Did you know you can make big bucks developing the video games you like to play?
Do you remember Police Quest, the Beast Within, or Game of Thrones? These are all very popular video games that people loved playing when they first came out. When we think of playing video games, we think of geeks with a lot of leisure time who spend their days playing out the latest and greatest video games to exhaustion. These people are called gamers. While many people associate video games with fun and leisure, it is actually possible to make a living designing and creating video games.
What is video game development?
Video game development is both an art and a science. It is an art because it requires creativity and a subjective mindset to do well. It is a science because it is a hybrid field which combines the disciplines of math, computer science, and production. It requires exactness in this sense. Video game development often requires teams of individuals with diverse skills and backgrounds. For example, production, artistic, programing, graphic design, creative writing, storyline editing, audio specialist, and level design skills are all required to produce a creative video game that will actually sell!
How does video game development proceed?
Video game development can be divided into two distinct processes: game programming, and game design. Game programming is fairly straightforward because it integrates the concepts that game designers create and integrates them with art and sound. The programming code translates all of this from great ideas into an intriguing game that gamers and non-gamers will actually want to buy! Because game programming involves creating a game from a more abstract idea or concept, programmers need to think logically, understand math, and have good programming skills, particularly in the C++ programming language! Programmers must map and visualize the gaming terrain as they create it, they must inculcate artificial intelligence into the non-playing game characters to make them interesting enough to motivate people to continue to play the games, and connect player input to the screen through the controller to make the game interactive, and hence interesting enough to continue to play!
Game designers visualize the concept for the game. They are much more spontaneous and creative in thinking as a result. They know what gamers want to see in a game, and they use their creativity, knowledge, and intuition to create a game that delivers exactly that! They study and analyze the logical flow of the game from beginning to end, and they create its structure – they determine its rules, and the methods by which it will be played! They develop the game’s layout and play sequences, they work with the entire team to develop a marketable game, they document the production of the game for a template for programmers to follow, and they give the game a realistic and human touch!
As is evident, game development is an involved and complex process which involves teams of individuals with diverse backgrounds, skills, and qualifications to develop well!
