Most are aware of the fact that making modern video games is no small task, taking thousands of employees, and obscene amounts of time. Or at least; making modern AAA video games requires thousands of employees and obscene amounts of hours. Smaller video games, or independently produced video games, can be made with just a handful of people.
This much is clear, but the actual process of video game creation is largely a mystery to the average gamer. Few go into any real depths as to how a video game is made, and just how complicated and challenging the process is. In fact, if more modern gamers were aware of just how mammoth a task it is, they may be more forgiving of video games that they feel do not live up to expectations, or that end up crashing midway on the odd occassion.
Let’s take a closer look at how a modern video game is created.
Concepts And Planning
Before a video game is made, obviously, the developers need to know what is going to go into it, and how everything is going to work. This part of the process can take a great deal longer than many assume, with every aspect of the game needing to be planned out in meticulous detail. After all; it’s no good if teams start work on various aspects of the game, only for those parts to not work correctly with other elements of the game.
Planning the game and it’s various parts is also a process that needs to be updated constantly, as the game development pans out and unknown details come to light. In some cases games need to be completely redesigned from the ground up, if an initial plan fails to work as desired. Sometimes through the process of creating the game, so much changes due to unexpected challenges that the end result is nothing at all like was originally intended. Video games are much harder to create, as unlike the online Blackjack Canada has to offer, there is so much scope for interpretation. The formula is not pre-set, and just about anything can happen.
Game Making Technology
Modern AAA games use extraordinarily advanced technology in order to meet expected standards. Some gamers aren’t even aware that many game cut scenes are created by real people acting out the scene, with devices attached to their bodies recording their movement. In this regard some parts of game creation are much like making a movie. The process can be very time consuming, and the procedure requires a full team of experts, all of its own.
Some games even use a separate process that records facial expressions, which is, again, another full team of experts, and enormous amount of time. The recorded movement of the body, and facial expressions, are later combined to make in-game characters. And don’t forget that the voice recording is yet another, completely separate process, the results of which must be synced to the lips of the already recorded facial animations.
And all this isn’t even taking into account the completely separate creation of the actual gameplay part of the game.
Time Management
If it wasn’t already clear, creating the game by a set deadline is extremely challenging, so much so that deadlines are often missed. This demanding, complicated, and very expensive procedure often cannot be rushed, and if rushed results in games that are riddled with glitches, bugs, and other obvious failures. Remember that time is money, and studios often cannot afford to keep a game development process running for too long.