Introduction
Video games have been sky-rocketing in popularity in the last few decades, and it is clear by now that they have become a massive phenomenon in the younger generations especially. With platforms such as Steam boasting more than 120 million monthly users, it is safe to say that video games are now rivalising with the other huge entertainment markets such as the book and film industries. As such, it is important in this modern age to know about them and how they can influence people.
You may be starting out on the journey of game-making, you have an idea that you want to bring a step further. You may have played video games for years without ever asking yourself how they are made. Or you may just be wondering how developers turn lines of code into massive 3D open worlds. In any case, if you want to learn more about what is hidden behind your screen as you are playing League of Legends, Minecraft, Fortnite or Elden Ring along with many others then you have come to the right place, I will be detailing all the main steps companies or small groups follow to create a marketable game.
Theorising
The first step is to imagine what game one would want to make. If it’s going to be produced by a company, they will need to look at the market: what is on demand and what is successful. Otherwise you can just think up a theme for your game, although it is important for it to be the perfect one, as you’ll have to stick to it for a long time. Teams have to think of what type of game they want to make, this could include first-person-shooters (e.g.Valorant), role playing games (e.g.Elden ring), sandbox games(e.g.Minecraft), real-time strategy games (e.g.Starcraft), massively multiplayer only games (e.g.World of Warcraft), multiplayer online battle arena games (e.g. League of Legends), battle royales (e.g. Fortnite) amongst others. Then they would need to find a general theme or setting for the game which could be fantasy (e.g The Witcher), sci-fi (e.g. Halo), contemporary (e.g. Call of Duty) or historical (e.g. Assassin’s Creed). Another key factor is your budget, especially with companies now building games with close to a hundred million dollars, it is important to be aware of what you have got to make a game and what you can realistically make. Also the questions of audience and platforms are important, it is primordial to know who is your target age-group or type of person, what platform do these people usually play on, what platform could support your game etc. All these are things developers must consider. Obviously you can let your imagination run wild and think up something completely different and unique, but usually sticking to these general lines will net you a pretty good game idea. Now it’s time to start prototyping!
Prototyping
The next step in game development is prototyping. This consists of a rough draft of your gameplay. Companies usually don’t even start graphics designing and other important steps before passing the prototyping stage. Simple blocks are used for the layout of the walls and floor and the gameplay is tested. The main aim of this step is to find out whether your idea is fun, marketable and realistic. Sometimes during this stage, developers “cut out” a section of the world and develop that part fully to estimate how much time developing will take, because the whole process can take multiple years! Prototyping is an essential part of your game because after this you are fully committing to your idea. Once you’ve started graphics designing and fully coding, there is no turning back. Now it’s time to actually start!
Graphics Designing
Before you start bringing your characters to life, you need characters to bring life to! Graphics designing can make or break your game, and it is key to know what you’re doing when modelling.
First and foremost is the question of art-style. Do you want to make a photo-realistic game? If so, you’ll need to spend a lot of time and effort on the graphics. On the other hand, you might want to make a charming non-realistic game. This is what is called high-poly and low-poly, poly standing for polygon. It will affect a lot how your game will look, and as one's first impressions are the most important, creating a striking art-style is a very good idea. Once you have decided on your art-style, it’s time to model.
Modelling is the first step in the process of creating a mesh (graphically designed object, also known as asset). It consists of creating the shape of the object you want to create, much like sculpting in real-life. To do this, graphic artists use 3d graphics designing softwares such as Blender, Maya or 3DS Max. When modelling, artists are essentially using various techniques to move points in space and construct a complex 3d geometrical shape, consisting of millions of different points. The process of modelling the meshes of a game is a gruelling tasks that can take hundreds of hours especially if you are going for a high-poly game, but industries usually create massive libraries of assets to be used in future projects, thus alleviating the tasks for artists when dealing with common objects found across multiple games such as tables, buildings or trees. Smaller teams however will not have very large libraries and will therefore have to work from the ground up.
Modelling a character in blender
Once an object is modelled there are two lines in the production of a mesh that come up: characters and objects. Characters will go through an extra step called rigging, which is the process of giving a rig (bones) to the character and moving these bones to animate them. All characters you see in both games and animated movies need to be rigged in order to move. Animators are put in charge to create walking, sprinting, jumping, crouching, talking as well as any other additional animations needed to make a fully functioning character.
A rigged body in blender
The two lines of production between character and object join back together once a character is rigged and animated. The last step for an object to be functional in game is texturing, that is adding colour and detail to a mesh. First of all, one must add a base colour to a surface, but to make it realistic it must reflect the light in amount depending on its material. For example, a piece of aluminium foil reflects light much more than a rubber band. All these details including shadow, imperfections and various marks are added during this step. To do this, professional artists use 3d texturing software such as blender, adobe substance painter or quixel mixer. This type of software allows artists to create procedural (automatic) materials that cover the surface: not all details are hand-painted, a lot are mechanically created through algorithms. Every surface is covered in a different material made by the artist which should reflect how that surface looks in real life if it is a realistic art-style. For instance, a character should have a skin material, which mostly absorbs sunlight, but also materials for their clothes and accessories. Therefore, characters can end up having close to fifty materials!
Once these materials are done, 2d maps of these materials are created, which a game engine interprets to produce the wanted results. This final process is called texture baking.
A sample map of a material adds a lot of detail to the object
Once your model has been modelled, rigged (if it’s a character) and textured, the mesh is ready for importation into a game engine! These include: unreal engine and unity. Industries create their own engines to have a more personalised one that can fit the requirements of their games better, but open-source ones are also excellent. This is the hub of your game, where you import your assets and write your code. So now, you finally get to do some scripting!
Scripting & Game Engines
The next step is scripting! But since this is a very complex and vast area, I will be covering this in part 2 of this article, along with the final adjustments of a game and then finally its publishing. In part 2, we’ll also explore game engines and their intricacies as well as discover how companies market their games to get perfect launches!
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