Pre-production
Also said as Preprod
The phase in which a small team works out what the game is and how to make it, with prototypes, tools and plans, before a large team is hired to build it.
A question costs a small team a week. The same question found later costs a full team a month, because all of them are waiting for the answer.
Say it
“We stay in pre-production until there is a fun prototype, a vertical slice and a costed plan. Fifteen people until then. No hiring for content until those three exist.”
Where you’ve seen it
Kotaku's 2019 report on BioWare's Anthem described nearly seven years of development in which key decisions kept being put off, and said that most of the game that shipped was built in the last 18 months or so.
Not to be confused with production
Pre-production decides what to make, and it is allowed to throw work away. Production makes it, and throwing work away is now very expensive.