7 Stages Of Game Development
Game development is a very complicated thing and to make it a little easier, mobile game development studios are used to dividing the development stages into several parts. When developing our games, we use 7 stages of game development:
Game development planning
We determine a budget, target audience, and platforms.
Pre-production
The team begins storyboarding, early prototyping, and milestones planning.
Production
This stage is responsible for most of the technical work development, modeling, mechanics, and more.
Testing
At this stage, bugs are searched for and fixed.
Pre-launch
At this moment, testing begins among real players and marketing intensifies.
Launch
Bugs found during testing are fixed and the game release.
Post-production
At the last stage, patches are released and the game had been balanced.
It is impossible to cover all the points of the plan in one article, so today we will analyze where thedevelopment of games begins and what sub-points it includes.
Eachmobile game development studiobuilds the development process in its own way, so they may differ from what I will talk about. It may seem that the development of a game begins with the first line of code, but behind any array of code, there is an idea and its concept.
Game Development Planning
Game development planning is the process of thinking about the activities required to achieve the desired goal. It is the first and foremost activity to achieve acceptable results. Our mobile game development studio divides this into three main tasks:
- Idea
- Market research
- Approximate budget
During the game development planning, all these tasks may change, but already at this stage, the team must present an approximate product that will turn out at the end of development.
Idea
The idea of the game can be based on unique gameplay or plot. Sometimes the main part of the idea of the game is the in-game atmosphere; a vivid example of such a product is the recently released Little Nightmare 2. Also at this stage of development, the game receives a test name, which can also change.
According to our mobile game development studio, the creation of a game idea is one of the most difficult stages, so you shouldn’t be careless about it. After our idea has taken some form, we can proceed to the next stage of planning.
Market Analysis
Market analysis is the process of looking at the game market with numbers, facts, and opinions. It’s about finding the equation between what people want and what you want to do. It will provide you insights into what people like to play nowadays, what you can produce, and why people would buy your game.
Also, we use these points:
- Market size
- Demographics
- Behaviors
- Trends
- Competitors
Each of these points will help you understand who you are developing the game for. This knowledge will also be useful in the next stages of game development. After analyzing the market, it will be easier to determine the desired audience, it will also help to correctly determine the budget allocated for mobile game development.
Also, market research will help us choose a game platform for our game. To select a platform for the game, mobile game development studios need to use the knowledge obtained earlier. Market research plays an important role in the process of developing your product. That is why it needs to pay attention, the deeper the data, the more accurately you will see the picture of your game.
Budget
Now we proceed to the last point of game development planning, budgeting should be an easy task. Actually, you still have several decisions to make, all these decisions we divide into 3 parts.
- the quality of the job to be done.
- the amount of time needed to do the job.
- the size of the project.
Combining these 3 parts you will get an average game development price. You need to understand that the game development price will change because it looks easy only on paper. In real development, new ideas, features, and other things constantly appear, which require additional investments. Also during the assignment of milestones, the budget most often changes due to the complexity of any of the tasks. Based on this, you should not consider the figure that you received during planning the final.
In Short
Game development involves many processes, each of which plays an important role in the entire product. Summing up the first part, before you start developing a game, you need to create an idea, analyze the market, find your audience, analyze competitors, determine a budget, and choose a development platform.
These are the minimum requirements for moving on to the next stage of development. We’ll talk about pre-production in the second part. There I will reveal some of the tricks that our mobile game development studio uses.
