The game development industry is vast and rapidly developing. The development of any game, even a small indie game, is always a multi-level, multi-stage process. Below we consider game development checklist.
What is Game Development?
GameDev is the process of creating different games. You should know that the game developer can be one person or an entire studio. To create an excellent AAA game (the highest category is commercially profitable game products with a big budget from the best studios in the world), the right decision will be to deal with a studio with an excellent team.
Professions in GameDev are diverse and are not always associated with the direct creation of the game. The professional studio employs also marketers, musicians, artists and many others. On these people the success of the game product depends no less than on a level designer or a specialist in visual graphics.
What types of games exist?
Video games are divided not only into genres. Due to the fact that there are many devices for games, then games are different.
There is a huge list of genres, ranging from extensive role – playing games – where the player literally lives the role of a certain character, fighting, developing social skills, making friends and romantic interest, dressing up, traveling around the big world and doing much more – and ending with clickers on mobile devices, where the whole process of the game is reduced to monotonous clicks on the screen. It is precisely because of the genre diversity that work in game development is interesting and suitable for different personalities.
Some popular game genres:
- role-playing game;
- online game;
Apart from the divisions by genre, games are divided into the platforms on which they work. According to this aspect, there are several types of games:
- Console. For PlayStation, XBox, and Nintendo game consoles.
- Computer. For computers.
- Mobile. For smartphones and tablets.
- Browser-based. For browsers.
The process of creating a game from scratch
Each game is created differently, but there are several basic steps that make up the development of a video game.
A brief description of each stage:
- Pre-production. The initial process in which the idea and the basic concept (here you may know about android concept art) are invented. In the publisher-developer relationship, the initial concept is presented to the publisher. Sometimes a working demo version is required, in which the general idea of the project and its “chips” will be clear. The game designer is the main person responsible in this process. Concept art is also created here, a script is written, prototypes of levels are designed. If necessary, engines are created.
- The main development. This is where the whole layer of work takes place, on which the final project depends. Programmers, visual effects creators, artists, sound engineers, level designers and other specialists work. Everything is controlled by the game designer and the project manager.
- Testing. The testing stage of the game. It can take from a couple of months to a couple of years. Testers should identify bugs and errors, as well as help optimize projects. In rare cases, testing affects the game so much that it returns to the main development step for the purpose of editing.
- Support. The last stage, starting after the release of the project. Developers are releasing patches that improve and fix various elements of the game. If this is an online game, then support takes place throughout its “life”.