Game Development Stages: How are video games created?

Video game production is a standalone subculture within software development. Game creators live and work under a specific agenda in which coding and art (i.e., math and aesthetics) are intertwined. Their challenge is to build interactive worlds in which thousands of players are invited to come and spend hours and hours of their time. And they do. Isn’t that magic? 

In many aspects, it is, but nothing sporadic and spontaneous happens in a video game development process. On the contrary, game development workflows go through particular stages, as occurs in any well-managed industry. Of course, creative insights and epiphanies come to game creators regularly (otherwise, no new original gameplays and characters can appear), but they manifest themselves in game art design rather than in the game development process. 

Let’s look behind the scenes to see how video games are created. Observing the stages of game development is helpful to realize how technological magic makes millions of gamers spend time and money on virtual products residing on the edge of art and software. 

What is video game development?

Simply put, video game development is a creation process resulting in a new video game on the market. More precisely, this is a complex production pipeline making a creative team of designers and developers go through all stages of video game development to transform an idea of a new game into a finished commercial product. 

Such a pipeline runs as a well-organized workflow when every member of a creative team knows what to do and when. Scriptwriters, artists, designers, programmers, producers, engineers, and managers are aware of all phases of game development to understand everyone’s role in the process. 

Unlike game developers, many customers and gamers have little to no idea how a new video game appears. The development timeline and budget are usually left beyond their attention as well. Ordinary video game players can hardly see the difference between game development and game design. The former encompasses the latter, actually. 

Game design covers the storyline and aesthetic vision of gameplay, characters, and in-game items. Game development brings all creative processes together to release a holistic product. There is no significant difference in approaches to game development, whether it is an AAA console shooter, an online indie game, or a mobile puzzle. They all start from the idea conceptualization and end up with post-release undertakings. But first things first. 

Stages of game development 

Most game developers recognize three main stages of video game development: pre-production, production, and post-production. Each one has some specific sub-stages. They may vary depending on the type and complexity of a particular game. It is reasonable to review them as if a sophisticated high-class game is under development.

Pre-production

Everything begins with a core idea of a new game. This is a sort of raw material for raw material. The idea usually comes from a customer, but not always. A customer can just propose a game type within a certain preliminary budget to encourage a creative team to come up with all the rest. It is luck when a customer has some story revealing the game plot and can define the technology the game should run with (console, desktop, online, mobile, etc.). 

To determine a general concept of the game, a customer and a development team should find answers to some basic questions. The more detailed the answers, the clearer the agenda of development.

• What will be the game world or, in other words, what is the game about (genre, plot, approximate gameplay)?
• Who is the prospective audience, and what is the estimated market?
• Which platform is the game to be published on?
• What is the competitive environment (what existing titles seem similar to the future game)?
• Can the estimated budget be enough to complete the development (will the extra investment be necessary)?
• What is the preliminary timeframe for the game development?
• Which team composition is needed?
• What is the monetization method of the game?

Such a stage does not require the entire creative team to be involved. A production manager, a conceptual artist, a digital designer, and a programming engineer can sufficiently accomplish this stage of game development in collaboration with a customer. The collected findings form the grounds for a critical document determining what will happen further on.

GDD (Game Design Document)

GDD includes all specifying subjects that provide the entire team with a holistic game vision. This is a sort of general plan according to which the game should be created. The document finalizes the pre-production stage of game development and covers the following, among other things:

• The conceptual idea
• The technology and genre
• The primary mechanics
• The plot and characters
• The in-game environment and levels
• The storyboard and art sketches 
• The development roadmap
• The business strategy (monetization)

Besides, GDD can describe the necessary team composition and means of coordination between various specialists and departments. GDD is rarely made once and forever: as in any living process, game development implies multiple changes and alterations along the way. Anyhow, GDD is an essential aid to keep a project following the timeline and budget.

As soon as GDD is released and brought to the entire team’s attention, the time comes to go to the next sub-stage of the pre-production stage of game development. 

Prototyping  

Everything can look perfect on paper. But what if seemingly brilliant ideas appear poorly viable or unviable at all in practice? It seems reasonable to test general mechanics, user experience, functionality, and characters’ art concepts before something goes wrong in production. The prototyping substage services precisely for this purpose.

Prototyping helps understand whether the game is as exciting as its initial promise is. Besides, various unpredictable challenges can be detected with prototypes at the earliest stage of game development. In other words, prototyping allows feeling the game beyond theories (however well they can be documented) to avoid wishful thinking. 

Prototyping makes sense if it can be accomplished as soon as possible after GDD sees the light. Various ready-to-use low-quality assets allow game developers to save time and money when prototyping. The so-called placeholder assets are simple shapes (props, weapons, etc.) that can be purchased or even found for free online. They are useful for prototyping only: high-quality custom analogs will replace them later in production. 

The entire pre-production stage of game development may last from a week to a year, depending on the project’s complexity. When prototyping proves that the future game can meet expectations in general, the team may get to the toughest stage of video game development.

Production

The most intense and dynamic one of the game development phases is production. Even if everything prepared at pre-production seems appropriate, the way of trial and error is how production usually runs. 2D/3D graphics and visual effects take the largest volume of work to create characters, in-game objects, locations, and user interface elements. Numerous iterations take place when game assets are refined to meet the game style and GDD.

Programmers start working in full force to provide interactions between the game world and players. They use either existing engines or custom ones to achieve perfect playability. 

Sound engineers and actors create soundtracks and audio effects to give a voice to every game character. VFX experts add lifelike credibility to all game assets. In other words, the entire team is engaged in the game development process according to predefined roles and responsibilities.

The production workflow reaches its completion through several hallmarks. 

• First playable. It follows prototyping by replacing placeholder assets with high-quality custom ones. Besides, characters and props are enriched by the artwork. This version is still far from the final one and gives a clearer game idea than prototyping.
• Fully playable sample. A short, fully playable version appears when investors, shareholders, or studios need to grasp the game idea via first-hand experience. The sample’s duration rarely exceeds several minutes of gameplay.
• Pre-Alpha. This is when game creators need to finalize the general vision of the entire game to introduce its content into the upcoming versions and stages of video game development. No radical changes in gameplay are implied after pre-Alpha. 
• Alpha. This is a fully playable sample extended to the entire gameplay from start to finish. The game mechanics and all functions should run seamlessly, even if some extra assets and elements need to be added. Alpha allows QA engineers to test the entire game functionality.
• Beta. When all assets and elements are introduced, the creative team can refine various technical and aesthetical nuances of the game with no significant alterations to gameplay. A test audience can try Beta to give user feedback to the development team before a final version is released.
• Final release. This is when all stages of video game development are complete, and the game is ready to be published.

Testing

Testing the game elements and functionalities goes across all stages of game development in varying degrees. QA engineers have different tasks, the majority of which should be accomplished at production. They test the game mechanics and functionalities when production is at pre-Alpha and Alpha mainly. The entire playability of the game goes through various stress tests at Beta. Game testing should answer many quality-related questions such as:

• How well is every element rendered on the screen?
• Are there bugs in the game environment?
• Is weird behavior possible (walking through walls and the like)?
• Are there elements that players can misuse?
• Do the characters’ movements and dynamics look and feel natural?
• Are in-game dialogs relevant and not tedious?

Any QA team includes several specialists with specific roles. One tries to break the game with numerous stress tests, another checks the so-called fan factor to determine whether passing through the game levels is not excessively hard (easy), yet another tester looks for bugs and discrepancies in audio effects, etc. The testing stage of game development can hardly be overestimated. At the end of the day, Quality Assurance helps players make sure that the game really costs what it costs. 

Pre-Launch

The pre-launch stage of game development usually implies a Beta version to be proposed to a limited public group. Game developers let the game leave their inner circle to meet external users before official publishing. The scale of pre-launch depends on the marketing budget: the more money the studio has for promotion, the more diverse the audience to test the game. 

Pre-launch aims to answer the critical question of whether the game is as exciting for players as the creators estimate it to be. A confirmation from the outside is essential, in other words. A special promo video with a portion of gameplay is often released to draw the publishers’ attention. Public gaming-related events provide a viable vehicle for attracting various gaming-industry experts, professional players, bloggers, and journalists to try a new game. Their views can be unexpected and divergent and deliver many doubts to the game creators. Pre-launch is always a psychological challenge for any game development company, whatever large budget is spent for promotion. Pre-launch determines the period needed to transform a Beta version into a final one depending on the corrections that should be made according to the public reaction. 

Launch

The launch is the event that can let game developers breathe a sigh of relief: what’s done is done. It does not mean they sit idle between the pre-launch and launch stages of game development, however. Mostly, the entire team is fixing some recently detected bugs. Sometimes, the release date has to be postponed due to technical issues revealed by external users at pre-launch. Besides, polishing game elements in pursuit of perfection can never hurt (if time permits). 

When the game is published, the game development process is not over: a post-launch stage of game development remains to be accomplished. 

Post-launch

In many cases (if not in all), the post-launch stage of game development appears to be the longest one among others. In fact, post-release undertakings run across the entire lifetime of the game in varying degrees. Insignificant bugs are usually available in any game, even if most have been detected and fixed after the pre-launch stage. In addition, the broad players’ audience detects other minor bugs after the game is published. Fixing various technical issues is a long-running support activity the development team has to be involved in when all previous stages of game development are completed. 

Another continuous post-launch process implies releasing software updates, patches, and various downloadable content for the game. New levels, assets, storylines, and even characters can appear in the game quite after a while. A lot depends on how intensive the communication between the game studio and the players’ community occurs. Gameplay can hardly remain petrified if the game appears to be a mass product. This is especially relevant for crypto-based metaverses where continuous evolution of in-game items can go via NFT-wrapped content. 

Key game development roles

Any fully-fledged game development team comprises various specialists with particular roles critical for each stage of game development. The project scale determines the size and composition of the team. Besides, any core team can involve various outsourcing studios to accomplish one or another portion of the development routine. Anyhow, the following roles demonstrate who is required to propel a video game development process toward successful completion. 

• Project managers

Project managers build and maintain the connecting fabric of the entire process of game development. They prevent various divergent priorities of all participating parties from turning the development workflow into a mess. They harmonize the customers’ ambitions and intentions with the developers’ capabilities and opportunities. Their excellent communication skills and special management responsibilities make them superconductors in the realm of interactions between team members. There is a well-known direct correlation: the more professional the project manager, the smoother the game development process.  

•  Programmers

The software engineers involved in game development have some extra qualities and skills compared to the programmers working beyond the game building. In addition to understanding the game logic and mechanics, they should be able to create custom game engines, for example. They should know the nuances of coding for specific hardware such as joysticks and consoles. Their programming creativity allows them to deliver fresh ideas for implementing and modifying various interactive visuals. Gaming programmers turn design concepts into executable code and provide all necessary undertakings to achieve faultless playability of the game. 

• Designers

Game designers are a special breed of specialists combining seemingly incompatible capabilities. They are either scriptwriters with programming skills or programmers with a playwright itch. But first and foremost, they are creative drivers for any game development process. Game designers invent what subsequently composes the game as such: the storyline, characters, objects, environments, challenges, obstacles, and rules. They develop dialogs and backstories, they determine the complexity of levels, they make up interactions between the entire game world and future players. Their vivid imagination, however, never goes beyond the existing technological opportunities of software development. This is what distinguishes professional game designers from just visionaries.  

• Artists

A “game artist” is a pretty generalized definition for those who create game artworks: game artists vary in their expertise and responsibilities. Concept artists, for example, create 2D sketches and storyboarding in pre-production. 3D modelers work with 3D visualization software to create objects, props, and environments that should be colored, textured, and animated. Animators provide in-game objects and characters with motion. VFX artists add effects to everything that can be provided with them. In addition, they create simulations of fire, rain, explosions, smoke, and the like. To sum up, game artists give lifelike believability to the game, how lofty it may sound.  

• Sound engineers

Sound engineers (audio designers) collaborate with composers and actors to add music and sound effects to the game. Soundtracks, dialogs, and various audio records deliver a powerful emotional impact to how players perceive the game. Adding suspense to a scene with relevant audio effects can impress players even if the available visual elements leave something to be desired.

• QA specialists

Video game testers (another name for QA specialists) try everything that others build at strength. No game can be published without work on mistakes induced by the testers’ verdict. The more bugs and errors the testers detect before the release, the more positive the gaming experience and, therefore, the game’s commercial success. The bug reports provided by testers at each stage of video game development can hardly be overestimated by the entire team. 

Final thoughts    

Reviewing the game development process step by step helps figure out why video games require the time and money they typically make developers and investors spend. The sequence of game development phases and roles of various game creators allow customers and players to understand how video games are created. Such knowledge prevents many puzzling issues from arising again concerning game development. The video game development process timeline, for instance, takes the period it takes because none of the game development stages can be missed, ignored, or scaled down somehow.

While stages of game development do not imply any choice, a variety of game development studios do so. Customers are free to decide which game designers to hire for one or another project. The selection criteria? They are multiple beginning from a portfolio to the explicitly revealed expertise in a particular game development subject. Our current topic of game development stages is covered with sufficiently professional content, isn’t it? Why not take it as a good reason for getting to know the game designing capabilities of Walla Walla Studio better? 

Contact us today if your new concept of a video game is waiting to be seized. Our creative team is never thwarted by game design tasks of any scale and complexity. We believe no bad ideas about video games exist; only poor imagination does. Let your game find its audience with Walla Walla Studio, whatever your project may seem surreal and challenging.