game-development-orchestration

name	game-development-orchestration
description	Use when initiating, replanning, or governing a complete game project from concept through vertical slice, production, certification, and post-launch; routes specialist game skills and prevents premature full-production commitment.
metadata	{"portable":true,"compatible_with":["claude-code","codex"]}

Game Development Orchestration

Coordinate a game as an evidence-gated product programme. Convert the creative premise into a playable risk-reduction sequence, then route each discipline to the narrowest specialist skill.

Prerequisites

Load world-class-engineering, anti-ai-slop, lean-game-product-development, and the project's cultural/research governance before making irreversible product decisions.

Use When

• Starting a mobile, PC, console, web, 2D, or 3D game project.
• Converting research or a narrative premise into a game concept and production plan.
• Defining an MVP, prototype, vertical slice, milestone plan, staffing model, or backlog.
• Auditing whether a project is ready to move from discovery to production.
• Coordinating design, engineering, art, audio, QA, release, and live operations.

Do Not Use When

• A bounded implementation task already has an approved design; use the relevant engine or discipline skill.
• The request is only for generic mobile application development; use the Android, iOS, or mobile-cross family.
• The game depends on unverified living-culture, historical, legal, market, or platform claims; research and verify those claims before locking content.

Required Inputs

Input	Required	If absent
Player, platform, business and cultural context	yes	Run discovery and record assumptions
Creative pillars and non-goals	yes	Draft and obtain owner confirmation
Target device classes and connectivity posture	yes for mobile	Commission a device study
Team, schedule, cash and rights constraints	yes	Keep estimates conditional
Existing prototype, repository and evidence	conditional	Inspect before planning changes

Workflow

1. Load world-class-engineering, anti-ai-slop, and ai-slop-audit.
2. For culturally grounded, historical, legal, market, or current-platform work, use the Digital Research Skills Engine and preserve its source and claim trail.
3. Frame the player promise, core interaction, target platform, age/education posture, business model, safety/wellbeing boundaries, and definition of success.
4. Create the concept brief, design pillars, fact/fiction/permission ledger, high-risk assumption register, evidence-class map, and prototype questions.
5. Slice work into paper test, technical spike, playable prototype, vertical slice, pre-production, production, alpha, beta, release candidate, launch, and support.
6. Route hypotheses, prototypes and learning gates to lean-game-product-development; do not use a feature list as proof of viability.
7. Route mechanics to mobile-game-design and gameplay-systems-architecture; route interactive narrative, agent AI/navigation and Blender production to their specialist skills; route mathematical contracts to game-math-and-simulation; route technology to one approved engine after the bake-off gate.
8. Route graphics implementation to real-time-game-graphics; route player-facing HUD, art direction, game feel and children's/educational experience to the game route in design-system-skills. Route lifecycle requirements and traceability to srs-skills; do not duplicate either engine's craft.
9. If advertising is a candidate, apply the non-intrusive-ad gate before vendor or placement selection: clearly label it, require explicit choice or a predictable non-critical break, cap and pace it, preserve core play and exit/save/recovery, and define a no-ads/degraded path. Apply stricter child, privacy, store and owner rules.
10. Hold a gate at every phase. Advance only when the named evidence exists; otherwise narrow scope or run another experiment.
11. Close each milestone with the repository Delivery Definition of Done evidence pack.

Quality Standards

• Prove fun, comprehension, cultural safety, technical feasibility, cost, and market access separately.
• Treat the vertical slice as production-risk evidence, not a miniature content dump.
• Maintain one decision register, one dependency map, one playable build lineage, and one prioritised backlog.
• Make every milestone answer a decision. Do not fund activity without a learning or delivery outcome.
• Preserve version-sensitive engine and store facts as dated, verified constraints.
• Keep documentation, prototype, build, device, observed-player and accountable-expert evidence separate; never promote one class into another.
• Keep learning, engagement, retention, wellbeing and commercial measures separate. A retention pass fails when regret, harmful spend, inability to stop, sleep disruption, child-safety incidents, refunds or trust materially worsen.

Anti-Patterns

• Starting full production from a narrative document. Fix: prototype the highest-risk interaction first.
• Calling a greybox a vertical slice. Fix: require representative art, audio, controls, pipeline, performance, and release evidence.
• Choosing an engine by preference. Fix: run the same representative scene on target devices.
• Treating research as lore decoration. Fix: keep claim, creative adaptation, consultation, and permission ledgers.
• Planning every feature as mandatory. Fix: use must/should/could/will-not and define the smallest complete player promise.
• Hiding uncertainty inside precise schedules. Fix: use ranges, confidence, dependencies, and contingency.
• Letting discipline plans diverge. Fix: reconcile them at milestone and change-control reviews.
• Calling a platform-compliant ad non-intrusive. Fix: also test expectation, interruption, accidental-tap risk, decline/recovery, frequency, wellbeing and trust in the actual game.

Outputs

Artefact	Acceptance condition
Game concept and player-promise brief	Names player, action, emotion, platform, differentiation, exclusions
Game design document map	Links controlled system specifications rather than one stale monolith
Risk and assumption register	Has owner, test, evidence, date, impact, disposition
Prototype and vertical-slice plan	Each build answers explicit product, cultural, technical, and commercial questions
Production roadmap and backlog	Scope, dependencies, roles, estimates, gates, contingency and exit criteria are visible
Decision and release evidence	Another team can reproduce why the project advanced

References

• Project lifecycle and gates
• Game documentation set
• Kaizen game production loop
• Narrative and gameplay playtest loop
• Behaviour telemetry and tuning

Decision Rules

Evidence state	Decision
Core player action is not enjoyable or understood	Iterate or stop; do not increase content
Art direction works but target-device frame and memory budgets fail	Simplify pipeline and content before staffing up
Cultural or rights gate is unresolved	Use a fictional substitute, obtain permission, or remove the content
Learning claim lacks an age/construct/measure/comparator	Keep it a hypothesis; obtain educational-method approval and evidence
Ad interrupts play, learning, narrative, save, recovery, stopping, or safety	Remove or redesign it; platform minimums do not override the Chwezi gate
Vertical slice meets player, pipeline, device, cost, and governance gates	Approve bounded pre-production or production
Budget runway cannot cover milestone plus contingency	Reduce scope or fund the gate before committing

Read Next

• mobile-game-design for interaction, sessions, controls, UX, accessibility, economy, and player testing.
• lean-game-product-development for inception, hypotheses, prototypes, learning and gate decisions.
• game-math-and-simulation and real-time-game-graphics for mathematical and rendering contracts.
• unity-mobile-game-development, godot-mobile-game-development, or unreal-game-development after the engine decision.
• apple-game-platform-delivery, online-multiplayer-and-game-backend, game-build-release-engineering, and game-security-anti-cheat-and-abuse for their platform, online, release, and trust boundaries.
• game-2d-art-animation-and-vfx-pipeline, game-3d-asset-pipeline, blender-game-asset-production, game-narrative-and-interactive-story-design, game-ai-behaviour-and-navigation, level-world-and-content-production, game-data-analytics-and-live-economy, game-studio-delivery-and-commercial-operations, and game-accessibility-localisation-and-player-safety when those production lines are in scope.
• game-testing-polish and mobile-game-release-liveops before any ship claim.