The software development cycle

The cycle of software development has six steps:

1. Analyze
A company may want a game for their product like Sunny Delight, so they send out an advertisement in this case to a media magazine for someone to make their game. A game company will see the advert and send in a pitch of their idea for the game and how much money they will need for the development and how long it may take. Another way of doing this is the product company want a specific game to be made and when game making companies pitch their design on the game they asked for they choose their favorite.  More successful companies would pitch their own ideas within the company itself such as Epic games who thought up and made gears of war in their own studio.

2. Quote and Approved
If the company like the pitch the game company sent in they will fund the game company to make the game and approve the development of it. Companies such as Bungie who made Halo would pitch their ideas to the project manager who will approve the development team to produce the game if they like it.

3. Mockup
The game company will use the money they recieved to design the game and start making ideas for it. There would be no point to start the mockup earlier becasue the company may refuse their pitch so it's best not to spend to much time on the game before they have approval to make it. This is where the company starts the design and art style. 343 Industries who made Halo 4 had to re-design some enemies hundreds of times before getting the right stye.

4. Create
The development team will desgin the coding, art style and gameplay to make an Alpha version of the game. They will design all the character, models, buildings and play style. This will be done by Programmers, Scripters and Artists. Throughout all the creation of the game the Programmers will make versions of the game to be Alpha tested until they have a stable game which can be put into further testing by targeted public. Many of the game developers played with game testers during the creation of Halo 3 while the game was in Alpha and Beta.

5. Stage and Test
While testing the game they may keep going back to stage 4 as they find things wrong with the coding and gameplay and if the production manager looks at the final product and does not like it they will refuse to pay money for it and make the development team re-design it. When Alpha testing is complete the game will be put into Beta where the company may release an early version of the game for the public to test. E.A. Games released a free to play beta for battlefield 3 so they could get feedback from the public.

6. Release
Once the project manager and the company have approved the final version of the game they will allow the game to be released. There still may be problems in the game that testers missed but this is where day one patches come in to play and the game will finally be released to the public. Many players exploited glitches and mistakes missed out by game testers in Halo 4 until 343 Industries released an update stopping these exploits.