Mobile Game Development Process – Overview
Mobile games are one of the fun activities that engage most smartphone users. Technological improvements have taken the mobile game trend to newer heights than traditional games. This has opened a lot of scope for enterprises.
Converting a game development concept into reality is complex. You must know the mobile game development process to build amazing games. It requires planning, designing, implementation, and distribution of the game on the targeted app store.
A successful game involves some pre-production, production, and post-production stages. Here's about each stage of mobile game development. Let’s have a look!
Why Invest in Mobile Game Development?
We cannot deny that the mobile game market is highly lucrative, extensive, and diverse. As per the latest Statista report, 3.24 billion people play mobile games worldwide. And this number to increase in upcoming years.
According to a recent report by Newzoo, the mobile game industry will develop at a compound yearly growth rate of 11% and expect to reach $116.4 billion in revenue by 2024.
Steps to Develop a Mobile Game Successfully
Every day, thousands of apps are added to the App Store and Play Market, but not all games have the same potential as Clash of Clans and PUBG. A successful gaming app follows a rock-solid idea, relevant monetization strategy and contains engaging and unique gameplay.
To make the mobile game development process easy, here’s the step-by-step guide on how to make a mobile game app:
1. A Superb Game Idea
A unique idea is the foundation of any mobile game. It's doesn’t need a highly creative or innovative idea. You can start with a simple but out-of-the-box idea and transform it into a superb one.
This idea can be brand-new, or you can also take inspiration from a successful game. It will help you find an exceptional way of giving a convenient experience to customers. It is the game’s experience that has enticed millions of gamers around the world to return to the mobile gaming app.
2. Build an Engaging Story
Game stories play a pivotal role in the mobile game development process. To let app users know about the features and purposes of the game, tell them a story that contains a complete description of stages, characters, and rewards.
The use of the concept is also essential in mobile game app development. Craft your story in a way that can attract a target audience and help obtain benefits.
After all, it’s the story that makes people feel that what they’re watching is real and not fiction, that makes them feel connected to the character, and that’s exactly what?need to achieve.
But, to develop games like puzzles, don’t need to make stories as there is no need for unwanted story elements.
3. Create a Rock-Solid Game Plan
It is mandatory to create a game plan carefully for a game development project. It helps to convey and execute ideas more effectively. The standard game plan includes:
Recommend considering an agile game development method so it allows to work with all your strategic elements. Any changes made to an element of your plan can also modify other elements.
4. Decide on Estimated Game Development Cost
To decide an estimated budget for mobile game development, you need to consider some factors. These factors help make your game a market-ready product with a high ROI. Here are the most critical factors:
5. Choose a Game Development Platform
What would be the platform to run your game app? The number of iOS and Android users is vast. Hence, this question relies on a budget.
领英推荐
If you select a single platform development, you can introduce your game to a limited market. But if you want to increase the area of reach of your app and have a reasonable budget, choose multi-platform development.
6. Select Mobile Game Engine
The back-end of the game app is highly essential as this is where the game engine comes in handy. Here are many engines to choose from for mobile gaming, and you can select one that can meet your gaming needs. For example, go for Unity 3D engine for empowering 3D games or choose Cry Engine to support the drag-and-drop feature in a game.
Also can using back-end languages from various options like C#, C++, Node.js, Laravel, and Python for game development. Since this stage will decide a app’s infrastructure, consider the most relevant back-end technologies.
7. Create a Game Design Document
After drafting the whole concept of a game, proceed towards the game design documentation. Developing the design document is necessary for designing a game.
This live and detailed document gives all the details about the game, including technologies, elements, design, experience, architecture, etc. The document records whatever you want to add to your app and ensures that the app follows a stick code for development and launch.
8. Design the Game Structure
An attractive game infrastructure helps to increase sales. Users will play a game only if it contains unique and eye-catching graphics and scenes. While designing the architecture, it's important to add elements like the environment, characters, objects, texture, etc.
This step decides the ultimate look of the game. You can go for 2D or 3D design to refine your game’s visuals. The step involves lots of coding and designing.
9. Create a Playable Prototype
It is necessary to build a playable prototype for a targeted gaming platform. The prototype must resemble the crucial parts of the game and incorporate all essential mechanics. Although building prototypes can be time-consuming, it is essential to figure out the game design errors.
Players can distinctly behave if the game controls are not spontaneous and some tasks are tough to complete. Hence, you can easily fix many issues during this stage.
10. Design and Develop Your Mobile Game
After the prototype has been approved, the actual game design work starts. Even the smallest things must now be completed with care. During this stage, you will have an experience that will transform the traditional gaming experience. Here, you can show creativity to make your mobile game more engaging.
After figuring out everything, you can start building a mobile game. Create an exceptional app back-end, consider all the features, functionalities, technologies, experience, navigation, etc.
11. Mobile Game Testing
Before launching a game in the market, it needs QA testing. You must make sure to launch the perfect and bug-free version. Hence, following this step is mandatory.
Professional developers test mobile games by introducing and playing the beta version on several devices. It shows different bugs the game may have and hence, you can fix them and build the best version of the game.
12. Select a Monetization Strategy
To meet your revenue targets, you can go for in-app purchasing, monthly subscription models, sponsored ads, paid mobile games, premium versions, free-to-play games, real money games, etc.
More about app marketing https://asoworld.com/blog/mobile-app-monetization-solution-typical-risks-mistakes-in-app-monetization/
Final Verdict
Converting your game idea into reality is a challenging task. You need to put in a lot of effort and deal with a variety of challenges and detours along the way.
To use the next-level game development and provide users with a rich user experience, you can contact an experienced mobile game development company that knows how to make a mobile game successfully.