Game Development Life Cycle.

This post is dedicated to all the wonderful, creative, hard-working, ambitious, lazy, lucky people in the gaming industry, where I belong..

So, you might wonder… What should be the right approach to develop your product? There are creative people who can scribble down their ideas, but to bring those ideas to life, to make them take up residence in the mind of the player, lurking in the background, tugging, pulling, and cajoling their emotions until they think and feel exactly as you want? That's a rare skill indeed, and it is what makes this industry special.

I am penning down game development wisdom that applies through the process of making games from an idea to a shipping product.

It's a bit embarrassing that not many people follow a standard process. I have observed too many indie studios failing to produce a AAA quality product either on time or through quality or some just failing to push it even on the app store. There are infinite iterations throughout the production and poor planning which is really bad for the product itself. Thus, resulting in a backlash/differences among the team.

It's disastrous to have too many iterations in the design after the development, or the development team is working on production even before the game design, there are too many unidentified loop holes in the product design but team never does the technical analyses. Quotes like "Who reads the design document anyway?", "We don't write any technical design document and this is how we always been working", "We will see all that at the end, our developers and designers have handled similar issues in the past. We will solve everything!" Blame-game like "the client asked us to change this, when the product is ready to be shipped". Sadly, Involving team members who have no idea about the process to take down the story design and requirements from the company owner who is a "marketer". Not investing anything in the research(technology, art and framework) and start the development to keep up with its timeline. .....Hence, due to this ideology in the industry, I see, artist's struggling to catch the story, developers having hard time to get the requisite quality performance, project managers delaying their delivery timelines, testers having hard time to log the reports and finally game publisher or producer comprising its vision of the product. just because they could not follow a careful, proper and standard approach, everyone in the process lose its charisma, the beautiful journey of developing a game. Therefore, I am writing this post, so that people understand the right approach and value the GDLC process of all the stakeholders in making a successful, quality product and on time..

There are hardly any schools/universities offering a game development course which involves software engineering architecture + creating graphics and development of 3D models. Most developers/artists out of curiosity have learned on their own. Sadly, GDLC does not yet have any international standards written by industry veterans (such as IEEE) recognized as engineering principles.

Many times we see publishers wanting to develop the next game that everyone talks about. That is really good. However, how do you accomplish it? Well it is quite simple. You need to know where you want to end up. If you do not do follow a standard process you could be a year into developing some product that does not even make sense, or might not even be a game.

So guys, Its gonna take a while to read this post, so grab your favorite drink and continue.

The systems development life cycle (SDLC), also referred to as the application development life-cycle, is a term used in systems engineering, information systems and software engineering to describe a process for planning, design, develop, testing, and deploying an information system. The software development life cycle (SDLC) is a framework defining stages/tasks performed at each step from an initial feasibility study through maintenance of the completed application in the software development process.

Is GDLC as a model to implement exactly inherits SDLC? Software Development product always require a need for an existing problem and its developed for providing a solution, whereas, Game Development product is for entertainment to engage people to have fun, learn and spend good time. Hence the product will require an idea, story, innovation, creativity, writing skills and technical expertise. Hence, just following SDLC engineering principles as a product will have complications and iterations in design and development as a gaming product. Therefore simply adopting the SDLC is not enough, as the developers face several challenges such as (Artwork,Visuals,Animations,Character Interactions,Collisions, Physics, Sounds,etc) during its life cycle. To address the problem, we must use a specific approach called GDLC. This article presents the first, one of its kind, very thoughtful, practical guide and the process to successfully deliver good quality product. In this article the details of every process, team members and elements in the game are explicitly considered at each phase.

GDLC focuses on the standard streamlined engineering principles to build a robust software architecture for your game on all the platforms. Computer Science graduates mark this, "software is a need, it is developed to provide "solutions" for a business, but a game, my friend, is never a need for the user instead it feeds the user with fun, creativity, excitement, learning, joy and entertainment".

The game development process is a highly complex process and it will always require a collaborative multiple skilled/talented team to build the product for various platforms. The process is inclusive of game producers, game/art directors, technical team, game designers, game artwork team, game quality team, game programming team, game testing team and game marketing (Post-Production) team.

GAME DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE

A universal GDLC process must consists of the following stages :

1. Idea/Concept/Story of the product written in the Game Concept Document.
2. Game Design/UI/Environment/Characters/Levels/Missions/Audio/storyboard of the product written in the Game Design Document.
3. Technical Requirement Analysis of Framework/Plugins/Data/Scripts/Scene Management/Software Pattern/Object pooling/UI Development as Game Architecture for prototyping of the product written in the Technical Specification Document.
4. Programming/Development - of the product written in the Technical Design Document.
5. Testing – of the product written in Test Cases and Test Plans.
6. Deployment on the publishing platform of the product written as Release Notes & Support Document.

The GDLC section explained below will consider the practical use cases using agile methodology and project requirements for all genre games using the available game engine or developing own game engine framework to build the product for deployment on any platform. As the gaming industry has evolved over the last 20 years, the process has drifted to complexities involving many team members. The GDLC emphasizes on software architecture, decoupling, modularity, abstraction and design patterns. The ability to handle complex development tasks and achieving perfection requires iteration and experimentation, a common set of good practices must be adopted to achieve these goals. Here, we will also stress on the agile methodology for iterative product development. Let's deconstruct tasks/phases in detail.

Stage 1: Idea/Concept/Story

Ever noticed how some idea have an uncanny ability to toy with your emotions?

Ideas represents just bits and pieces of your game. They are just a spark for your fire in your product. An idea, story, concept, strategy in a game will evolve, therefore critical thinking and analysis of the game has to be drafted right at the beginning. Group of ideas has to be nurtured in the right direction using gamification, It’s the prototype of a product written for the team.

______________________________________________________________________"The core game concept, the story flow, the visual appeal, characters and the interactivity of the player, protagonists(if any), missions, multiplayer(if any), levels(if any) playing hours, build size of the product, business/revenue strategy, social sharing, publishing platforms and producers budget are the things needs to be thought about and written in the game concept document." ______________________________________________________________________

Game design theory is a set of fundamental questions about the game-mechanics, play-mechanics and game play experience. Therefore, a basic visual theme, character, arts sketchup, background and environment as a story board, flow chart, created by artists or designer must be a part of the document.

Tip: I suggest you to visit the following link, for a collection tools, techniques and methods by M. M. Hrehovcsik. Game Design and Tools

Most Indie game studio skips the design iteration process and does not stress on "if's and buts" of game or level progression. Don't shoot an arrow in the air, without aiming a target. It simply means too many assumptions at this stage will prove to be fatal for your product. You must take time to get into the groove, its design, concept and idealization over iteration, hence think critically of design in relation with inputs and outputs and let the product evolve.

In the first stage, checking as many requirements as possible with the product owner and team members is a sure path to success. The designer must convey their idea to the rest of the team, a team filled with people who will also have many different ideas regarding what is and is not feasible within the given scope of the project. Please "No shortcuts" here, Its the stage, where you can play with the matrices of requirement and solutions.

You can read a fantastic article on Evaluating Game Mechanics and Visualizing creative process by Mike Stout. This stage is also called the pre-production stage and the games blueprint should be mapped out in sync with vision of the producer.

Stage 2: Game Design

Game Design, a proof of mastery of the craft and the yardstick to bring an idea to a reality.

Designing of a game as a software product is one of the most creative, innovative, complex process and requires a critical iterative thinking, understanding, implementing of the design. Let's call it the "heart" of the game.

Tip: Dear Game Designers, its a must to read the book "A theory of Fun" for Game Design by Raph Koster.

The game design document is a written for any gaming product and its a collaborative teamwork where lead game programmer, art director, project manager must be involved.

The Game Design Document should specify every element about the player and progress throughout the game world along the player has to be documented. Game designer must ensure to create a check list of following points :

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• Game Concept/Genre/Audience of the product as narrative story flow and genre definitions and target audience etc.
• UI Interface of game flow as flow charts, Buttons, Animations/Tween, Popups, Texts, Font, Dialogue systems, UI supportive resolutions, UI theme, error handling messages, etc.
• Character Features as Player Characters, Animations, Its Inputs, Player point System.
• Game Data as Inventory, Weapons upgrades, Power Ups, level progression, etc.
• Level Design as Winning Elements/Stages, Losing conditions, Game Progression Stages/Scenes, difficulty level, interactive game play enhancements, game over pointers, redeem of points for upgrades,etc.
• Music as background theme music, pop up and UI button sounds, sound effects for player and other interactive elements in the game.
• 3D Environment as game world, Player view in scenes, navigation in 3D world, real world-scale and props/objects, character/player addons, supportive in game characters, protagonists, each level design views, background theme etc.
• Graphics/Visuals as Lighting, Shadows, Reflections, post processing, particle and other vfx effects.
• Camera Projection as perspective or orthographic modes, field of view, HDR, Occlusions, etc.
• Game Progression as storytelling and narrative writing as in game videos, cut scenes, animations, camera points as per level design, loading screens, scene transitions, game progression transitions as per winning and losing conditions, etc.

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If its a outsourced project, then, "creating a rough sketchup of artwork before making the finished product in art or modelling which must include the characters, art backgrounds, 3d environment, user interface design, buttons, sample animation clips, sound and background music and game/level flow are some of the elements to be taken care of before actual production."

The list of software tools necessary for game design:

Image Editing : Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Gimp, Inkscape etc are used for creating the 2d artwork design and user interface design.

3D Modelling: Autodesk Maya, 3D Studio Max, Blender, Sketchup, are used for creating the 3D Models, Animations,Textures and Shadows/Lighting the scene.

3D Texturing: MudBox, ZBrush, etc are used for UV Mapping and Texturing/Painting of the 3D Models.

Story Writing: Check this list

Graph/Workflow/Drawings: Check this list

Project Management: List of Top software's used in Agile and scrum development.

Games are systems with lots of interdependent elements. Changing one element (e.g., to balance your game) might introduce many problems to another element. Understanding how this linked system works and being able to advocate a process of creating the game in all team members is core game design skill. Making sure to develop your game in small iterations(module) and play testing elements accordingly helps guide your development process. Being on top of this process is your job.

Game Designers must ensure to integrate the story/challenges in an incremental phase towards completing/finishing playing the product in GDD. An interesting blog on What’s the role of game designers?

A game is simply just not playable until it is made, and thus is inherently worthless only in its design document format. No matter how carefully crafted your documentation may be, there are a myriad of reasons why your brilliant idea can fail when it comes to execution. Some of these possible reasons could be lack of technical skill, not enough budget, time constraints, lack of personal motivation, poorly thought out game mechanics, or a host of other issues that you will undoubtedly run into when you actually begin the development pipeline and that's where Technical Analysis comes in. This stage is where production starts.

Stage 3: Technical Requirement Analysis

Before we plunge headfirst into adding art, design and code. I thought it might help to give you some context about how I think about software architecture and how it applies to games. It’s less about writing code than it is about organizing it. Programming of a game as a software product is one of the most complex programming system development and requires a critical thinking on its game software architecture. let's call it the "brain" of the game.

This stage must involve a highly skilled Technical Artist who acts as a bridge between the Artists and Programmers working on a game.

The hierarchy of the team developing a gaming product

Most of the gaming studios face the challenge of limited budget and have limited resources to develop their product and therefore are not able to include everybody in the team who are specialized to execute their individual tasks as explained above. . I would like to emphasize that, its only the "skills" that are required to develop it and not necessarily a large team including every member to develop it which some might think. It simply means an individual or two can also push out great products as long as they are able to provide the required skills/expertise for the developing it and making sure there are is no void in executing it. So for example, an individual can sketch, can design, can animate, can create 3d models, can program, can test and can also deploy. So don't get demoralized or think if your team size if just two or very limited, you can't produce a high quality product as per your vision. You can do that, all you need is a skill and the determination to overcome the challenges.

Now, writing the game architecture has to be considered as the most important aspect of development process because its the base and lays foundation of your product, multiple layers depends on it and accordingly programming team must collaborate and understand the technical requirements of the design, a critical thinking of input and output of data including the art/visuals/effects is an important task. A well designed architected program really is a joyful experience to work in, and everyone loves being more productive. Good architecture makes a huge difference in productivity. It’s hard to overstate how profound an effect it can have. Be careful, do not make a mistake here...

Almost all games are developed on a gaming framework, an underlying software which provides you with the basic tools and editor to program for game development is called a game engine. List of game engines: First selecting a game engine or develop your own game engine depends on the project requirements. Some of the popular game engines such as Unity 3D Game Engine, Epic's Unreal Engine, Cocos 2D, Crytek Cry Game Engine, Game Maker Studio are used as the underlying framework. Hence selecting your game engine must be considered after understanding the requirements of the system or product and what the engine offers.

Below, I have mentioned supportive frameworks adding to the game engine as modules which needs to be considered while writing down your technical design document and add place holders to build prototypes. Thus finding the whole game architecture of your product as per the requirements specified in the GDD. Get your check list, here..

• UI System - UI is the art work created by the design and artist's team, Now, using the programming code the interaction, animation, response has to be performed. A standard format of the 2D sprites/sprite sheet in (.jpeg, .png or .svg or .psd or .tiff) format must be locked and also the dynamic font as per the design. This is a very crucial decision as GUI or interface of the game will impact many factors like FPS, quality, size, resolution, performance and support on the publishing platform. While designing UI interface, the resolution of all the target platforms must be considered.
• 3D Modelling and Texturing - Graphics Software to create 3D Models such as 3dsmax, blender, Maya and sketchup. These graphics software are the modelling tools to create 3d characters, environment, terrain, props, and anything that has 3d dimensional views. The texturing and UV mapping is then applied to those objects to give color. Supporting textures like the normal maps, specular maps, bump maps, occlusion maps must also be created to give the object depth, shape and a perfect look and feel in the environment. The scale of object is very important while creating these objects and accordingly other objects should be added. The scale should be mapped to the game engine and tested properly.
• Animation - Animation does not involve a framework, however, as a whole the 3d and 2d animations implemented on the objects or its import as baked in models has to be considered. The Character/Human/Camera/Story Transition/Loading Animations can be done in the engine framework or also on the imported 3d models from Maya,Blender or 3dsmax as baked component. The decision to implement and apply animations must be considered before development. Ideal animations embedded with the 3d object and imported to the scene works good.
• Sound - Most game engine provide you with sound module, however, if the game project involves run time effects, binaural 3d sound, and have custom design as per sound designer then the sound assets, output quality and the underlying framework must be well taken care of at the initial stage of development.
• AI - There will be instances where AI will have to be added to the levels, characters, enemies, spawning, progression, and in the entire design. The AI system have to well taken care of at the beginning of development.
• Data Management - The player scores, points, in game data handling and saving on the server or device has to be considered while development. This is a very important task and the Lead developer must make sure data of the player is saved using a proper predefined framework.
• Particles - Dynamic particle systems are required for effects in the game. The effects, its textures, the framework needs to be considered while designing.
• Multiplayer - Multiplayer games required a dedicated server for concurrent players and connectivity, Do consider Smart Fox server, Cloud servers or even maintaining own servers. This is a major call for multiplayer games.
• Physics/Collisions - Physics are a part of all the games, 2D or be it 3D. Physics are ideally integrated with the engine itself like Unity or Unreal, However, there are values which can be changed to give you better performance and also smooth collisions. The Collider attached to the game objects reacts to the collisions and physics and will have a great impact on the controls and performance.
• Social Media Sharing - Social sharing framework needs to be added after the core mechanism of the project is completed. This also is a must to take a note of it in your project.
• Game Analytics - This framework needs to be added after the development is completed. This is a must for all games, it helps a lot to track your game performance and its success in the market.
• Video Player and Subtitles - The cut-scenes and the subtitle are a part of most games. The framework needs to be considered for the project. The video format, quality and size of it for each publishing platform.
• Graphics/Shaders - Shader rendering are very expensive for the engine and multiple shaders rendered on the 3D objects will give you a low frame rate, crash and also lags. Be careful when you opt for custom or expensive rendering shaders on the 3d objects.
• Lighting, Shadows and Reflection- Lighting, Shadows and Reflection of 3D Models, the environment must be well thought before adding the 3D Models to the 3D scene. This may not sound that great deal before the product, but believe me when you take this call at the beginning of the 3D Scene and Environment design, you will benefit a lot on performance. Real time lighting, global illumination, shadows and reflection costs a lot of GPU processing, dropping your frame rates. Hence, baking the scene to the textures, UV mapped with models will take care of your performance issues. Do try to bake the shadows and lights on the texture models itself, Thank me later. :)
• Sky box - If it's a 3D game, an HDR sky box is a must. The Environment and 3D Artist must select this as part of the design. For 2D game its not needed.
• Camera Projections - 2D and 3D games have camera projections. The orthographic and perspective views, the FOV, layers rendering for multiple cameras.
• Platform dependency - If a project needs to be published on several platforms then a thorough study and implementation framework should be identified.
• Game Point System - Leader board and Achievements of milestones throughout the game and the framework to publish it on all the respective platform.
• External Supportive Framework - Blueprints, Editor Extensions, Debugging tools, etc should be considered.
• Game Monetization- Game advertising framework and In app purchases compatibility for the respective platform published in the project.
• Language Support - At early stage of the product design, we must know what languages is our support in the project and make the modules scale-able so that data is easily readable in particular language.
• Post Processing Effects - Anti-aliasing, Brightness, Color Correction, Ambient Occlusion, and Camera Filters added for post-processing render.
• Performance and Optimization - Performance optimization and size reduction techniques of the product are a must. At early stages, these are two important things that the development team must know and the right methodology will work wonders to push it on the low end platforms.
• Connectivity - Wireless, Bluetooth connectivity of your product with other devices for multiplayer or inputs must also be considered while development. If the project requires multiple players or some connectivity to an external hardware a framework must be build or added to the project.
• Source Control: GIT/Cloud Backup - The project will require multiple teams to work on it on a regular basis, the team must be allocated with pushing and pulling out of source control and data of project on an svn server or any private cloud server.
• Code Merge and Code Editor - Code revision and merging tool with editor to write and debug code.

The above mentioned frameworks are all the supportive modules which usually gets integrated to the project. There must be a thorough research and development of the product will shape exactly as you've designed. The prototypes build as per the requirement will make your development smooth. This must be documented by the Lead developer as a Technical specification document. Team Lead should keep this as a reference when allotting work to all the other team members.

Tip: If you would like to read more on game architecture and design patterns, I suggest you to browse the link by Robert Nystrom.

Stage 4: Programming/Development

After brain storming and taking a critical decision of selecting the game engine and its supportive plugins/modules/framework and building the game architecture as a whole. How do we go about programming it (art + code + graphics + sound) should be our next challenge.

Programming input and output of data is simple, however handling that with art, visuals, animations, collisions, physics, sounds, scene/level management, AI, Dynamic Objects Loading and Unloading, shaders, rendering power, garbage collections and to top CPU and GPU performance every dynamic frames makes it complex.

Lead Programmer at this stage should make a checklist of how the data is going to get executed using the software architecture. This gets excited about abstraction, modularity, design patterns, and software architecture.

Tip: Unity developers - A list of useful Unity Game Development tools and resources.

Tip : Unreal developers - The Big List of Unreal Engine Development Resources.

Game development will require your OOP skills and hence writing required classes/scripts/interface coupled as a good design which means that when I make a change, it’s as if the entire program was crafted in anticipation of it. Writing the code and changes will not disturb its linked modules. decoupling is that a change to one piece of code doesn’t necessitate a change to another.

Every script executed on the game object will run game loops function as much 1000 times per second. your CPU and GPU processing is calculated while performing the required loops assigned on those scripts, an extra care has to be taken when you execute code on game loop functions.

Time and sequencing are often a core part of a game’s architecture. Things must happen in the right order and at the right time.

Development cycles are highly compressed, and a number of programmers need to be able to rapidly build and iterate on a rich set of different behavior as functions without stepping on each other’s toes or leaving footprints all over the code-base.

After all of this behavior is defined, it starts interacting. Monsters bite the hero, potions are mixed together, and bombs blast enemies and friends alike. Those interactions must happen without redundancy and without the code-base turning into an intertwined threads.

And, finally, performance is critical in games. Game developers are in a constant race to see who can squeeze the most out of their platform. Tricks for shaving off cycles can mean the difference between an A-rated game and millions of sales or dropped frames and angry reviewers.

Explaining how to write code for games is not the motive of this article, However, i would like all developers, companies should read the following game programming books :

• Game Programming Patterns
• Game Programming Gems 2
• Game Coding Complete
• Game Engine Architecture (Online) and (paperback) - Game Engine Architecture
• Real Time Rendering
• Game Graphics Programming

Tip : Lead developer must have a code review system at place as per the game architecture he has chosen.

Project Manager should make a note that when their product is at the development stage there should be minimal iterations in the story design, creating art assets (3d models or the UI flow), skipping and adding more scenes in the story. The development stage is 4 and hence doing back to stage 1 or 2 for design iteration is a indication that the product was not given critical thinking at its initial stage. changing the level design or object interactions of the character time and time again after approvals of design and lock in the process, then my friend, you're inviting complexity to the development and will certainly have performance issues later resolving. Programming is done as per the game architecture in phase 3, which is very important as a technical analysis on the given requirements of the design. Iterations of the product at the end shows that either the game designer or the game director or the project manager were not serious or fit for their job, as simple as that, so avoiding that should play a key role in getting a quality product on time. A simple background or sprite button design change, or text is absolutely alright as long as its not making an major impact on the module/framework or its scene flow.

Stage 5: Testing

Testing is just not playing games at your workplace. Its a lot, lottt more than that. It tests your endurance. Its a repetitive and an iterative process of same screen flow and input and expecting the output from the user for quality control of video games. At this stage, the flow analysis and bugs has to be tracked by the QA under Bugs Tracker Report and Testing team must work on two documents Test Cases and Test Plans. Test Cases are the software modules as per the Technical Design document and Test Plans are the reported defects/bugs and issues found during testing. There are two stages of testing: Alpha and Beta.

A Process/Framework driven testing is one the best practice methodology.

Game Quality team must ensure that the documentation involves :

• Defect/Bug : What is the bug?
• Reproduce: How does the bug occur in game play. The reproductions steps.
• Module : Level/Game Stage and the module linked with the test cases.
• Frequency : Does the bug occur occasionally or frequently or all time.
• Bug Log Number : A defect track sheet should have a id number.
• Status/Occurrence : Has the bug been solved and closed or reproduced again.
• Screenshots : Screens and video clips attached showing the information in detail.
• Platform : Must specify the build platform and tech specs of the device.

Challenge comes when the product is for hours to be played by the testing team and different programming team works on different modules like Game play, UI, Networking, Data Management. The report is passed to all the teams and gets backed to the testing and QA team for closure of a reported issue or the bug as per the version of the submitted build. Hence, this documents has to be thoroughly managed as per the version by the QA team and shall be updated at all time for the project managers to analyze the progress of the project.

The Team failing to prepare this report or not working on it from the beginning till the product gets deployed making a note/update of all the iterations will have serious consequences of the product not turning out as per the design and story and will certainly have critical performance problems. This has to be taken care of when developing a product in a collaborative team and the product development is going to be for a longer time, wherein there are team members getting added or subtracted.

Tip : A simple,short blog on the What, Why and How of Game testing.

There are some studios who outsource testing of their products, hence you must know the differences in testing: Functional Testing, Compliance Testing, Compatibility Testing, Performance Testing, Load/Stress/Memory Testing, Interruption Testing.

I have observed, most indie studios with small team or marketing brand products as games never take this process as seriously and lose out a lot of time in solving bugs and solving the performance issues later, which can be easily sorted following a standard process.

Stage 6: Deployment

At deployment stage, prepare a short video (like a trailer) and some screenshots (like Flashbacks) , then finally hit publish and make it live!. managing the user release notes and privacy policy and terms of usage should be properly documented. The Game Credits is very important in a game and the team hard work due shall be given.

Deployment of the game is popularly published using the Steam Engine and Google Play/Itunes App Store, Windows Store. High budget games are published on a DVD for PC/Console.

This stage may sound not too important, because at one end you want to celebrate your success and feeling of relief that your product is out in the market, all your hard work and time spent is actually seen as a product. but the truth is once you deploy your product that's when you get the practical user reviews/feedback on performance, quality, graphics, game play from the end users.

At this stage, after analyzing analytic report, the only priority should be fixing performance issues or any platform specific bugs/issues. It's Toxic to change the art assets, user interface or reduce quality or skip some levels, removing/adding a framework or to reduce the build size. I often see companies in the deployment stage all of a sudden care about the build size because the downloads/purchases are not up-to the expectation of game producer, which is really sad.

There are instances, where a product is deployed in the market and published and later due to its success/failure in the market, the product goes through iterations of adding more levels, increment of difficulty level. wherein design, development and testing team works again and again on the product. This scenario should be carefully handled and taken care of while the initial first stage writing the game concept design. Make consistent updates about your game with considering improvement of feedback and reporting of any bugs/incompatibility.

There is no limit to the choices that a gamer can make. In order to compete and thrive in the market, you should take up the struggle of delivering the best possible quality products.

You then get down to work, investing your blood, sweat, tears, time, energy, and money into creating this oh-so-amazing product for the world, to be played by eager audience all across the globe.

Just creating a game and listing it for sale online is not enough; people need to actually know about your game. Put your audience first at all times. If you give them the options, people will happily play test levels, give feedback on ideas, and even serve as sounding boards for entire drafts of the game. They know you, love what you do, and their feedback will help you guarantee that you create a future hit.

This phase ends the production stage and post production team of marketing and sales starts. This ends the game development life cycle.

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Tip : An informative read : Business of Games and Entrepreneurship ______________________________________________________________________

Conclusion :

There is no silver bullet to make project management easy, but there are ways to organize your work that gives you the desired output.Therefore, when you want to make sure your game/product turns out to be exactly like you have visioned, GDLC is a must. :)

Game development companies frequently face this challenges to explain what process you will follow and how to go about structuring an idea of a product. What you will need from them to design and take the idea further.Branding/E-Learning Marketing/Sales reps talk about gamification in their product. Share/Show them this article when you see yourself in back foot or asking you to do the impossible iterations/changes.

I don’t have much in return for your patience, but I’ll offer up a few bits of advice that I hope may be useful to you :

Few Tips :

• The Project Managers or Directors keeps an iteration of changes after the development stage is finished. This certainly demotivates artists/programmers/team. Take responsibility of your work and decisions and minimize the iterations. It is victory, victory at all costs.
•  If you remain organized and on top of your to-do list, game development will be a cakewalk. Team members should not accept half or incomplete documentation of the project. It will help you to include your new team members at any stage of the product and it would be easy for the team to collaborate. Always keep that updated and complete.
• Gaming experience of the user is increasing in all dimension of entertainment. be it graphics, sound or game play. Every gaming project will require different skills, hence, the challenges of learning new ways and techniques are a must or hiring a technical consultant on freelance is an option. Just because we have worked and have expertise on some existing framework shouldn't be a reason, hinder you to try new framework/technique and achieve better results.
• Always check with the client/producer for references or sample design they have thought about, if it's absolute innovative product ask them to give the script in writing, this will give you some relief in avoiding or navigating from going/doing in a different direction from the product.
• If the development of game/product involves large teams, then adding a technical Artist serves as a backbone in providing you the right product. Technical Artists act as a bridge between the Artists and Programmers working on a game.
• Game Analytics is a must integration in the product. It helps the producer, marketing and development team in many ways.
• A robust game architecture with code review system in place has to be drafted while prototyping of modules so the code is easier to understand over the lifetime of the project.
• You have to take great care to both organize the code well and keep it organized throughout the thousands of little changes that make up a development cycle.
• Do not quit. Do not be the guy with 50 prototypes and no finished product. Do not procrastinate, when you hit a roadblock.
• “Scribbling ideas are easy. Design is fun. Implementation is hard. Stick to the project scope and goals.”
• Asking out for solutions, you must not hesitate to consult seniors, juniors or on people on forums for guidance. Remember, gaming industry has evolved because people in this industry are more of a giving nature, they know that we are all learning not everybody knows everything.

Tip : This link is a must bookmark : Game Development Resources by Kavex

I will soon share all the template for project documentation if you drop a comment with your email: Save your valuable time in production.

I hope, after reading the article, it evokes a desire to learn more, to stay tuned, and inspires lust to make game development intriguing. All I ask in return from you is to "share" it with your friends and readers when appropriate, helping it reach the people who need it most. The people who wish to be a part of this industry asking you 'How do you make a game?'. I want to see their curiosity, someday, answering it with confidence. :) Your feedback will be most valuable and will encourage me to write/improve more on it. Thank you and my best wishes.

P.S: There are skills needed to push the next generation of entertainment especially at the dawn of the VR and AR industries with their increased graphical requirements. Therefore, I am publishing "3D Modelling for VR/AR/Gaming: A Developer's guide." next week. Stay tuned. Connect with me at Sumit Jain.

PPS: And Yes!!. If you personally ask me, I believe, "Game Development, is a process of writing a book, making a film and developing a software, all at once."