Level 18 - Process
You may have come across the term Beautiful Corners on your game development journey. This is a common tool that art and production teams use to show what a game will look like to players when it ships. Put simply, it is a small area of a game that is taken to a final polish level before the rest of the game. It has many uses such as evaluating the artistic vision, finding risks, and demonstrating value.
While it shares similar goals to tools like Vertical Slice and Minimum Viable Product, it is unique because it serves as an art focused deliverable. This focus allows it to be completed with fewer dependencies and defined pipelines in place, therefore it can come much earlier in the development process. It is often paired with a gameplay prototype to showcase the team's vision. These two tools create a powerful demonstration of what the game team is capable of accomplishing.
Image Credit: A Playful Production Process by Richard Lemarchand
Definition
A Beautiful Corner (BC) refers to a small area of an environment built in the game engine that has a high level of visual polish.
Purpose
This game production tool is similar to Vertical Slice, First Playable, or Minimum Viable Product. It is an evaluation and feedback focused deliverable most commonly used in the first half of development. It is specifically targeted at the Art goals of a project. It is most commonly used to:
Evaluate the outcome of the art direction vision early in the development process
Demonstrate the art team's ability to produce quality environments to stakeholders
Bring a new art team up to speed and measure their ability to execute the art director's vision
Focus & Constraints
A Beautiful Corner effort is focused on art only. Because they are an early development tool, final pipelines and performance optimization tools are not yet finalized.
Final art quality representation: The art created will rarely be shippable because of the early nature of the goal, but it should be indistinguishable to a non-developer from shippable art.
In Engine Art: The BC should be completed in the game engine. This is important because your goal is to represent what it will look like to players. To accomplish this, you must use the rendering engine.
No Gameplay: If it is early in development, you will be unlikely to have the tools needed to make these areas performant with all the VFX, shaders, and complex assets. Adding additional features will take away from your goal.
Level Standards: It's beneficial if design has locked down their standards for environments before this effort begins
Benefits
Vision Realization: Helps team members understand and realize the art vision for a project
Demonstrating Value: Shows stakeholders, publishers, and funding partners what the end product will look like
Optimization Tool: These environments can be used by Engineering and Tech Art teams as tools to help them plan out performance optimization.
Things to Watch Out For
Over Polish: Avoid excessive polishing beyond the required level. Be conscious of what your final game's target is. Set the right expectations.
Size: Choose the smallest area that achieves your goal. Some, if not all, of your work will need to be retouched or recreated. The larger the area you choose, the more rework will be required.
Multiple Goals: Be cautious about adding additional game features. Performance is always a challenge on early environments due to optimization pipelines not being fully developed. This is primarily an art tool. If your team wants to combine efforts, consider staggering milestone goals to allow the art team to move on before feature teams begin their work.
Conclusion
By focusing on this small, highly polished area, the team can efficiently communicate their vision and showcase the value without committing extensive resources to a larger, potentially less flexible demonstration.
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