By Juegostudio | Game Design, Game Development, Gaming Industry | July 13th, 2015

HOW TO BUILD A GAME AROUND AN IDEA?

Having a great idea with good potential is the first crucial step towards building a successful game. All the great games you know have started out with such great game ideas that the developers firmly believed in. Sometimes these game ideas are entirely unique, but in most cases, these ideas are just interesting takes on other existing ideas.

However, notice that we said that is just the first step towards making a great game. This is because like in everything, an idea is just an idea if it does not follow up with the right execution. If the execution goes wrong, the idea will be a wasted opportunity, no matter how good it is.

A lot of games have failed to get the right results, just because of wrongful execution. One can even say that when it comes to building games, execution is where a lot of great game ideas meet their demise.

example: cross platform game development is the highly preferred concept at present markets. we have to keep the user intent and actual concept of the game in mind while building a game to reach major audience base.  

You can, however, prevent this, when making your own game. By themselves, neither a good idea nor good execution can produce great results. But when combined together, they result in some of the best games we have ever seen.

This is why, when developing your game, you need to take a few crucial steps to build an execution strategy that revolves around your key idea. Here is how you can do it:

Execution of Game Design according to Game Idea

Game design is probably the most important thing you can do to maximize the potential of your idea. A great team of designers can take your initial idea and add new things to it. They’ll stretch your idea to its maximum potential.

It is at the design stage, that you will nail down various things about your game. Like who the target audience of your game will be, or what basic gameplay mechanics is the game going to revolve around. The earlier these things are nailed down, the better the latter stages of your game’s development will be.

Other various components in your game’s design include designing levels if the game is level-based, writing a storyline and creating characters if your game follows a storyline, and recognizing a good progression system so that your users get a sense of satisfaction as they travel from one in-game milestone to the other, 

The designers will then write all these things down and document them in a design document. This game design document will be like a blueprint you can follow over the course of your game’s development. It will act as a reliable document on which you will always be able to fall back on when required. That does not mean, however, that you have to follow it diligently whatever is written inside. But it will nonetheless aid you in creating a pathway you can follow while you build your game from its idea.

Prototype of the Game

The next step is prototyping. Prototyping is the step where you create a very basic version of your game, with only the barest mechanics. This means you will create maybe just one basic level or so of the game, or sometimes even less. 

The intention of a prototype is to make sure the basic mechanics and idea behind your game are both feasible and fun. The earlier you figure out if your idea is a feasible one, the better off you will be. This version will also in no way be released to the public.

And you might have to create multiple prototypes until you are satisfied with the outcome. The first few times, you may be unable to achieve the desired result, but with enough iterations, you will be. 

By nailing down the basic gameplay mechanics and other stuff at this stage, you can ensure that your game’s future development will be much smoother.

Development and Post-Development

Then comes the development stage. This is the stage where your idea no longer remains an idea or a prototype but starts to take the shape of a real game.

At this stage, various teams within game development will be involved: from the developers to the artists, to the testers. The team of designers will have to work closely together with all these different teams to make sure that the vision you have in your mind is brought to life exactly how you want it.

For this, you will need a team of competent developers who will be able to tackle your entire project from scratch. This team must be able to work with the game engine you have chosen for your game’s development. Not only must they know their way around it, but for the maximum benefit, they must be able to thrive in it. That is they must know the programming language the engine uses,  in-depth, and must also have mastered the various features of the game engine.

The second thing you will need is a team of artists.  Now, while building a game, there will be a lot of artistic elements that your art team will have to take care of. This includes your game’s UI, the character designs, environment designs, animations, modeling, rigging, and more, based on your game’s type. Your art team must also create all these in an art style that matches both your game’s key idea and the design you have built around it.

Finally, once the development and art are finished, the game you have built must be tested. Because despite the best intentions of you and your entire development team, your game will have a lot of bugs in its initial stages. Releasing your game to the public at this time would be wasting all the effort you have put into the game until this point. 

To avoid this, you must have a team of experienced testers who will play through your entire game, analyze and scrutinize everything there is, and find as many bugs as they can. They will then get in touch with your development team, report the bugs they have found, and get them all fixed.

Conclusion

By following the right steps, you can build an amazing game from a great game idea. By giving the execution process, the same care you give during the ideation process, you can give your users, a great gaming experience.

Doing so alone, however, might seem daunting to you. Especially if you are a beginner. This is why the best way to develop your game from a key game idea, is to hire a top game development company. A top game development company like Juego Studio, who has created 250+ games over the years, will know exactly how to take your game from a mere game idea into a well-designed game. 

They will be able to maximize the potential, your game’s idea has.

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