Heather Maxwell Chandler is a multimedia producer with over 20 years of experience in the video game industry. She's worked in production at Epic Games, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, and Activision. She was most recently a Senior Producer on Fortnite.Heather has contributed to over 35 games, including Fortnite, Never Alone, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, Sid Meier's Railroads, Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia, Vigilante 8, Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield, Shanghai: Second Dynasty, and Apocalypse. She also worked on every title in the Ghost Recon series, including Ghost Recon 2 and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. In 2005, Heather founded Media Sunshine, Inc., a company that provides consulting services to game developers and publishers. She is the author of The Game Production Handbook, The Game Localization Handbook, and several other articles on game development and localization. Her articles have been published in Secrets of the Game Business and The Project Manager's Desk Reference, 3rd Ed. Heather has lectured on game production and development at North Carolina State University, the Game Developers Conference, IGDA Leadership Forum, and at several other conferences and educational institutions. She served as the chairperson of the IGDA Production SIG from 2006 - 2010. Heather graduated with honors from Vanderbilt University and received an M.A. from the USC School of Cinema-Television.

Part 1 Overview

Chapter 1: Game Industry Overview 3

Chapter 2: Developer and Publisher Overview 25

Chapter 3: Legal Overview 43

Part 2 Creating the Prototype

Chapter 4: Laying the Groundwork 57

Chapter 5: Creating Concept 81

Chapter 6: Prototyping 95

Part 3 Establishing Requirements

Chapter 7: Schedule 105

Chapter 8: Budget 121

Chapter 9: Pitching Your Game 129

Part 4 Assembling the Game Team

Chapter 10: Hiring Talent . 147

Chapter 11: Team Organization . 157

Chapter 12: Managing Your Team . 167

Chapter 13: Outsourcing . 183

Part 5 Making the Game

Chapter 14: Executing the Plan . 191

Chapter 15: User Experience (UX), UX: Written in Collaboration with Celia Hodent . 205

Chapter 16: Audio 215

Chapter 17: Localization 231

Chapter 18: QA Testing . 245

Part 6 Launching the Game

Chapter 19: Getting the Word Out 259

Chapter 20: Releasing to Players . 265

Part 7 Appendices