say *not* to stick to a linear "waterfall" system, but make the development phase consist of many cycles of "design, implement, debug" and so on.

Of course, your question isn't implying a "waterfall system".

Also, I'd say the case is a little different with games, because they really do have a single release date. You don't (as a gamer) replay a game because the version number has gone up.

So, nearing the release date, there will be a phase where no new things should be added, and the remaining time will be spent on bug-fixing and balancing. You can really call this what you want, but most people call it alpha. Beta, I think, would come after that, when the game is reasonably stable and pretty much in its final form.

But this is just a matter of names. AFAIK, there is no fixed standard on that.

As randomZ pointed out, there's not an industry standard. However, a typical project runs like this:

* Concept -- An idea gets kicked around by a designer. He might get an artist to help him with concept art and a programmer to do some simple prototyping. The goal is to create a pitch that can be used to sell the idea to managment or a publisher.

* Preproducion -- The concept is greenlighted. The designer fleshes out the concept into a full production document. The art lead sets the visual style. The programming lead produces a technical design document that lays out the system architecture. Schedules and budgets are drawn up.

* Production -- The team ramps up to full size and the bulk actually making the game begins. Progress is tracked using milestones every few months. If the game is being funded by the publisher, payment is often tied to hitting these milestones.

Near the end of production are a few key milestones:

* Alpha -- The game is feature complete, but very rough. All the play mechanics are in, as are all the levels, but some areas have placeholder art, there are lots of bugs, and not much in the way of play balance.

* Beta -- The game is essentially done. All of the final assets are in place and the game plays well enough to be shown publicly, although it will probably have another few months of polishing and bug-fixing before it's released.

* Golden Master -- The game is really done. It's burned onto a disk and shipped off to a plant to be manufactured.

Quote: Original post by Brian Upton

* Alpha -- The game is feature complete, but very rough. All the play mechanics are in, as are all the levels, but some areas have placeholder art, there are lots of bugs, and not much in the way of play balance.

* Beta -- The game is essentially done. All of the final assets are in place and the game plays well enough to be shown publicly, although it will probably have another few months of polishing and bug-fixing before it's released.

These vary a lot though. Most games I've seen didn't use Alpha for "feature complete".

Sometimes, Beta is feature complete, and sometimes not even that, and it won't be feature complete until somewhere near the end of beta. It varies a lot, and there's no one standard

Quote: Original post by randomZ
From what little I know about software development processes, recent teachings say *not* to stick to a linear "waterfall" system, but make the development phase consist of many cycles of "design, implement, debug" and so on.

The analysis phase is missing, which comes before the design phase. Without that one you can't do the design because you don't know the requirements of what you are trying to implement and such.

But these are just the general development phases I learned back in university. There many different concepts of how to do this, many follow the same general outline, others are very different and only used in certain branches of software development (the military for example made its own development model if I remember correctly, but I don't know if they are still following it or not).

Mostly you'll get to see something along the lines of what has been posted here already, I would say.