Even though the video game development community believes that making a game never goes as planned, we should never let the process flail about on its own. Game dev is not only about letting creativity run free, but also about strict deadlines, precise accounting, and workforce management. Even if you’re developing a game on your own, drawing a development cycle will help structure things to avoid missed deadlines, bottlenecks in production, overtime, and greatly contribute to saving your nerves.

Video game production cannot go well without planning. And a big part of  planning is defining development stages. We’ve reviewed the basic principles of each and highlighted tips to consider. Without further ado, let’s find out what are the stages of the video game development process!

Main stages of game development

We can divide the whole game development process into three main categories: Pre-production, Production, and Post-production. While the work pattern may differ in different environments, the process is quite similar for any video game type or size.

Pre-production includes conceptualization and planning. Here we try answering fundamental questions of our project:

  • What are we building?
  • What is our budget?
  • What is our audience?
  • What is the genre?
  • The platform?
  • The story?
  • The main features?

As soon as we have the answers to that, we can proceed with something more complicated –  planning. This may include storytelling, technical features, prototyping, hardware & software selection, scheduling, etc.

The main chunk of game development – production –  mainly consists of the actual work. Modeling, designing, level-creation, scriptwriting, programming, rendering, physics, sounds, music, testing, marketing, major bug fixing, and finally – release.

Post-production is everything that comes after the main release. This includes minor bug fixes, balancing, polishing, patching, and further content development – DLCs, skins, add-ons, etc. (if you planned any).

Let’s have a look at these in detail!

Pre-production

Before designers begin to create, engineers begin programming, and writers hit their keyboards, a development first needs to come up with an idea. This is the seed that will eventually sprout into a game. For that, we gather the information from collective discussions (or from your own mind), answering fundamental questions and putting them on paper. This document is often called a game design document. 

This document is essentially a guide for all further development. For your team and anyone else joining the project in the future, it is the text that explains the game world, the game mechanics, sets a standard of quality, and other basic parameters of your future video game. It may be rewritten, augmented, or updated here and there as the project goes on (if you feel things are not working as expected ), but the core idea should remain intact.

A game design document (GDD) will also be your main tool in marketing: pitching for investor funding, media attention, or to generate some hype from potential fans.

It might seem simple, but coming up with a strong idea is arguably the hardest part of the whole project because it has to go through a proof of concept. Proof of concept is the preliminary viability of the ideas put into GDD. There we face the next bunch of questions needed to be answered before development can start firing on all cylinders:

  • What is the price of development and where do we get the money?
  • How many people do we need?
  • What hardware and software do we use? And do we have that in stock?
  • Is there a need to develop an in-house video game engine or we can find it on the market?
  • What are our deadlines for each production stage?
  • How can we monetize the game?
  • How can we promote the game?

When we have these issues figured out, we can finally start digging deeper into your game’s world. The ideas that survived the proof of concept are expanded upon through brainstorming sessions between writers, designers, developers, their managers, etc.Roughly, here’s what happens:

  • Writers compile the narrative, create characters, and discuss the plot;
  • Developers discuss mechanics, physics, rendering, and other technical points;
  • Designers and artists discuss game environments, level design, user interface, draw first visuals and concepts arts;
  • Project leads discuss monetization, marketing, funding, and other business elements.

Now that we have character prototypes, environmental foundations, an understanding of the game mechanics, interfaces, player interaction strategy, and if we’re lucky – bright visuals to drum up the audience, we can start bringing our game to life.

Development

We already know that prototyping a game is not an easy task. Actual development is just as complicated. But in addition to its complexity, the development stage is also a resource-intensive task.

The toughest challenge here is to figure out how to convert what might sound good on paper into a fully-operable mechanism. This means that the development team must:

  • Create models of the game world, decals, animations, effects, and other visual elements;
  • Put them onto pieces of textures programmed by developers while not violating the game’s physics and mechanics;
  • Put that into a fully-crafted level, adjust game elements, environments, connect scripts, fit interfaces, etc.;
  • Design the audio aspect of the game and make sure everything sounds right: ‘right place right time right volume’, including voice acting, SFXs, and music;
  • Come up with working schedules, quality control, department cooperation, and other managment aspects;

And this is a VERY simplified list of what needs to be done. In the real world, it’s relatively common to rework wholly completed sections of the game after weeks of work, which may induce frustration for game developers.

Testing

A huge part of video game development is testing. Testing is the type of quality control without which you can’t release a video game (or any other product in fact). Through this process, testers seek out buggy areas, holes in textures, make sure all the interface elements are properly aligned, experiment with the game’s economy, and so forth. They also play through every possible scenario trying to ‘break’ the game before real players can.

It’s a good idea to hire multiple playtesters for the job since their services are not that expensive, especially considering the time consumed by this process. Testers also provide developers with feedback on the video game’s difficulty, replayability, and measure its overall excitement or ‘fun’.

Testing is a cyclic process that has to be repeated over and over again following major updates and releases. When the basic playtesting is complete, we can proceed to Alpha and Beta releases to involve real players in further testing.

Launch

Once the launch date is announced, and  months (or even years) of hard work have been poured into making the game, the team is ready to collect their commendations and cash… What’s next? The launch! And before you can do that, there’s still a lot of work to do. It’s mostly organizational and logistical: make agreements, negotiate for exhibitions and advertising, come to terms with video game stores, and reassure investors once again that the pain was worth it.

The product itself is never going to be 100% ready for release, but the more work hours you invest into bug fixing – the better. As the playtesting community discovers more bugs, you’ll have to prioritize them in order to fix critical issues first. If there’s time to put some extra gloss into polishing the game, then those efforts are likely to be highly appreciated by your customers.. Maybe there are inaccuracies in graphics, incorrect sound timings, minor text errors, or maybe you want to add some fancy details into the game to make it more immersive. There’s no quality ceiling here.

When there’s nothing obvious left to fix, it’s time for a big step into the unknown – the release and distribution.

But even then the video game development process is not yet fully completed.

Post-production

Video games (unlike works of art or music) usually require further development efforts even after ‘completion.’. Since it’s impossible to launch a perfect video game, there’s some work to be done after “D-Day”.  Nonetheless, this stage of development is considered a “honeymoon” period for any studio. The task is complete, now we only have to support and occasionally update the game. Sales (hopefully) will go up as your game gains attention from players and media. The studio can now handle everything without involving extra employees.

Developers usually spend the first weeks to months after the release on bug hunting. For that purpose, they use automatic bug reports, dedicated forums, and polls. The company – publisher or studio – should establish a post-launch support system that will likely be running for years on end.

Besides post-launch support and hotfixes, your team might take up game updates such as balancing or optimization patches, add downloadable content, expand the story through DLCs, or bring in new in-game items or refreshing aesthetics (skins). One way or another, there will be stuff to do.

Now that you know what stages video game development includes, it’s going to be easier to start. Off we go!