In the current entry of our digital informative digest, you will learn all the useful information regarding the production of video games in general, and more subliminally, about the game development lifecycle. At least once every one of us, while playing a favorite title, has caught ourselves thinking: “Something is missing here”, or “If a certain feature were introduced here, the gameplay would become much more immersive and exciting”, and, of course, “I definitely could do it better”. But have you ever wondered what the process of creating a product from concept to release involves, what challenges and pitfalls you may encounter, and why many projects, spearheaded by famous game designers, never made it to release or failed shortly afterward? Let’s try to figure out where to begin the journey of creating your own title, what to consider at certain game development and design phases, and how to avoid mistakes that could bury the whole project. Process of Video Game Development in Short The game development pipeline involves several core stages. At the first, pre-production pipeline, a general design of the future game is created, and a design document describing the universe, gameplay mechanics, and lore is written. In addition, the design document contains a game core loop – which is a chain of actions that your players keep performing as their main experience. Also, the first graphic concept, which usually includes the sketches of levels and characters is created so later on it will determine the style of the upcoming product and serve as a guide for artists and 3D modelers. In this stage, some studios bring in the art director to ensure the game’s visuals adhere to a uniform art style. The design document and drawings are also crucial to attracting the attention of publishers, gaming-related media, and various reviewers in the pre-production stage. Suppose the project has no problems with funding. In that case, the second, production stage starts, which first and foremost involves assembling a diverse team of various specialists, developing your own or customizing one of the existing game engines to suit your needs, creating graphic, three-dimensional, and audio content, coding, implementing and testing game mechanics. All of the foregoing can be encompassed by the broad term “game design”. A game designer makes sure the game in general follows the design document and core mechanics. This person also works on keeping the game balanced. The product goes through development and internal testing to alpha and beta versions, which are thoroughly checked and tested, sometimes by conducting open access with the participation of a specified number of players (open/public alpha/beta tests). At some point after the final checks and tests, the title “goes gold”, meaning that the game build is ready for further distribution or release throughout the various digital stores and, in the case of PC/console versions, on physical carriers (Blu-ray discs mainly). But work on the game doesn’t end after its release. The video game post-production timeline includes updates and bug fixes, DLCs, and the players’ community development and support. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? But the truth is that creating a high-quality game is a rather complicated and time-consuming development process with a lot of pitfalls and difficulties that everyone, eager to create a name in the industry will have to face. Let’s take a closer look at the game development process step by step. Pre Production Pipeline Any theater begins in the garderobe and any title starts from the idea. Pre-production in game development involves multiple linked processes but, first of all, someone comes up with the idea of creating a new product, and usually, this person takes the lead game designer role in the project. Gradually or with the help of collective brainstorming, it is decided on its main constituents, core features that can catch the future players’ attention; will the title bring something radically new, or exploit already known and time-proven technologies and content? Based on the planned actions, a genre is chosen, for example, a real-time strategy or a first-person shooter. It is absolutely common that in the course of work, the genre and the whole game concept may change and undergo a significant reworking, depending on different circumstances such as publisher/investor vision of the project, global market needs, or funding cuts. The game designer decides what the images of the characters and the game world will look like, and makes preliminary drawings – concept art. The game receives a provisional name, which may be clarified or changed over time. At this stage, a concept document is composed, which highlights the essential key elements of the project for both internal (company employees) and external audiences (publishers, potential investors) and justifies why it will be beneficial to create this game. This document describes the product in general, its initial story, and gameplay, and usually contains samples of concept art. And last, but not least – assembling a developers team. We offer you a short list of specialists that form the team usually involved in video game development. Note that the list below does not include A-levels and is rather an approximation, as the team structure depends on the developer’s financial capabilities, goals, and other factors. There are a large number of AAA studios and one-man projects in the industry nowadays and they can’t be compared to each other. Mandatory team roster Game designer – develops the project’s concept and its main features. Thus, they create the basic mechanics, gameplay logic, and characters, and afterward adjust them throughout the whole future video game production. Usually, a game designer already is experienced working in different roles in the industry. Depending on company size there can be several specialists in this role: lead designer, and those who are each responsible for their aspects like characters, levels, gameplay mechanics, or title storyline. Project Manager – responsible for the coordination of the team performance during the game creation. This person defines obligations, and sets & controls deadlines for each task for every company department. The recruitment of a strong project manager is essential for the adherence to budgets and pipelines, and the success of the project overall. Programmers – develop and improve the product code. They are the one who creates the core game mechanics and file architecture of the project. There is a wide range of programmer specialties like game engine, back-end programmers, or even AI specialists, but altogether they usually form a development team. Artists and Modelers – they create animations, work with textures, 3D models, and UI/UX design. Often departmental division is implemented, where one artist deals with level design, another one with VFX, and a third is responsible strictly for character animation, etc. Their work is usually coordinated by an art director who is in charge of the game’s visual components consistency. Depending on its size the development team can also include numerous tight-knit specialists Sound designers and composers – sound designers record and process sounds, music, and character’s speech. They are also responsible for the correspondence between surrounding sounds and gameplay scenes. Composers create the game’s soundtrack. The music for it can be performed for record or combined from the free samples, task-dependent. Screenwriters and/or narrative designers – develop the game story, and form the general plot and side storylines. Also, they are in charge of generating exciting and immersive storylines, lore, dialogues, objects and character details, and many more. Marketing team – With the current level of information technology and the level of competition between publishers and developers, it is crucial to engage potential users in the game long before its release. That’s where these guys come in. Generally marketing department combines a variety of specialists, each in charge of a different area of expertise: SMM, PR, community, email marketing, ASO, targeting, and direct advertising. Occasionally, especially for startups and indie studios, proper marketing is already equal a half of a project’s success. Major studios working on AAA projects can afford to employ such specialties as motion-capture actors, voice-over actors, and their own internal testing department. But, if you’re reading this article, the odds that you’ll need such narrowly focused specialists on the payroll are pretty slim, so we won’t focus your attention on them. Okay, the game design process is all set up, the team has been recruited, and timelines and funding have been determined. Everything is set up. Now it’s time to start the production phase. Production Pipeline The longest game development stage, where most ambitious projects go off the rails due to broken pipelines and commitments to publishers, funding problems, and inappropriate marketing campaigns. However, most of these problems can be avoided if you treat the pre-production pipeline responsibly and thoughtfully. This phase consists of three separate, yet closely aligned and interrelated processes: coding, content creation, and gameplay mechanics development. Let’s say a few words about each one of them. Coding Since a video game is a computer program, everything it consists of, its operation, technical capabilities, content, and gameplay are provided by program code. In general, video game productionincludes the same stages as the development of any software, but involves more content and specific game mechanics. Modern titles are mostly based on ready-made software modules – game engines that already implement not only basic, but advanced functions that can connect video, sound, objects, and motions. To customize the engine for specific needs, programmers modify it by adding the necessary functions or plugins. Some engines are designed to create games of a specific genre, while others are universal. Not all engines can provide the same in-game features and graphics level. Some engines allow you to create products for different platforms, and some support only one or two of them. You can find a detailed breakdown of the comparison between two of by far the most popular game engines available nowadays in our previous blog. The main thing that you should clearly understand when choosing an engine for your title is that starting the video game-making process on one engine, and then moving it to another, is an extremely challenging and complex task that involves the colossal loss of time, effort, the necessity of searching for the new specialists and, in fact, the loss of all previously created material. Therefore, the choice of engine on which you are planning to develop your product should happen at the early video game pre-production stage and correspond not only to your ambitions but also to your capabilities. Content creation Creating content for a game is an utterly broad concept that involves the efforts of a wide variety of professionals listed above. Here’s a brief description of how this happens. A video game involves the creation of video, sound, and text content. Visual concept art is made in both paper and digital versions. On their basis, artists adopt and create 2D or 3D models of characters, objects, and environments. To make the models move, they need to be animated. Using the complete program code different sets of movements are created, which correspond to the player’s, NPCs and environment-specific actions and states. In the case of 2D graphics, this process includes creating a sprite set, with each image being a separate frame. To provide realistic 3D movement or emotions, industry-leading studios use motion capture technology of live actors. After the motion is captured by sensors, it is transferred to a corresponding digital character. Sound design includes music composing and character scoring. In addition, for a full-fledged sound design, certain effects are needed, such as footsteps or gunfire. They can be selected from free open-source libraries or recorded exclusively for the title. Here you are only limited by your imagination and funding. Many composers specialize in creating music originally for video games. The soundtrack can be performed by whole orchestras followed by an original accompaniment. Character dialogues are often voiced by professional actors at sound recording studios. Many games contain video cut-scenes created in 2D or 3D. Major studios often use live actors who are filmed and sets are built for video inserts. Another important component of content making is the lore and narrative of the upcoming title, which serves the purpose of building a solid game world, its storyline, and ultimately the player’s immersion in the gameplay. Sometimes even professional and acclaimed writers are brought in to write a game’s lore. Gameplay mechanics Mechanics determine gameplay intensity and the rules by which a video game is played. The basis of the mechanics is in-game objects, such as characters, objects they can manipulate, and the active environment. Part of the mechanics is control, which includes manipulating the character and the world around and for example, setting the direction of movement, of virtual objects activation. In addition, during mechanics development, a UI is created that informs the player and allows him to interact with the surroundings. Games are usually divided into levels (locations) so that the player’s device is not overburdened with the entire world calculation. But in modern releases, the world is often designed in such a way that it does not have clear divisions into locations, or, in other words, open-world or sandbox. Level designers place pre-made objects in the environment and plan their behavior. In general, the overall layout of the levels determines the excitement and the opportunities the player will have to solve a particular situation. The game’s physical engine is responsible for the objects’ behavior that takes place without the player’s control. It implements the rules of inertia, gravity, fluid behavior, and the physical properties of various objects. And finally, AI is in charge of the characters and NPC’s behavior, and their reactions to the actions performed by a player. Often many plot game events are scripted, which means that the events themselves are invented by scriptwriters, and the scripts themselves are implemented by programmers to trigger properly. Impressive, isn’t it? And we have only slightly mentioned the processes involved in the game production cycle. But let’s assume you’ve managed to fit into the game production timeline, you haven’t exceeded the budget, you haven’t beaten the pots with the publisher or investors, and there are no critical bugs in the product code. But, before your title “goes gold”, you have one more very important phase to go through, i.e. testing. Testing Once the code, content, and gameplay mechanics are complete, and synchronized, and the product receives a functional version, it is finalized. A game that is not fully assembled but is still playable is called an alpha version. It may contain significant bugs and deficiencies, such as the absence of certain features, music, or objects. Sometimes alpha version provides only a small part of the planned content or just a short tutorial. Existing problems are usually identified by testers who scrutinize the alpha build, trying to take full advantage of all the available features and searching for all possible bugs for the game developers to fix before the next stage. Larger companies have their own internal teams of testers, smaller ones usually run a closed alpha test among a limited number of users, or even organize a large-scale public testing. Usually, at this stage, developers record a promotional trailer, offering the potential players the possibility to take a quick look at the core gameplay features and provide them with an overall insight into the product. At the next stage, a beta version is released, which is offered to the public and can be tested by all potential buyers of the game. In this version, further search for errors takes place, as well as final checks of the correct interaction of game world objects and controls. Generally, this is the one final opportunity to make edits or changes to the design, game balance, and various product details before the release. Release Well done! Our congrats! You’ve made it, and your title, made with the sweat and tears of the dev team is finally ready. Take your time, and breathe out, because it’s the turn of the game’s immediate sales on the supported platforms and in the online stores. You’re lucky if your product has a publisher and very lucky if your company is a developer and publisher at the same time. And if you don’t, you have the following to deal with: Marketing of the finished product, i.e. organizing PR various activities and events aimed at getting the attention of the gaming community forward your product. Participation in all kinds of online and offline events. ASO optimization to satisfy the online store’s requirements. Game localization, namely translation and voice-over of your product into the language of the country where you plan to publish it. Adaptation of your product to the laws and culture of the countries where it is planned to be published. Keep in mind that the laws in different countries or even states are quite diverse and, sometimes, to get access to sales in a certain country, you have to make edits in gameplay, or even cut a portion of restricted content. Undertake the printing and distribution of the hard copies. (If it was planned to) And also prepare to face various force majeure circumstances that can affect direct sales. Video Game Post Production At last, all the challenges are left behind, everything is working just fine, revenues are growing, and the dev team is away on their long-awaited vacation. That is the well-deserved result of your efforts! But one more little issue remains, and it’s called post-production. After the game is released, it may reveal previously unknown bugs. Or the players may disapprove of a certain game aspect, for example, the difficulty. In this case, developers are going back to their workplace in order to release patches that fix bugs and add certain improvements. Developing and releasing patches does not generate revenue by itself, but can increase the total sales as the product becomes more attractive for users. To maintain further interest in your title it’s crucial to release various add-ons and expansions, which, in addition to fixing bugs, add new features and content to the original game. This means that the development workflow continues. Is it all worth the result? Our answer is: “Definitely yes!” No hardship can compare to the satisfaction of creating the game of your dreams. So go for it!
In the current entry of our digital informative digest, you will learn all the useful information regarding the production of video games in general, and more subliminally, about the game development lifecycle. At least once every one of us, while playing a favorite title, has caught ourselves thinking: “Something is missing here”, or “If a certain feature were introduced here, the gameplay would become much more immersive and exciting”, and, of course, “I definitely could do it better”. But have you ever wondered what the process of creating a product from concept to release involves, what challenges and pitfalls you may encounter, and why many projects, spearheaded by famous game designers, never made it to release or failed shortly afterward? Let’s try to figure out where to begin the journey of creating your own title, what to consider at certain game development and design phases, and how to avoid mistakes that could bury the whole project. Process of Video Game Development in Short The game development pipeline involves several core stages. At the first, pre-production pipeline, a general design of the future game is created, and a design document describing the universe, gameplay mechanics, and lore is written. In addition, the design document contains a game core loop – which is a chain of actions that your players keep performing as their main experience. Also, the first graphic concept, which usually includes the sketches of levels and characters is created so later on it will determine the style of the upcoming product and serve as a guide for artists and 3D modelers. In this stage, some studios bring in the art director to ensure the game’s visuals adhere to a uniform art style. The design document and drawings are also crucial to attracting the attention of publishers, gaming-related media, and various reviewers in the pre-production stage. Suppose the project has no problems with funding. In that case, the second, production stage starts, which first and foremost involves assembling a diverse team of various specialists, developing your own or customizing one of the existing game engines to suit your needs, creating graphic, three-dimensional, and audio content, coding, implementing and testing game mechanics. All of the foregoing can be encompassed by the broad term “game design”. A game designer makes sure the game in general follows the design document and core mechanics. This person also works on keeping the game balanced. The product goes through development and internal testing to alpha and beta versions, which are thoroughly checked and tested, sometimes by conducting open access with the participation of a specified number of players (open/public alpha/beta tests). At some point after the final checks and tests, the title “goes gold”, meaning that the game build is ready for further distribution or release throughout the various digital stores and, in the case of PC/console versions, on physical carriers (Blu-ray discs mainly). But work on the game doesn’t end after its release. The video game post-production timeline includes updates and bug fixes, DLCs, and the players’ community development and support. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? But the truth is that creating a high-quality game is a rather complicated and time-consuming development process with a lot of pitfalls and difficulties that everyone, eager to create a name in the industry will have to face. Let’s take a closer look at the game development process step by step. Pre Production Pipeline Any theater begins in the garderobe and any title starts from the idea. Pre-production in game development involves multiple linked processes but, first of all, someone comes up with the idea of creating a new product, and usually, this person takes the lead game designer role in the project. Gradually or with the help of collective brainstorming, it is decided on its main constituents, core features that can catch the future players’ attention; will the title bring something radically new, or exploit already known and time-proven technologies and content? Based on the planned actions, a genre is chosen, for example, a real-time strategy or a first-person shooter. It is absolutely common that in the course of work, the genre and the whole game concept may change and undergo a significant reworking, depending on different circumstances such as publisher/investor vision of the project, global market needs, or funding cuts. The game designer decides what the images of the characters and the game world will look like, and makes preliminary drawings – concept art. The game receives a provisional name, which may be clarified or changed over time. At this stage, a concept document is composed, which highlights the essential key elements of the project for both internal (company employees) and external audiences (publishers, potential investors) and justifies why it will be beneficial to create this game. This document describes the product in general, its initial story, and gameplay, and usually contains samples of concept art. And last, but not least – assembling a developers team. We offer you a short list of specialists that form the team usually involved in video game development. Note that the list below does not include A-levels and is rather an approximation, as the team structure depends on the developer’s financial capabilities, goals, and other factors. There are a large number of AAA studios and one-man projects in the industry nowadays and they can’t be compared to each other. Mandatory team roster Game designer – develops the project’s concept and its main features. Thus, they create the basic mechanics, gameplay logic, and characters, and afterward adjust them throughout the whole future video game production. Usually, a game designer already is experienced working in different roles in the industry. Depending on company size there can be several specialists in this role: lead designer, and those who are each responsible for their aspects like characters, levels, gameplay mechanics, or title storyline. Project Manager – responsible for the coordination of the team performance during the game creation. This person defines obligations, and sets & controls deadlines for each task for every company department. The recruitment of a strong project manager is essential for the adherence to budgets and pipelines, and the success of the project overall. Programmers – develop and improve the product code. They are the one who creates the core game mechanics and file architecture of the project. There is a wide range of programmer specialties like game engine, back-end programmers, or even AI specialists, but altogether they usually form a development team. Artists and Modelers – they create animations, work with textures, 3D models, and UI/UX design. Often departmental division is implemented, where one artist deals with level design, another one with VFX, and a third is responsible strictly for character animation, etc. Their work is usually coordinated by an art director who is in charge of the game’s visual components consistency. Depending on its size the development team can also include numerous tight-knit specialists Sound designers and composers – sound designers record and process sounds, music, and character’s speech. They are also responsible for the correspondence between surrounding sounds and gameplay scenes. Composers create the game’s soundtrack. The music for it can be performed for record or combined from the free samples, task-dependent. Screenwriters and/or narrative designers – develop the game story, and form the general plot and side storylines. Also, they are in charge of generating exciting and immersive storylines, lore, dialogues, objects and character details, and many more. Marketing team – With the current level of information technology and the level of competition between publishers and developers, it is crucial to engage potential users in the game long before its release. That’s where these guys come in. Generally marketing department combines a variety of specialists, each in charge of a different area of expertise: SMM, PR, community, email marketing, ASO, targeting, and direct advertising. Occasionally, especially for startups and indie studios, proper marketing is already equal a half of a project’s success. Major studios working on AAA projects can afford to employ such specialties as motion-capture actors, voice-over actors, and their own internal testing department. But, if you’re reading this article, the odds that you’ll need such narrowly focused specialists on the payroll are pretty slim, so we won’t focus your attention on them. Okay, the game design process is all set up, the team has been recruited, and timelines and funding have been determined. Everything is set up. Now it’s time to start the production phase. Production Pipeline The longest game development stage, where most ambitious projects go off the rails due to broken pipelines and commitments to publishers, funding problems, and inappropriate marketing campaigns. However, most of these problems can be avoided if you treat the pre-production pipeline responsibly and thoughtfully. This phase consists of three separate, yet closely aligned and interrelated processes: coding, content creation, and gameplay mechanics development. Let’s say a few words about each one of them. Coding Since a video game is a computer program, everything it consists of, its operation, technical capabilities, content, and gameplay are provided by program code. In general, video game productionincludes the same stages as the development of any software, but involves more content and specific game mechanics. Modern titles are mostly based on ready-made software modules – game engines that already implement not only basic, but advanced functions that can connect video, sound, objects, and motions. To customize the engine for specific needs, programmers modify it by adding the necessary functions or plugins. Some engines are designed to create games of a specific genre, while others are universal. Not all engines can provide the same in-game features and graphics level. Some engines allow you to create products for different platforms, and some support only one or two of them. You can find a detailed breakdown of the comparison between two of by far the most popular game engines available nowadays in our previous blog. The main thing that you should clearly understand when choosing an engine for your title is that starting the video game-making process on one engine, and then moving it to another, is an extremely challenging and complex task that involves the colossal loss of time, effort, the necessity of searching for the new specialists and, in fact, the loss of all previously created material. Therefore, the choice of engine on which you are planning to develop your product should happen at the early video game pre-production stage and correspond not only to your ambitions but also to your capabilities. Content creation Creating content for a game is an utterly broad concept that involves the efforts of a wide variety of professionals listed above. Here’s a brief description of how this happens. A video game involves the creation of video, sound, and text content. Visual concept art is made in both paper and digital versions. On their basis, artists adopt and create 2D or 3D models of characters, objects, and environments. To make the models move, they need to be animated. Using the complete program code different sets of movements are created, which correspond to the player’s, NPCs and environment-specific actions and states. In the case of 2D graphics, this process includes creating a sprite set, with each image being a separate frame. To provide realistic 3D movement or emotions, industry-leading studios use motion capture technology of live actors. After the motion is captured by sensors, it is transferred to a corresponding digital character. Sound design includes music composing and character scoring. In addition, for a full-fledged sound design, certain effects are needed, such as footsteps or gunfire. They can be selected from free open-source libraries or recorded exclusively for the title. Here you are only limited by your imagination and funding. Many composers specialize in creating music originally for video games. The soundtrack can be performed by whole orchestras followed by an original accompaniment. Character dialogues are often voiced by professional actors at sound recording studios. Many games contain video cut-scenes created in 2D or 3D. Major studios often use live actors who are filmed and sets are built for video inserts. Another important component of content making is the lore and narrative of the upcoming title, which serves the purpose of building a solid game world, its storyline, and ultimately the player’s immersion in the gameplay. Sometimes even professional and acclaimed writers are brought in to write a game’s lore. Gameplay mechanics Mechanics determine gameplay intensity and the rules by which a video game is played. The basis of the mechanics is in-game objects, such as characters, objects they can manipulate, and the active environment. Part of the mechanics is control, which includes manipulating the character and the world around and for example, setting the direction of movement, of virtual objects activation. In addition, during mechanics development, a UI is created that informs the player and allows him to interact with the surroundings. Games are usually divided into levels (locations) so that the player’s device is not overburdened with the entire world calculation. But in modern releases, the world is often designed in such a way that it does not have clear divisions into locations, or, in other words, open-world or sandbox. Level designers place pre-made objects in the environment and plan their behavior. In general, the overall layout of the levels determines the excitement and the opportunities the player will have to solve a particular situation. The game’s physical engine is responsible for the objects’ behavior that takes place without the player’s control. It implements the rules of inertia, gravity, fluid behavior, and the physical properties of various objects. And finally, AI is in charge of the characters and NPC’s behavior, and their reactions to the actions performed by a player. Often many plot game events are scripted, which means that the events themselves are invented by scriptwriters, and the scripts themselves are implemented by programmers to trigger properly. Impressive, isn’t it? And we have only slightly mentioned the processes involved in the game production cycle. But let’s assume you’ve managed to fit into the game production timeline, you haven’t exceeded the budget, you haven’t beaten the pots with the publisher or investors, and there are no critical bugs in the product code. But, before your title “goes gold”, you have one more very important phase to go through, i.e. testing. Testing Once the code, content, and gameplay mechanics are complete, and synchronized, and the product receives a functional version, it is finalized. A game that is not fully assembled but is still playable is called an alpha version. It may contain significant bugs and deficiencies, such as the absence of certain features, music, or objects. Sometimes alpha version provides only a small part of the planned content or just a short tutorial. Existing problems are usually identified by testers who scrutinize the alpha build, trying to take full advantage of all the available features and searching for all possible bugs for the game developers to fix before the next stage. Larger companies have their own internal teams of testers, smaller ones usually run a closed alpha test among a limited number of users, or even organize a large-scale public testing. Usually, at this stage, developers record a promotional trailer, offering the potential players the possibility to take a quick look at the core gameplay features and provide them with an overall insight into the product. At the next stage, a beta version is released, which is offered to the public and can be tested by all potential buyers of the game. In this version, further search for errors takes place, as well as final checks of the correct interaction of game world objects and controls. Generally, this is the one final opportunity to make edits or changes to the design, game balance, and various product details before the release. Release Well done! Our congrats! You’ve made it, and your title, made with the sweat and tears of the dev team is finally ready. Take your time, and breathe out, because it’s the turn of the game’s immediate sales on the supported platforms and in the online stores. You’re lucky if your product has a publisher and very lucky if your company is a developer and publisher at the same time. And if you don’t, you have the following to deal with: Marketing of the finished product, i.e. organizing PR various activities and events aimed at getting the attention of the gaming community forward your product. Participation in all kinds of online and offline events. ASO optimization to satisfy the online store’s requirements. Game localization, namely translation and voice-over of your product into the language of the country where you plan to publish it. Adaptation of your product to the laws and culture of the countries where it is planned to be published. Keep in mind that the laws in different countries or even states are quite diverse and, sometimes, to get access to sales in a certain country, you have to make edits in gameplay, or even cut a portion of restricted content. Undertake the printing and distribution of the hard copies. (If it was planned to) And also prepare to face various force majeure circumstances that can affect direct sales. Video Game Post Production At last, all the challenges are left behind, everything is working just fine, revenues are growing, and the dev team is away on their long-awaited vacation. That is the well-deserved result of your efforts! But one more little issue remains, and it’s called post-production. After the game is released, it may reveal previously unknown bugs. Or the players may disapprove of a certain game aspect, for example, the difficulty. In this case, developers are going back to their workplace in order to release patches that fix bugs and add certain improvements. Developing and releasing patches does not generate revenue by itself, but can increase the total sales as the product becomes more attractive for users. To maintain further interest in your title it’s crucial to release various add-ons and expansions, which, in addition to fixing bugs, add new features and content to the original game. This means that the development workflow continues. Is it all worth the result? Our answer is: “Definitely yes!” No hardship can compare to the satisfaction of creating the game of your dreams. So go for it!
Except for the text adventure? Definitely, the easiest will be a Space Invaders-style 2D shoot-em-up with a minimum of required content and visual effects. It’ll be perfect for testing your skills
As for October 2023 the most profitable genres are: RPG > $20 billion Strategy > $16 billion Puzzle > $9 billion Casino > $8 billion Shooter > $4.6 billion Simulation > $4.5 billion Action > $4.5 billion Sports > $2.7 billion
Based on the 2023 Statista data 39% of World game developers live and work in the USA and 12% in Canada.
Minecraft. Released in 2009 by Mojang it sold more than 300.000.000 copies worldwide. For example, highly acclaimed GTA 5 “only” sold 100.000.000 copies.
