Being a game developer is a dream for many students today. If you played games while growing up, it's only natural that at some point you've thought about making a game of your own. If so many others have done it and found success through doing so, it can't be that hard, can it? During this course, we will go through what game development is all about. By the end, you will have made a simple game of your own.
Simply put, game development is the process of developing a video game from a simple prototype, into a finished product. The majority of the biggest games out on the market have been developed by large studios with hundreds of employees, but many solo developers have also been able to find massive success with their games. People with all kinds of different talents can find their future at game companies. This is one of the reasons why game development seems like such an approachable option for many people.
Game development teams tend to be extremely varied in terms of their size and structure. There are many different kinds of roles that require different kinds of talents, however, there is nothing stopping you from becoming a one-man team. Getting started is now easier than ever thanks to all the information available on the internet. Game developers are often quite open about sharing information, so finding answers to specific questions is usually just a few google searches away.
Game development is often separated into different stages. The length of these stages changes wildly from project to project, some can spend years in the planning and pre-production stages while others can get started in weeks. This commonly depends on the size and scope of the game. Here are the key development stages that commonly get talked about:
"Competition" is the keyword these days. Now that gaming has become so popular, there are more aspiring game developers than ever, and standing out from the crowd has gotten increasingly difficult. Because of this, game development is a pretty challenging field. Everyone hears about the massive success stories, while the vast majority of released games remain obscure. Many of the over-night success stories you may have heard about, often took years of hard work to complete.
Developing games for mobile and PC tends to be more common among developers because the barrier to entry is much lower compared to the console market. This also means that those platforms have a lot more games that you need to compete with.