According to industry veteran Troy Dunneway, creator of CG Spectrum’s Game Design Diploma, because players expect cinematic quality graphics, 75-90% of the game budget goes to design.

The main stages of production
There are several stages to the game development process.
Prototype: this is the initial testing of the game (which takes place during the pre-production stage and is detailed above). Some games may never make it past this stage.
First playability: the first playability gives a much better idea of the look and feel of the game. Although it is still far from final, fills are replaced with better assets and illustrations are added.
Vertical Slice: A vertical slice is a fully playable sample that can be used to present your game to studios or investors. A vertical slice, from a few minutes to half an hour, allows you to see the game firsthand.
Pre-alpha: Much of the content is developed during the pre-alpha phase. Several important decisions will need to be made during this phase of game development. Content may be cut, or new elements may need to be added to improve gameplay.
Alpha: The game is “complete,” which means that all major features have been added and the game is playable in its entirety from start to finish. Some elements, such as art assets, may still need to be added, but the controls and features should work properly. QA testers will make sure everything works smoothly and report bugs to the team.
Beta: at this stage, all content and resources are integrated, and the team should focus on optimizing rather than adding new features or functionality.
Gold master: the game is final and ready to be sent to the publishing house and released to the general public.

One of the best-selling games of all time, Minecraft has over 100 million monthly active players.

Key roles in game development
Game development roles vary depending on the size and type of studio. Here are some of the common positions you’ll find.

Project Manager
The project manager makes sure that the game development process runs smoothly, milestones are met, risks are predicted/reduced, and team members do what they are supposed to do. They are often the center of communication between developers, design teams, and executives. Project managers are exceptionally organized and must have excellent communication and people skills.

Game Developers / Programmers.
Game programmers help develop games by turning design concepts into code to create playable games. Programmers are specialists with extensive programming experience, and have the combination of creativity, math skills, and patience to successfully translate ideas into interactive visuals and sounds. They ensure that the game runs smoothly.

There are many different aspects of programming, including:
Creating a custom base engine for the game
Scenario features, events, interactions
Creating physics (e.g., differences in gravity in a game whose action takes place in space)
Development and modification of 3D graphics renders
Simulating artificial intelligence in enemies
Adding sound effects, music and voice-over
Implementation of game logic and mechanics
Creating UI
Writing code for keyboards, mice or joysticks
Enabling players to compete or collaborate over a local network or the Internet
Develop your own tools
Porting code between platforms
Implementing algorithms, solving memory and caching problems
Bug fixing and detection

At larger studios, you’ll find specialists dedicated solely to AI game programming

Game designers
A game designer is a creative game driver, and generally a mixture of a writer and an artist, with knowledge of programming. A section of the game design pipeline involves creating compelling stories, characters, goals, rules, and objectives that encourage interaction with other characters, users, or objects. Designers may be responsible for:

Developing the storyline, character backstory, and dialogue
Developing gameplay, rules, and scoring system
Determining the level of difficulty
Building environments, protrusions, obstacles, and objects
Level and world design
Programming / scripting
Digital editing
If you work for a larger company, these tasks may resemble individual roles, which we’ll look at next.

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In 1889, Japanese Fusajiro Yamauchi founded the world’s first company Marufuku. The firm was engaged in the production of Hanafuda playing cards. In 1907, the firm was renamed Nintendo Koppai, which became the largest interactive entertainment company. The first prototype computer game was created in the United States, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This game was called Space War and was designed for two players. Its essence was that the two spaceships had to shoot each other down with their rockets. However, in those days, the game did not get the attention and popularity due to the high cost of personal computers and everything associated with them. Two other games were released during the same period:
“Tennis,” whose developer was William Higinbotham;
“OHO” (a computer version of “tic-tac-toe”), developed by Sandy Douglas.

A few decades later, in 1972, Nolan Bushnell released a well-known game called “Pong”, the essence of which was to keep the ball on the playing field with the help of special plates. This event was truly one of the most important in the history of computer games. Then began to appear the first games in the genre of adventure, racing and others. A few years later was released first gaming console with a single game, and then its counterparts with multiple games. Since then, personal computers and gaming consoles are constantly improving, and games for them became functional, interesting and brighter. There was a whole market for the computer industry, which in its turnover and investment outpaced even the market for the film industry.

Computer games are complex programs that serve a person for training or entertainment and are designed for different age groups. Now we can classify all computer games by the following topics:

• Adventure. These computer games are decorated as a cartoon with some interactive features – the ability to manage the main character. These games train intelligence and logical thinking. The main character on his way to meet different subjects that help him increase his abilities, or, conversely, can cause damage. The character gets into different adventurous situations.
• Strategies. Ability to control an army, energy or other similar items. Here you need to be able to plan, calculate your forces and act depending on the situation. These are quite difficult games, but they form perseverance and the ability to plan your actions in advance.
• Arcade. This multi-level toys, go to the next stage, you can only perform specific tasks and get a special award. For this game is characterized by a system of points, which the player receives for the passage of a particular mission. This game develops good eye and attention.

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The programming language is the most important tool for game development. Whether or not all of the game’s requirements will be realized depends on the capabilities of the language. With the help of a programming language occurs:

• Creating 2D or 3D;
• Binding to the game images, sounds and video;
• implementation of the gameplay, etc.

The second important tool for creating computer games is the engine. Nowadays it is very rare to create games without an engine. The engine is a finished game module, which contains the basic functionality for games. All that remains to do is to “tighten” the engine to your needs. This is what a programming language is for.

Depending on the engine, heavy games are mostly written in C# or C++.

Game mechanics
It seems that once the game’s objectives are prescribed, the development team is engaged, and the tools are selected, then there is only coding and coding to do. That’s how it is, but before they start “hard-coding”, the developers have to work a long time on the mechanics of the future game. In fact, the mechanics of the game is the implementation of gameplay:

• shows how the characters should move;
• How the characters should react to gamers’ actions;
• what should happen when shots are fired;
• how the balance in the game should be implemented, etc.

Where the gameplay takes place
This is where the levels and maps of the game are worked out. All of the stages so far are just a set of rules and requirements for the game. Now their implementation takes place. In serious projects to develop the game levels hire special specialists – level-designers. Very often these specialists are avid gamers who understand the gameplay more than just programmers.

During the development of levels is working out all the possible gameplay processes. Players in the game will be a lot, and they are all different, so you have to anticipate different game situations and calculate the various options for player behavior. And with all that the visual component of the game should be as realistic and believable as possible. That’s why the development of maps and levels takes the lion’s share of time.

Game’s exterior design
Mechanics of the game is ready, levels, maps thought out, now it remains to give a beautiful and realistic look scenery, maps, vehicles and game characters.

Creating the look of the game very often starts with a sheet of paper and a simple pencil. Then the drawings are “touched” by 3D artists, who create virtual models of game objects based on the drawings. These game objects are then touched by developers, who incorporate them into the gameplay. And only then various special effects are added to the game, levels are “decorated” with backgrounds, trees, landscapes, etc.

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1. Pre-production
   This is where every project begins. Essentially, pre-production defines what the game is about, why you should make it, and what it takes to make it. You may have a great idea for a type of game, a story you want to bring to life, or you may want to create one that uses a certain type of technology (like VR, a new controller or console). In the pre-production phase, you should have answers to questions such as:

What is the game about?
Who is our target audience/users/audience?
Are there analogs in this market? What is the competition?
What platform will the project be created on?
How will it be monetized? Will it be sold on the platform or will it be sold for free with in-game purchases?
How long will it take to develop?
What staff and resources will it require?
What is the estimated budget?

This phase can take anywhere from a week to a year, depending on the type of project, available resources and finances, and usually takes up to 20% of the total production time.

2. Production
   Production is the longest phase of the pipeline. It takes anywhere from 1 to 4 years, and that’s when the game really starts to take shape. The story is refined, resources (characters, creatures, objects, and environments) are created, game rules are established, levels and worlds are created, code is written, and more!

Almost everything in video games is a conscious decision. This includes all characters, environments, object, as well as appearance, colors, sounds, difficulty level, rules, and scoring system. However, initial ideas don’t always translate that well, so the game is constantly being tested and refined as the work progresses.

3. Post-production
   Once production and release is complete, the game development process continues, and some team members are relegated to maintenance (fixing bugs, creating patches) or creating bonus or downloadable content (DLC). Others may move on to a sequel or the next project.

There can be a debriefing to discuss what worked and what didn’t work and to determine what could have been done better next time. All project documents, assets, and code are finalized, collected, and stored in case they are needed in the future.

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Why is that? Because the storyline needs to be worked on constantly if we want the game to be popular. With this approach, even after the game is released, it is always possible to “tighten up” the plot or even develop a new one.

Initially, the story is not just a “game story” like: this character has to go here and there, but to do this, he must perform these tasks. Developing a plot is not just, by plot we mean:

all the random events that can happen in the game;
dialogues and interactions between players;
video insertions;
narratives, etc.

Sound in the Game
Sound in a game is as important a component as anything else. No matter how cool the game is, if it is not accompanied with the same sound effects, no one will play it.

The sound creates the atmosphere of the game and helps to understand the gameplay better. At the same stage of voicing characters, adding background music and mn.dr. Sometimes these actions invite professional musicians to write tunes and professional actors to voice the characters.

Soundtrack appeared, and now we can approach the final stage.

Game Testing
At first sight it may seem that as the game was created by real professionals, what can happen to it. But practice shows that anything can happen. Usually each described stage is the work of a separate team of specialists who do their job “perfectly”. But then all their work is put together in a single project, and conflicts in their work and bugs in the game can happen. That is why testing is carried out.

Testing is the final stage of game development. There are different types of testing. Usually the game ends up in the hands of professional testers who can spend months on it, rewriting all the bugs that occur on their way. Then the testers’ reports are sent to the programmers, and they fix all the bugs.

The next phase in testing is the release of the game for a limited number of players. That is, the game is not in the hands of professional testers, but in the hands of professional players who just play the game and report all the bugs that arise. Such game testing can also take several months.

But even these events do not allow to find absolutely all bugs in the game. That is why “fresh” games are being “improved” even after the mass release.

Game sale
Everything about the game’s development is completed at the testing stage. After testing, all that remains is the release of the game to the game market, as well as its further maintenance.

Let’s be honest. When creating a grand project, one of the goals is to “make money.” Therefore, usually at this stage in the game taken by professional publishers, whose responsibilities include taking care of advertising and successful sales of the project. Usually cooperation with publishers begins with the first steps of game development, in which case publishers very often become investors in the game.

Of course, you can advertise and sell your game on your own and without publisher’s help – it is not unusual. In that case, you will have to work quite closely on the tools to distribute the game – this may be an online marketplace or “hard” media for the game.

Game tech support
Like a game created, posted on the online site and brings the money – it’s time to “score” on it and quietly consider earnings somewhere on the islands. But in practice this is not the case. For the popularity of the game to grow and not fade, it must be constantly maintained and improved. As we said before, even after the game is released it will have a lot of bugs to fix.

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