Making of a video game

Making of a video game

If you have ever thought how a video game is made or what is the process of making of video games then in this blog i am going to tell you the step by step process of video game development and how video game development companies actually develops them in simple terms so let's start our blog on the video game development process

So when we are talking about the video games development process we must know that making a game is not a cup of cake it requires a team of 20 to over 100 peoples depending upon how big the game which takes months or rather years to complete the game the budget of making a AAA title game can range anywhere between $5 m to over $100 m and sometimes even more than making a film or music video so video game development is a costly task which requires a big team and time to complete 
If it's a indie game than an individual person can also make it or it will require a small team with very low budget and the game will be published online an indie game is basically a small game with less features and low graphics usually a 2-D game 

Before we start discussing the development process or making of video games let us first have a look of different branch of teams that are required in making video games

• Designer- designs game play,rules of the game,structure of the game,different levels of the game,user interface graphics etc

• Programmer- writes the code for different aspects of the games such as game physics,game mechanics,game engine,Artificial intelligence,U-I etc to make the game actually work

• Artist- creates game art such as textures,environment,animation,2-D and 3-D environment,cinematic etc

• Sound engineer- is responsible for the in game sound effects,music,voice over,sound creation etc of the game

• Writer- writes the dialogues,script,content,story etc of the video game

• Tester- tests the different levels and their features in the game in detail and gives information of any type of bugs in the software or any type of glitch in a particular level or in any other aspect of the video game

So this was the team required for the making of a video game now we are going to talk about different phases of video game development
so basically it is divided into three phases

P-r-e production

• This is the starting period of making of a video game and during this period

• The whole concept of the game is being discussed such as story,game play,script,interface,how the game will look and works,features etc and then the team finalizes about the concept of the game

• Then the budget of the game and different task and schedule of working on the game is being discussed along with it's genre,marketing strategies,platforms on which it is going to be released etc 

• Then the idea is shown to the publishers if the publishers and after their approval the further development is started

• Designers outlines the games concept and specifies parts of the game,mechanics and story line etc

• Programmers creates a prototype based on the design document

• Artist creates concept art and character illustrations

• and many more things such as tool creation,content writing,content design,artistic work etc is done during p-r-e production

Production

This is the real video game development process of a video game and video game development companies divides the work of making a video game between the teams every team work according to their requirements we have talked about the teams and their works which are required in the development of a video game 
Let's talk about some other important things during a development phase

• Level creation- creation of different levels of a video game usually the first level takes the most time to complete and a new feature is being added to the new level all the previous levels should be updated so this is a very tedious task

• Testing- testing of the game is done after the development of a particular level to test that level in detail but after the game is made then their are phase of testing a video game and various versions of game are released to test it like:-

1. P-r-e alpha
2. Alpha
3. Beta

During the development and testing phase their is a point when new code is no longer added to the game and only bugs are being corrected this point is known as code freeze
After the testing phase is done and bugs are fixed the game is manufactured by the publishers and is ready to be shipped after the shipment of the game the production phase ends

Post production

After the production phase ends the post production of the game begins there are various things done during the post production such as

• Maintenance- After the development the maintenance of the game is necessary for fixing the bugs in the game for that patches are released by the video game development company to fix bugs and glitches

• Marketing- marketing of the game is also necessary by advertisements,releasing demos etc so that more and more people will become interested in it some of the biggest events such for showing game trailers and demos are Electronic entertainment expo(E-3) and Penny arcade expo(P-A-X) 

So this whole information on how video game development companies develops a video games and what are process of video game development and how the whole works is done among the teams 

If you like my blog do like,share,subscribe to it for more such gaming information and gaming related things and do comment for any suggestions or queries