LOVE GAMES. As a kid I always loved games, ever since playing the early zelda games, I wanted to make games myself – but then after years of school and eventually college and odd jobs, life happened. Eventually I had a family of my own, responsibilities, bills to pay, priorities, and I didn’t even have time to play games anymore! However, ever since I started getting into web design I always held onto the idea and passion of wanting to make games in the back of my mind. So thinking about gaming a lot lately (Wii U is coming out soon, as well as seeing a lot of successful video game related Kickstarters), and seeing a couple of awesome interviews with Gabe Newell lately & reading up on his company Valve, have inspired me to put this post together. With all the research I have done with looking into how to make games in the past, I hope it will be a good resource for those that are looking to dive into game design & development, and follow their passion to make their own games! So that the next generation of kids will have something to play, obsess over, fall in love with, and aspire to one day make something that awesome as well! You may be so inspired that you may want to look into some video game design schools, or teach yourself!<\/p>\n
I believe a lot of people get the two confused, game design and game development, while part of the same thing, are two very different things. This post focuses on game development, because that is the actual thing that gets the game made. I believe a lot of people search for “Game Design Tutorials” and “How to get into game design” and then get frustrated because they can’t find out how to actually make a game (at least this was my experience a few years ago when I started looking into the subject). I have learned that to actually learn how to make a game, you need to focus on the development – I believe the “game design” part comes to you first, as an idea for a game or just a passion to want to create something. So focus on game development to get started – then worry about the “design” aspect once you can actually build something (if you are a one man, or a few man startup), If you plan on partnering with someone on a game then perhaps consider partnering with someone who is familiar with design (if you are the developer) or vice versa. Anyway, this is what wikipedia defines for Game Development:<\/p>\n
Video game development<\/a> is the generally involved and lengthy process of creating a video game. Development is undertaken by a game developer, which may range from a single person to a large business. Mainstream games are normally funded by a publisher and take several years to develop. Indie games can take less time and can be produced cheaply by individuals and small developers. The indie game industry has seen a rise in recent years with the growth of new online distribution systems and the mobile game market.<\/p>\n
The first video games were developed in the 1960s, but required mainframe computers and were not available to general public. Commercial game development began in 1970s with the advent of first generation video game consoles and home computers. Due to low costs and low capabilities of computers, a lone programmer could develop a full game. However, approaching the 21st century, ever-increasing computer processing power and heightened consumer expectations made it impossible for a single developer to produce a mainstream game. The average price of game production slowly rose from US$1M\u20134M in 2000 to over 5M in 2006 to over 20M in 2010.<\/p>\n
Mainstream games are generally developed in phases. First, in pre-production, pitches, prototypes, and game design documents are written. If the idea is approved and the developer receives funding, a full-scale development begins. This usually involves a 20\u2013100 person team of various responsibilities, such as designers, artists, programmers, testers, etc. The games go through development, alpha, and beta stages until finally being released. Modern games are advertised, marketed, and showcased at trade show demos. Even so, many games do not turn a profit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
How To Make Games<\/h2>\n
There has never been a more exciting time to make a video game, seriously, there are so many ways to do it now – so many platforms, so many good starting points. However, this can be overwhelming and it is often hard to figure out how (or where) to start. Hopefully this resource can shed some light on the mysteries of game design and I will point you to some good game tutorials to use as a starting point. These tutorials focus mainly on the coding\/programming\/development aspect of game development – when it comes to the “design” of the game you should probably study the style of design you are going for because as we all know games look vastly different from game to game, however if you want a ‘8bit’ or ‘pixel’ styled game then we do have a post with some nice pixel art tutorials<\/a>. Also these game tutorials range from beginner to advanced and cover a wide range of mediums such as browser games (html5, javascript, canvas, etc.), xbox xna games, mobile app games, all the way to traditional computer games, and everything in between. (See, told you there were lots of opportunity for games these days!) One of the big industry standard programming languages to learn if you aren’t sure what language to learn to get into the video game industry is C++, so if you just want to develop video games and nothing else, that would be a good language to get obsessed with. So whatever you are working on at the moment, it might even be a game, I hope you get inspired to get creative, make something fun for people to enjoy! I hope you enjoy this post and it helps you in some way! Who knows, maybe you will create the next Minecraft<\/a>, you never know until you try!<\/p>\n
Advice for Game Designers<\/h2>\n
I saw this video while doing some research for this post and I had to put it up right at the start – oh man, look back at this video of game designers from the 90’s – my how times have changed, but the message they are trying to get across is still pretty accurate “If you want to be a game designer, do it, go build something”. Good video, for nostalgia if nothing else! haha.<\/p>\n