The World of Computer Gaming

Preproduction is the stage during which the production team and development team expand upon their initial concept, begin to get a visual and technical feel for the game, and prepare financially and managerially for the task of creating the game. A large part of preproduction is creating a design document. The design document is created by the game designer and the art design department to show examples of how they believe the video game should look. It gives the production team an idea of the game's visual style and art direction, and helps everyone on the development team gain a singular vision of the game at hand.

On the technical side of things, preproduction allows the programmers a chance to play around with the video game engine that will run the actual game. If the game is going to have some exciting new lighting effects or a new physics engine, preproduction is where the programmers will have an opportunity to show an early example of how they plan on actually pulling off these new game-specific technologies.