velopmenGame Development; the Art of Releasing a Game

There are a lot of interesting parts related to the creation of a new game; the design, the mechanics of the game, the levels, the rewards, the player engagement, and much more. Part of the game development world depends on programmers who are supposed to write down the codes, but there are also artists, designers, and testers. If you want to work in the field of game development as a programmer then let’s introduce you to this world and what you should know about it.

What is Game Development?

Game development in its easiest definition is the art of creating a game, which includes all the different steps that might come within, such as the design, the development, and eventually the release of the game. Through these three steps in the process of creating a game, there are several stages that the team will need to go through, such as the concept generation, the design of the game, building it, testing, and finally releasing after making sure that everything is working properly and as needed.

There are interesting things to know when it comes to game development, such as the fact that a game developer could actually be a programmer, a sound designer, an artist, a designer, an engineer, or lots of other roles as well. Even though the process of developing a game is usually undertaken by a company or a game development studio, it could be also created by an individual as long as he/she could create something that the player could interact with, no matter how big or small it might end up to be.

What’s good to know about the world of game development is that even though it brings different fields in one place together, it is still considered a bit hard for someone who doesn’t have a background in programming to understand it, so we have to say that programmers will always win in such cases.

What Does a Game Developer Do?

A game developer — or a video game developer as also referred to — creates games in different formats in order to fit PCs, mobile phones, web browsers, and consoles. It’s important to know that a video game developer is considered the most important role in the process but who also comes at the end of the cycle because he takes the ideas, designs, drawings and rules from the designer or artist and start turning them with codes into an interactive game with visuals and sound that users could interact with and play.

If you are considering a career in game development then it’s important to realize that a video game developer is responsible for specific tasks and a game designer is responsible for others.

When it comes to the tasks that the game developer is responsible for then we have to mention:

• Writing codes in order to turn the concepts of the game designers into a real game.
• Using APIs in order to allow different software to interact.
• Programming the game’s terrain.
• Programming artificial intelligence for non-player characters within the game.

On the other hand, game designers are responsible for other tasks that are more related to the artistic look and concept of the game, which include:

• Coming up with the ideas related to the concept of the whole game, the characters included in it, the levels, the rewards, etc.
• Working on and editing the language of the game, in terms of the script.
• Designing the layout of the whole game.

We could say that the pre-production process of the game usually depends more on the game designer, while the production phase itself depends on the game developer, and the post production phase is the one that depends on testers who focus on testing and correcting any issues or bugs.

Game Development Salaries

Since we have been talking about both, the video game designers and developers in the field of game development, it’s important to tell you about the average annual salary of each one of them.

The game designer average annual salary according to payscale is around $65,302, while on the other hand, the expected annual salary for game developer is $65,098, which is also according to payscale.

Top Needed Skills to Become a Game Developer

If you are taking the idea of becoming a game programmer seriously then there are some skills — not all related to programming or IT — which you are supposed to have. These skills of course start with having the needed programming knowledge and if you are planning to become a game designer then you’ll also need to have an eye for design, such as knowing how to create designs for the characters, the scenes, as well as the user interface (UI).

In addition to the part of programming and IT, there are a couple of other personal skills which will definitely help you when it comes to the field of game development, such as problem solving which is beneficial with all developers since they will need to be patient with solving debugging problems. Also, creativity is a must in order to come up with a different game that is at the same time original and would attract people to try and play it.

Finally, you’ll need to have the needed communication skills in order to be able to communicate with the rest of your team and at the same time have the time management skills that will always keep the team moving towards creating the game without any delays.

These are beneficial skills that you need to have and will definitely know the reason when you come to the point where you are creating the games. On the other hand, being a gamer yourself will help you more since you will know what a gamer would love to see in a game and thus be able to create it; you have to be someone who truly loves the world of games and who is always up-to-date with what is happening in this world.

It’s important to know that in addition to the programming skills that you need to have in order to become a game developer, you will also need those personal general skills that will keep you going no matter what field you decide to work in and which job you eventually decide to take.

You could learn how to code with RoboGarden through our game-based platform in order to improve your technical skills before deciding on which road you need to take next. And you could also attend one of our bootcamps; Full Stack Development or Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence in order to find yourself a job in the future.