Anyone who works in the video game industry understands that development is a challenging but important process that must be mastered to deliver a remarkable result. However, not all firms understand how to create workflows properly, and things can quickly spiral out of control due to chaos and poor management.
It is vital to understand and follow a video game production pipeline. A video game development pipeline is a detailed explanation of the steps in producing a project that helps you organize and optimize your workflow.
In this article, we’ll go through the essential stages of game development and some of their distinguishing characteristics. You’ll also learn about game development strategies and how to choose a trustworthy bespoke game development partner.
What are the stages of game development?
Pre-production, production, quality assurance, launch, and post-production maintenance are the five stages of the game development process.
- Pre-production is the first stage of game development.
Each stage of the game production process is critical, but the initial planning phase directly impacts the remainder. It’s vital to start the computer game development process by obtaining information about a possible product, such as technical requirements. Managers and product owners work together to determine the project’s objectives, business strategy, and principal concept.
- Analyze the market and competitors. It’s vital to determine what’s popular in the gaming industry and what’s profitable.
- The target is demographic. It’s critical to determine who will be interested in your offering so that the game may be personalized to their tastes.
- The first step is to select a platform. The popularity of a forum and the coding expertise of the organization are typically considered when making a decision.
- The way resources are distributed. The number of professionals, equipment, and video game development process timelines needed to complete the project must all be determined.
- It’s a piece of concept art. Concept artists create characters, locales, props, and other gaming aspects.
- This is the kind of monetization we’re discussing. Make money through advertisements, in-game purchases, or a one-time purchase?
- Examine the dangers. It requires assessing all potential threats and devising damage mitigation techniques ahead of time.
- Marketing strategy is important. It’s critical to consider how to appeal to as many individuals as possible with the game.
When all of the relevant information and specifications for a project have been acquired, a Game Design Document (GDD) is created. It contains more detailed game requirements, and examples include concept, genre, plot, type of gameplay, game mechanics, level design, and environment.
2. Manufacturing.
The longest and most labor-intensive component of a video game development pipeline is the production stage, divided into many internal stages.
3. Quality Assurance
A game of any complexity should be thoroughly tested to ensure that it is bug-free. This is the case since a single issue can significantly impact the user experience and the overall experience of a game. Functional and non-functional testing and Alpha and Beta testing are widely used as a result.
4. Start-up
The product launch is the peak of game production, and it is something that everyone anticipates. However, the story does not finish there. Even after a game is finished, there are frequently enough problems and difficulties that the game’s development team continues to add more information and changes to it as it is released. Testers collect the first user feedback simultaneously, allowing developers to make significant improvements.
5. post-production.
Fixes and improvements to a game after being released to the market demand ongoing monitoring to ensure that it is stable and performs as expected. In an ideal world, studios would provide updates regularly to meet the technological requirements of current platforms.