Let's conclude our discussion on preparing your game to ship. Now let's talk a bit about packaging your game. Packaging of games has changed dramatically over the years. From the arcade cabinet to box product on the store shelf, to online presence of a purely digital product. The packaging can be viewed as both the in-game packaging, what you see on the screen in the game, and the out-of-game packaging as shown here. In-game packaging includes things like the splash screen and loading sequence, main menus, credits, attractor screens, and the game icon. In general, the goal is to build a strong brand within your game and create a smooth user experience. Out-of-game packaging includes things like the game's name and description, screenshots and other promotional graphics, the game's trailer and installers or custom web templates. In general, the goal is to introduce the game to potential players and encouraged folks to get the game and play it. One of the out-of-game packaging items is screenshots. Screenshots should build excitement while representing the game. Generally, you want to include your title screen and a few in-game screenshots. You can consider doctoring screenshots with overlays and titling. But most players frown on you changing the actual game footage as represented within the game. In addition to screenshots, one of the best ways to showcase your game is through a game trailer. Game trailers should be short. Typically 30 seconds to one minute is enough, but you should not exceed two minutes. Impactful. Engage the audience and build excitement about your game and make it high-quality. If at all possible, try to create high resolution visuals with high-quality audio and don't forget the epic music. The typical structure of a trailer includes an introduction. The goal of the intro is to build suspense and set the stage while communicating who made the game and the name of the game. The body. The goal of the body is the show off the game while communicating what makes the game fun and interesting. Unless you are creating an early teaser trailer for an unfinished game, your primary visual in the body should be gameplay footage itself. The conclusion. The goal of the conclusion is a call to action to communicate where you can find and play the game or if it's coming soon, when to expect it. One of the challenges of creating a game trailer is recording gameplay footage from your game and then editing it into a compelling trailer. There are several popular screen capture and video editing software tools you can use. Some are built into the operating system. Some are open source like OBS, and some are commercial software for sale like Camtasia or ScreenFlow. I encourage you to check out trailers from other games to get some inspiration for your game trailer. Once you have a high quality impactful game trailer, you need to get it out to the world, announce your game to your friends and family through social media, is one way to help your game go viral. I have found that adding a trailer to your posts helps garner likes and shares. You should also put the trailer on any internet presence you have for the game. You can also often include the trailer within digital distribution channels as well. Another thing to consider is creating an installer for your game. That is, move beyond creating a zip archive for your players to download, extract, and play. This just feels a little hacky and probably too technical for the casual player. Creating an installer makes the game feel more legit. It also helps with more complex setup. Fortunately, some platforms like iOS and Android handle the installation for you. But this is not the case on the PC. There are several tools out there to create Windows or Mac installers. I personally have used InnoSetup on Windows and DropDMG on the Mac to create installers. Take a moment to consider the packaging of your game, including your game's description, what media you need to create or gather, such as icons, screenshots, and trailers and if there are any other packaging you need to do for your game, such as creating an installer or building a web presence. Pause the video now to think through these items. Okay, let's finish up by thinking about your games distribution channel. Typically, you'll figure out the distribution channel early in development and it will be dependent on the target platform. We spoke a bit about this in the business of games talk in Course 4. For purposes of the Capstone Project, I assume most of you will be targeting things like PC executable, including Windows and Mac, or a web-based game, or a mobile game, including an iOS and Android. A few of the popular distribution channels for these target platforms are shown here. Take a few moments to consider these distribution questions for your game. What platforms are you targeting? What are the best distribution channels to reach your target audience on these platforms? What are the barriers, if any, to get on these channels? Often when developing games while learning, I try to use channels that have a low barrier to entry, like H.IO or Game Jolt. Once you begin to create games professionally, then you can pursue the distribution channels with higher bars of entry. Overall, preparing a game to ship is not easy. There are a lot of details to consider and get right to end up with a successful launch. I encourage you to use this checklist as you prepare your game to ship.
