Research Essay : Video Game Designing

I want to be a video game designer, after completing my bachelors on Computing in De Montfort University. My essay is about video game designing, which is a research essay given to me by my Computer Skills and Research tutor, Carrie Mansfield. Video game designing means developments of video game. Video game development consists of two companies, one which is the developer[1] and the other is the publisher[2].

The entire game industry is divided into two parts: the game industry which develops AAA games[3] and the indie game [4]developers. The game industry who develop the AAA games have the highest budget in making their games which are of the highest quality and also attract the bigger audience; the indie developers develops the games with lower budget and they just sell it by themselves.

My target in designing games is to have all of the key features with a lower-budget so that everyone can play it with not much to spend on it. Developing a game needs a lot of features implemented in it. Type of game is it going to be, the budget spent on it, the length of the game, the basic plot, and the skill level needed to build it. I want myself able to build various type of game, i.e. a platformer, shooter, RPG. And to keep the budget low I need to design it in a way so that both Nvidia or AMD graphics card user will be able to play the game.

Making games take a lot of time, and some games does not consume much. Few games can take around 4-6 months to develop it, and many others can take years after years in developing it. Games like Mario, Supersonic are the ones who will not take that much time. Then on the other hand games like Fortnight, Dota 2, League of Legends take years of development and then after the developers still need to be maintain and keep it updated.

Spending on a game is not a target which can be estimated before development. Your budget might increase on the long run or even sometimes can be cheaper then you estimated. Big AAA games take millions of dollars to be developed and the indie games do not have that much of a high budget. I myself play two games quiet a lot. One is a MOBA game called Dota 2 and the other one is Counter-Strike Global Offensive, which is a first-person shooter. Both of these games are played on a platform name Steam[5], which is played in a desktop or a laptop. My experience from both of the game is that they are addictive even without having high-end graphics. Why you may ask? Because they offer a much better gameplay, with a competitive gaming experience.

Keeping games accessible for the wider audience both young and old is also a challenge. Games like GTA, by Rockstar Games which have a rating of 18+, which means they are not for the young people. So also keeping the contents of the game decent, which is needed so that the game can be played by the younger people as well.

One problem in the gaming industry today, is that every game is now pirated and are freely played by most of the players

Reference:

Danke, A. (2010). An Introduction To Game development. [online] Slideshare.net. Available at: https://www.slideshare.net/AhmedSaker/game-development [Accessed 13 May 2018].

Wang, F. (2015). What does AAA games mean? [online] Quora. Available at: https://www.quora.com/What-does-AAA-mean-in-AAA-title-game [Accessed 12 May 2018].

Widder, B. (2017). How to make a video game (experience not required). [online] Digital Trends. Available at: https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/how-to-make-a-video-game/ [Accessed 14 May 2018].

Azseo (2015). Video Game Design Research Paper | AZ Writing | Sample Essays, Example Research Papers and Tips. [online] Azwriting.com. Available at: https://azwriting.com/research-papers/video-game-design.html [Accessed 15 May 2018].

Supererogatory, S. (2014). How much does it cost to make a video game ?. [online] Kotaku.com. Available at: https://kotaku.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-big-video-game-1501413649 [Accessed 16 May 2018].

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[1] Developer - A video game developer is a software developer that specializes in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games.

[2] Publisher - A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that have been developed either internally by the publisher or externally by a video game developer.

 [3]  AAA games –Triple-A title is used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion. A title considered to be AAA is therefore expected to be a high-quality game or to be among the year's bestsellers.

[4] Indie game -  An independent video game (commonly referred to as an indie game) is a video game that is often created without the financial support of a publisher, although some games funded by a publisher are still considered as “indie”. Indie games often focus on innovation and rely on digital distribution.

[5] Steam – is a gaming platform which is played by games on Desktop or a laptop. Now most of the games played online in both the platforms are usually on Steam.

Google Drive : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AAM7Kub3x1lVzqDCCljjhpGh36O8b0wu/view?usp=sharing