A Familiarity with the Mobile Game Development Process

 

Video games have seen constant growth in popularity in different social, cultural, and economic segments. Whether for training, learning, or mere entertainment, video games, have become significant and have become a close part of our lives.

One can relate it well during the tough times of the pandemic ;-).

And with this, a great upsurge is witnessed in the mobile gaming development industry which is further expanding with endless possibilities to deliver unique entertainment to the end-users.

Video games are everywhere: on our personal computers, smartphones, mobile devices, and of course on consoles. There is a wide diversification of markets, for example, for entertainment ranging from AAA games like The Witcher or Call of Duty to casual games like Candy Crush or Pokemon Go.

[Prefer Reading: “How to Get Started With Mobile Game Development”]

Steps to Mobile Game Development Process

The Creation Process

There are different factors that influence the process of creating a video game for which there is no definitive recipe. Knowing these factors is vital to understand and measure the project to be developed, understand the limitations, and ensure successful development.

Among the most common impact factors, these are the major ones

#Gender
Be it a role-playing game, platform game, puzzles, or educational, etc. the type of game to develop significantly marks the required production fundamentals.

Get the Game Idea

• Who is the player?
• Is the game fun?
• What parts of the game are fun?
• Why would a player play the game?
• Is there any problem solving that the game involves?
• Are there any surprises involved for the player in the game?

#Portability
It refers to the target systems and service platforms where the video game will be available: PC, Mac, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, mobile devices, Internet browsers, VR devices, etc.

It is crucial to know the technical limitations and restrictions for the game design of each one of them; video games that do not respect the respective development guides run the risk of not being published or even banned on certain platforms.

#Game Design

It refers to the design of the video game and its rules, which answers questions such as,

• What is the game about?
• What is your logic?
• How does the user interact?
• What are the objectives?
• What is its character progression?

These are a few questions that define the logic and operation of a video game and that possibly require a particular development.

#Budget
The financial resource is available to work the video game. It is common for developers to obtain partial or full investment from publishers. Private investors or the government.

#Visual Artistic Guide
It is the line that dictates how the video game and all its graphic elements will look and under which all production is governed. Whether it is for the development of a hyper-realistic AAAgame or the development of a stylized casual game, the art guide must accommodate the needs and expectations of each target market.

#Development Team
Both the budget and the development team are crucial elements for production, the lack of any of them practically blocks the proper functioning of the project.

[Prefer Reading: “iPhone Game Development: Turn Your Idea Into a Lucrative Opportunity”]

Milestones
Milestones are the key points in the construction status of the video game. These milestones are usually set by the investors or publishers in the form of reviews that mark the progress of the construction.

For each milestone, the functionalities are agreed that must be present in the game build, say functional physics, a final navigation system, an active collision system, and many others.

Based on these sensitive features, it is devised whether or not the game is on time or not. The mobile game development process passes through several stages and proceeds and marks a
specific state in its construction and has particular characteristics.

[Prefer Reading: How To Create A Brilliant Game Icon to Increase Game Downloads?]

Stages of Development

There is no miracle recipe that spells out the procedure to make a mobile game. Nevertheless, there exist several recurring stages that give an idea of the process that the development entails.

As a large part of the video game production involves programming development, methodologies used in software development that are especially popular include:

• Development management
• Progress
• Debugging
• Quality Control
• Quality Assurance

Pre-Production Stage

This stage generally involves designing and conceptualization. As it all starts with an idea, its based on where a small group of people begins to build the foundations of what the video game will be.

In this phase, the work team is usually small, the most common being from one person to a half dozen. The roles involved in this first stage are usually the heads that will later lead the work team during data gathering:

• Executive producer,
• Creative director,
• Game director,
• Narrative director (writer),
• Animation director,
• Art director
• Systems architect (programmer)

They begin to define all the fundamentals of video game development.

#Game Proposal
The first phase significantly transitioned towards producing a compendium that details and describes all the information regarding the video game. Some notorious sections include:

-High Concept
It refers to one or two sentences that explicitly answer the question: what is the video game about?

-Pillars
They are the most important group of characteristics on which the game is built.

-Market & Financial Study-Game Mechanics
Explain the dynamics, rules, and objectives of the game. Define character progression issues, player retention methods.

-Artistic Vision
Explains and defines the visual style that the video game is intended to give by combining and/or creating reference images which will serve as a guide for the development of the game and its graphic elements: color palettes, degree of stylization, treatment of shapes and materials, etc. . In it the characters are explored

-Narrative Vison
Describe the story and its impact on the game. At this point, we seek to define the scope that it will have, which can range from a very simple story to a complex RPG story. Usually, the synopsis of the story, potential characters, and their arcs are presented.

-Technical Vision
Explain the technologies to be used and the implementation methodologies. They depend on the expectations and requirements of the game as well as the development team.

[Prefer Reading: “Big Data Molding the Face of Gaming Industry” ]

Production Stage

This phase as the name suggests is where the actual hands-on work is concentrated and where the team tends to expand as per the budding requirements. The duration of this phase depends mainly on the type of game that takes place and can range from a few months to several years.

#First Playable
Also known as FP, it refers to the version of the game with the first iteration of assets and gameplay functions. FP focuses primarily on building artistic foundations and technical developments that define the essential experience of the game.

In the case of having been developed, the FP can be the continuation of the prototype. In some predictions FP and Alpha are considered as the same milestone, simply to better accommodate the project needs.

#Alpha
The goal of the Alpha is to implement all the essential playability features and have most of the assets (also known as resources or elements) of the game. It is because of the above that the Alpha is considered complete in terms of gameplay – that is, the game experience – but it is still far from being the final version.

Here the development team will be dedicatedly working to finish the build and polishing the functionalities implemented in the source code as well as finalizing the artistic assets.

#Beta
This milestone marks the finished game in functionalities, gameplay and it has all the assets. It is also considered free of major bugs (sometimes called show-stoppers ) that prevent the game from launching.

This level focuses on finding and squashing the greatest number of bugs as well as optimizing the performance and efficiency of the game before its launch.

#Gold Master
It’s the last milestone within the project phases and where the game is prepared for its market launch.

-Release Candidate
It is the version of the video game that the developer considers stable and ready for launch and is the same that is sent for certification.
-Gold Master
This status is obtained once the game has passed the publisher’s requirements and the platform and/or console certifications. The Gold Master is the official copy for mass reproduction and/or distribution of the video game.

Post-Production Stage

This stage has relatively acquired huge importance in a few years in the life cycle of video games. Originally the development ends with the launch of the video game after making several

#Maintenance
This is a continuous process that focuses on keeping the product/gaming systems up and running with a balanced and optimized technical structure. Common activities include: bug fixes, support, and maintenance of the software, updations, and improvements of online services.

#Game as a Service
Usually abbreviated as GaaS, it is a scheme that combines different practices for the production, support, maintenance, and monetization of a video game.

The premise of this model is the continuous updating of the game in order to generate a constant flow of profits. There are different variants like a subscription to video games, season passes, microtransactions, subscription to distribution platforms, etc.