How Video Games are Developed
Hello creatives,
Today, as I continue to walk through the ways in which a story can be adapted, I’m going to talk about how video games are developed.
To recap, I’ve already recently covered:
How visual novels are a bridge between publishing and vide games
Why story arcs change between novels, film, and video game adaptations
The Phases of Video Game Development
If you are at all familiar with film development, then you may find yourself comfortable with the terms for the phases of video game development.
There are five distinct phases to video game development:
Concept
Pre-production
Production
Testing
Release
These five phases require a broad range of expertise and subsets of teams to accomplish depending on the size of the project. Let’s dig into how video games are made.
The Steps to How Video Games are Developed
Like filmmaking, the concept is the core of the project. This phase mirrors the details you may find in a show bible or a pitch deck. It’s the business case and the heart of what project partners will resonate with. Your concept will need to cover the genre, key characters, storyline and main player mechanics as well as target audience, and potential market for the game.
Pre-production is where details of the core concept start to get ironed out. Artist renders of the basic aesthetics of the game and characters begin to take shape, the Game Design Document (GDD) will start to flesh out the finer details of gameplay, and the technical requirements needed for software development are determined.
Production encompasses the bulk of video game development. This process can take years of dedicated teams working on every single tiny detail. These details may involve:
Programming. This includes writing code to handle the branching logic for possible player interactions and anticipating how players will interact with the game and well as managing the physics of character movements and environmental world building.
Story and World building. This means a team of writers consulting on the plot, the lore, the dialogue and everything that is required to make the world within the game feel real as players interact with it.
Sound Design. Sound is a critical component of a game, which can add to the atmosphere of gameplay and emotional engagement of the players. This category of work covers everything from sound effects to voice overs to music to add depth to the experience.
Video game development is an incredibly iterative process, requiring regular testing. Testing the product starts as soon as there is a prototype, which could be very early on in the process. Play testers are often engaged to measure the gamemnaker’s expectations on how players intend on interacting with video game elements with the reality of human intuition. The team also plays through various sections and levels of the game to check for quality assurance, identify bugs or glitches and other technical issues that may arise. Beta testers are invited closer to the release of a game to get feedback on broader playability questions and to determine where future resources may need to be given to address players’ expectations for expansions of a game after release.
Releasing a game is an art and a science. Marketing a game sometimes requires having a demo available for the public to try out the game before the game is fully available and trailers with gameplay that can be expected. These assets can be incorporated into a targeted digital marketing campaign across multiple social media platforms.
Typical Timelines and Budgets of Video Game Development
The timeline and costs associated with video game development largely depends on the size of the studio and the anticipated mechanics of the game. A nonlinear text-based Twine game is far easier and cheaper to develop than a AAA game like the Grand Theft Auto series.
Some reports suggest that small-scale indie games can range between $10,000 and $1 million for development and launch with a timeline that could span a few months to a few years.
High budget AAA games begin around $50 million for the project that could take as long as five years (with exceptions for video games trapped in development hell).
I hope this was insightful if you’re new to the topic of video game development. Are you interested in getting into video game development?
Until next time,
Rochele Rosa