Intro To Game Development | What is Game Development, Roles in Game Development

Games.

Something that every single one of us have played or so i hope, as if you have not, then you are missing out big time.

Games are fun and they take your mind away from the chaotic world that is our normal life.

Whether it be Exploring a Dungeon, Building a Farm, Living a Simulated Life, Controlling a Swinging Monkey or whatever else that floats your boat, the world of games has a game for you that will make you fall in love with it.

Now, every single game that has ever been created has an exceptional bullheaded person like Eric Barone or a group of really dedicated people behind it as in spite of the fact that Games are fun to play they can, for a lack of better word, be a bitch to create.

In today’s post, I’ll be introducing the Art of Game Development to you and will be covering What Game Development is , various Roles in Game Development and finally we will be talking about your Recipe of Success as a Game Developer

that is in what way you should approach Game Development to get satisfactory results from your journey as a Video Game Developer.

This Post is Part of : How To Make A Game Series where i’ll be showing you how to become a game developer and will be going over the basics of Game Development, Step by Step, using the Unity Game Engine and C# Scripting Language to script the Game Logic.

If you are new to Game Development or Programming in general you should definitely go through this Unity Tutorials article series as it will set give you a kick-start towards becoming an exceptional Video Game Developer.

If you are interested in Game Development, then you might like this article on Add Some Unpredictability To Your Games

in which i talk about how by adding an appropriate amount of unpredictability to your game mechanics

you can make a more interesting game which would be played and talked about for years by your player base.

What is Game Development?

Now let’s move on and talk about what Game Development is.

In it’s core, Game Development is the art of making games and it contains the process of designing, developing, testing and releasing the produced game.

There are a lot of aspects that needs to be thought of when making a game like Game Art, Sound Design, Game Mechanics, Level Design, Storyboarding and many more but the primary and the most important aspect that you as a game developer needs to pay attention to is to make sure that your games are engaging and fun to play.

Unlike Movies and TV Shows which are Passive Entertainment, Games require people to actively engage with the Game’s Content and if your Game is Not Engaging, it’s No Good.

Now, the team that you will require to develop a game can be of any size from a single person to a whole Game Development Studio with hundreds of employees.

The only difference it will make is that if you are doing it alone you will be wearing a lot a different hats and you will need to learn all the aspects of developing a game which will take quite a lot of time to get a hang of while if you have a larger team the workload will be divided between your team based on your team member’s specialties.

This will in turn result into you producing the games faster.

Also because your team members are specialists in their fields you might produce a better quality game as sometimes even though you try to be the king of artists or emperor of code you are not.

It is possible that all you know is how to open your softwares and there is no shame in that as everyone started there.

Roles in Game Development

Now with that done, let’s talk about the various Roles in Game Development.

If you are working in a team, to get involved in the Game Development process, you do not need to know how to write code.

Instead, you can get involved in other roles like as a Game Designer, Game Artist, Level Designer, Sound Engineer or maybe a Game Tester.

Now let’s talk each of these role and what they do in the development process

Role Of Game Designer / Video Game Designer In Game Development

The key role of a Game Designer is to come up with and think over the rules that will govern your game and will make your game fun to play.

You can consider Video Game Designers as dreamers who come up with crazy ideas and then think about whether this idea is workable or not. If an idea is workable then they will convey this idea to the rest of the team.

It is game designers who usually decide what the player can and cannot do, how the Game’s AI will behave, then think about how to progressively increase the level difficulties of your game and all in all just what kind of experience the player will finally get when playing your game.

Role Of Game Artist In Game Development

The key role of a Game Artist is to work out the visuals of the overall game.

Video Game Artist will come up with preliminary designs of characters, environments, and other assets based on your game’s intended message, art style, and genre.

Then from those sketches and concepts which can be considered as prototypes for the final design, game artists will create the final production level 2D or 3D content.

If you are working in a studio, usually, all the game artists work under the direction of a lead artist. This lead game artist is the most experienced specialist who is responsible for working out a specific artistic vision of the whole project.

Video Game Artists might also create artworks for the game’s packaging, promotional materials, and websites.

And finally Game Artist is actually a really broad term in Game Development which covers a lot disciplines like Modeling, Animation, Rigging, Texturing, Concept Artist and what not.

So, if you are working in a game studio as an game artist you might only be actively working on one of these aspects of game art.

Role Of Game Programmer / Game Coder In Game Development

The key role of a Game Programmer is to write code for all the aspects of the game.

Game Programmer or as some might call it, Game Coder, are your team members who will bring the Game Design Concepts of the Game Designers and the 2D and 3D Art developed by the Game Artists together with their logical glue and create a world which the development team as a whole envisioned.

Now just like Game Artists, Game Programmer or Game Coder is a really broad term as there are a whole lot of things that the programmers do like writing code for : Game Physics, AI, Graphics, Sound, Gameplay, User Interface, Input Processing, Networking and what not.

So, if you are working in a game studio, based on how big that studio is you will be working on any one or couple of these sections of Game Programming or if you are part of an indie team then you might be the only programmer and might be in charge of coding everything.

As a Game Programmer or Game Coder you might also be constantly working with Game Designers and Level Designers to create Development Tools to increase their productivity.

Role Of Level Designer In Game Development

The key role of a Level Designer is to design and create levels and obstacles for the player using the concepts and rules that the Game Design team has come up with.

A good Game Level Designer needs to see the game from a Player’s Perspective and understand the flow of the game.

They need to understand where to give a lull to the player and where to add high intensity sequences so that the player is constantly engaged with the game.

Role Of Sound Engineer & Foley Artist In Game Development

Next we have the Sound Engineers and Foley Artists whose key role is to be responsible for everything related to sound in your game.

I don’t know much about this area so my apologies but what i can tell you is if your game does not have good background and environment sounds to create the ambiance you are doing something wrong.

Try watching a cooking video with only a voice over and without any environment sound of your utensils and worktop interacting with each other you will see how annoying it is.

You can try creating a huge green pasture in your game with 4k textures on everything looking extremely beautiful. Your animals and birds can be seen grazing and flying in the sky but no environment sounds at all.

No Sound of the Morning Breeze, Or the Birds Flapping their Wings
No Sound of Sheep Eating Grass, Or the Sound of Player’s Footsteps.
None of that.

I think you get my point.
Sound Is Important Don’t Mess That Up.

We as humans need feedback sounds and if they are not there most people playing your game will feel that something is wrong.

Sound Engineers and Foley Artists on your team will make sure that this side of your Game Development is taken care of.

Role Of Game Tester / Video Game Tester In Game Development

Next are the Game Testers, who as the name suggests will test your game to check not only for bugs in your game but also to make sure that the overall quality of the game is up to the par.

Video Game Testers will check from an End User / Player’s Perspective what the flow of the game feels like, check if all the Functionalities are working as intended, check if your Graphics Quality meets the standards of the current time and will also try to do crazy things to break your game.

It takes very skillful people to find the bugs and issues and they should have a very good understanding of the game from a technical point of view to do their job well.

Recipe of Success For Game Developers

Now this is where i need to be super blunt as there is one thing which is a fact :
Game Development is a Hard Job especially if you are a Solo Game Developer or part of a Small Indie Team.

As a Solo Game Developer you need to be extremely talented in multiple disciplines as you at the very least you need to understand and execute the bare minimum required for all the Roles that were mentioned above and on top of that you have to also understand and implement the marketing and sales part in the later phase of game development while developing the game.

Another point is that if you are doing it alone and working on a quality project then it will take a long time to complete the game and here the time frame I’m taking about is in years. So, you need to have the guts and sheer bullheadedness to stick to your guts and passion of developing games.

Also, though i seriously advocate against doing it, you will probably be saying goodbye to your social life as after a long day at your job while developing the game at the side you will literally have no energy left for any social gatherings.

While if you are developing your game full time then i would suggest that you start diversifying and building an audience through YouTube, Your Website or a Social Platform while you are developing the game.

What this will do is,

If you are able to monetize the audience it will bring in some money.
You can get feedback on your ongoing projects and work on those suggestions to solve any problems that your audience points out.
You will be able to market to your audience directly in the later phases of your development to build some traction.
If you do it well, you will have some people who are actually interested in you and your game. This is important as you are fighting with the big dogs with huge pockets and marketing budget for your audience’s gaming budget. If your audience does not know you or your company then you are just another random dude or a corporate entity trying to get their money.

All in all what i can say is the Recipe of Success for you as a Game Developer is dependent on you and your preferences but what is absolutely required out of you is

Extreme Bullheadedness and Passion to stick to your game.
Decisiveness when making Game Development choices.
Willingness to be stuck alone in your den for weeks if not months and listen to your audiences feedback whether it be negative or positive.
Guts to market yourself and your game even if your are afraid of the negative feedback.
Ability to bring in some income to keep you afloat while you are working on your game.

Developing Games is a Business so from the First Day you get into it, look at it from that perspective. Develop a Great Game, Market it well and give awesome Customer Support.

That’s all there is to it.

Conclusion

Well folks, i hope that this information will be helpful to you.

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