Guide

Game Development Process: How Game Development Works

Digital Creation & Collaboration,

Project Management,

Version Control

It’s time to improve your game development process. Here, we compile resources to help you make development and design work even better at your studio — whether you’re at an indie start-up or massive AAA game studio.

This is your guide to the game development process.

We’ll cover everything you need to know about how game development works for successful studios. You’ll get tips, best practices, and essential tools to succeed.

Read along or jump to the section that interests you most:

➡️ Accelerate Game Dev with Helix Core

Overview of the Game Development Process

The game development process and game design process involves three main phases.

Pre-Production:

The game concept is established during pre-production. This is also where you’ll outline development and design requirements. And you’ll plan how this game will be made and what resources it will take.

Some assets and prototypes are typically created during pre-production. A successful pre-production phase requires good project management.

Production

The majority of game development and design happens during production. This is usually the longest phase in the game development process.

Developers, designers, artists, and project managers work together to build the game, hitting the following milestones along the way.

From prototype to gold master — a successful production phase requires good collaboration across teams.

Post-Production

The maintenance phase of game production begins with post-production. This is where bug fixes and additional features are added to games. 

Game Development Process in Action

Hear how the following game studios improved their process:

Game Development Process Tips For Beginners

Getting started in game development can be overwhelming. This is true whether you’re just getting started at a game development studio or getting started on your own game. 

There’s a lot that you need to consider.

Where do you start? What do you need to know? Which language and tools will you use? How will you get funding? And how will you get your game to market? 

Keeping Up with Trends

Game development constantly evolves. Keeping up with game development trends can be tricky. Important trends to know include AR/VR, 5G, eSports, and inclusivity in the industry. 

In a recent survey, we asked over 300 game development professionals about the trends they experience and challenges they face. Find out what they had to say. 

➡️ get the Report

 

Getting Funding

Getting funding can be one of the trickiest aspects of game development. You do have several options for how to get game development funding, including working with a publisher, crowdfunding, or simply moonlighting until you make it. 

One thing that can help is to leverage free resources. Of course, making your own game for free can come with some unexpected costs. It’s important not to sacrifice quality for costs.

Resources

Here are some resources for getting started developing your game:

Must-Have Tools For Game Development and Design

Successful game design and development requires the right tools. 

The following five types of tools are must-haves in your game development process.

Project Management

Game development project management tools help you make sure your game gets finished.

Tools, like Hansoft, typically help you:

  • Manage your backlog.
  • Visualize your progress.
  • Develop using Agile methodologies.

More on project management:

Game Engines

Game engines are critical to building your game. 

Some of the most popular game engines include Unreal Engine, Unity, and Lumberyard. Most game engines are free to get started with. But many studios make their own game engine, too. 

Game engines are often integrated with other game development and design tools to accelerate workflows. This includes IDEs, graphics tools, version control, and more.

More on game engines:

 

Complete Guide to Game Engines

Learn more about game engines and get started fast. 
➡️ gAME ENGINE OVERVIEW

IDE

IDEs are where game developers work on their code. Microsoft Visual Studio is one of the most popular IDEs for game developers. 

More on IDES:

Graphics Tools

Graphics tools are essential for designers and artists. Photoshop, 3ds Max, Maya, and Blender are all popular examples of graphics tools. 

Like game engines, graphics tools are often integrated with other tools used in game development. One of those tools is version control.

More on graphics tools:

Mobile Game Development Software

Teams are looking to build mobile games, prototype, and release them fast. Many use game making apps or frameworks before pushing forward onto game engines.

More on mobile game development:

Version Control

Version control is essential for game development, whether you’re a single developer or on a team of 1,000s. That’s because games are built with many types of assets — binary files, digital assets, code, and more. Managing all of these files can be challenging.

For single developers, it’s important to choose a version control that can scale up, like Helix Core. After all, you might be working on a solo project now — but one day you might have a team to work with.

For teams, collaboration across developers, designers, and artists is critical to the success of a game. Using the right version control solution facilitates that collaboration. 

It’s also important to consider whether you should host your version control on-premises or in the cloud. AWS, for instance, is a popular hosting option among game development teams.

More on version control:

Get Version Control + Your Cloud

The Perforce Enhanced Studio Pack contains all the tools you need to do world-class development in a single, pre-configured environment on AWS or Azure.

In a few clicks, you can deploy everything you need with the infrastructure required to support large projects, big files, and all your team members. No expertise required.

➡️ get the ENHANCED Studio Pack

Best Practices For Successful Game Development and Design

To be successful in game development and design, you need to follow the best practices. 

Game Development Best Practices From the Best Game Developers

The best game developers are the best for a reason. They’ve figured out which tools are the best to build games — and the best practices for using them effectively.

For instance, Epic, Firelight Technologies, Riffraff Games, and Bit Fry Games Studio all use Helix Core (version control from Perforce). And they’ve shared their version control best practices for game development in an eBook.

Branching, for instance, is another version control best practice that’s critical in game development. In the webinar below, you’ll hear from Sumo Digital on how they use Perforce Streams (branching in Helix Core) to build hit games.

The referenced media source is missing and needs to be re-embedded.

 

Video Game Project Management

Success for video game project management means fulfilling certain metrics. But what are those metrics? 

You should be able to answer questions like…

Will we hit our milestone? Are feature teams/areas tracking towards completion? What does our milestone/release plan look like? How’s overall game quality

More best practices:

How Perforce Complements the Game Development Process

Here’s how game development works better with Perforce.

Perforce offers two solutions beloved by the world’s best game developers: 

These game development solutions help teams manage projects and version everything at scale. 

Giant Interactive, for instance, uses Helix Core and Hansoft to:

  • Manage their backlog.
  • Meet milestones.
  • Version files fast.

By using Helix Core and Hansoft, they were able to solve massive growth challenges, collaborate better, and save time. 

“The data from Hansoft allows us to take a closer look to the progress — and performance — of each project. We used to have difficulties transferring big binary files. It was a huge waste of time. Also, our branching can be complicated. So free tools, such as Git and SVN, became more of a hindrance than help. With Helix Core as our single source of truth, implementing our versioning system is like a breeze.”

— Eddie Zhang, Lead Project Manager, Giant Interactive

Get Perforce Game Development Tools — Free

The world’s biggest innovators use Perforce game development tools. So do indie studios. That’s why we offer an indie studio pack for free for up to 5 users. 

So, get started with Hansoft and Helix Core today. Get the indie studio pack.

 

➡️ indie Studio Pack