Why are card games so popular? For many of us card games carry a sentimental value, reminding us of family get-togethers and playdates from once upon a time. Nostalgia is a strong emotion to ignore and card game developers are integrating facets into the apps keeping this very psycho-social aspect in mind. For the less emotional ones, card games are charming for the critical thinking they require, promising brain work, use of strategic thinking and as a study of human behavior (or poker faces, to be precise). You can play card games from where you are, when you want and with whomever you wish to.

Mobile game development companies sensed this love the moment physical casinos became unavailable, leading to an exponential rise in the demand for online card game apps since. This demand is increasingly being met by those who started their own online card game business. Are you looking to join the bandwagon? 

10 Steps to Start Your Card Game Business

1. Begin With a Market Research

Market research is an essential step, as it helps you make informed decisions and minimizes risks in this competitive and crowded business. An in-depth research of the card gaming market entails studying the competitors as well as their audience. Learn about the prominent trends in the industry. Are the competitors using branding strategies that work for them? Who is the target audience? What do users prefer? What are the user demographics? 

By the end of this research, you will have moulded your basic game plan and identified potential customers for your own online card game business.  

2. Name the Game

What’s in a name? A lot! Keep in mind the plentitude of online card games and how the popular ones are based on similar concepts. If you want yours to stand-out from the crowd, the uniqueness of the name is a step in the right direction.  

3. Choose a Card Game Development Company

A good game development company will play a crucial role when you are starting your own card game business. You will need high-quality game software and an experienced and reliable team throughout. While there are innumerable companies to pick from, these are some of the things that you can consider when making a choice: 

• Study the company’s portfolio and know about any recent projects which are similar to your game ideas. Read the client reviews!
• Look for proficiency in the latest tools and technologies required for game development.
• A stable and scalable platform that suits your game should be available.
• Do they have an experienced UI UX design team?
• Quality assurance with 24*7 customer support is a must. 

Experience in making real money gaming apps goes a long way in ensuring a smooth and successful game development project, and game. 

Look for a company that offers - 

1. Secure payment options through gateways which support fiat and cryptocurrency transactions. 
2. Transparent accounting where users can view the complete purchase and in-game transactions, easy deposits and withdrawals. 
3. White label software, where each club has its own unique coin bank and design, and manages its own rake and users. 

Looking for an authentic casino betting experience with real dealers and live play?

4. Build a Website for Your Business

Today, having a good website for your business is as much of a given as the sun rising in the East and setting in the West. A quality website which is easy to navigate, aesthetically done and true to your brand image generates trust among the players. Keep in mind that both mobile applications and websites should be compatible with all the available browsers and constantly updated and well-optimized to ensure faster loading speeds. 

5. Find out about Gaming Licenses

Card games require licenses to operate and different jurisdictions have their own legislations pertaining to the card game business. Before launching your website and game, research the necessary gaming license required to operate your card game business in the jurisdiction where you plan to launch it. Government guidelines need to be followed to legalize your card game business. 

6. Know all about Blockchain and NFTs

The fusion of blockchain technology and NFTs with traditional card games is changing the online gaming landscape forever. It is believed that in no time, crypto TCGs will dominate the online gaming landscape. Here’s how:

In traditional online card games, the players have no guarantee of the future value and security of digital cards stored in servers. With Crypto TCGs and NFT Authentication, players can truly own their digital cards as unique tokens on the blockchain. These tokens cannot be duplicated, and hence the value of rare cards increases. This leads to confidence in the long-term value of digital assets.

NFTs and blockchain technology allow cross-platform compatibility so players can easily transfer and use their digital cards across platforms and games. This seamlessness allows players to explore new games and yet preserve the value of their digital assets.

Traditional online card games are centralized hence open to hacking and data breaches. Blockchain technology offers a solution by decentralizing data storage and transaction validation, securing the system against fraud and safeguarding the digital assets of the players. 

NFT marketplaces create a secure and transparent trading atmosphere to facilitate trading, selling or buying of digital cards, thus enabling players to monetize their card collections. 

Get a card game app at a lightning-fast turnaround time of 15 days!

7. Ensure a Reliable Payment Gateway Provider

Think about this - the reputation of your business rests on the payment gateway provider. Your card game business needs to steer clear of any fraud. A trusted and reputed provider will offer secure payment, a multi-currency support system, and efficient fraud detection. 

8. Brand Your Business

Solid branding need not be expensive, but it does ask for a lot of creativity and research. An effective marketing strategy boosts business success. Developing a team for your online card game business which will help enhance your brand awareness is a good idea. 

9. Check the formalities

If you’re here, you’re likely ready to hit the market! The final checklist will include essential aspects for legalization of your card game business, like liability protection, tax benefits, and legal and trademark formalities.  

10. Post-launch 

Once you launch the card game business, you will need post-launch services and support. The card game development company you chose at step 3 should offer maintenance and support, and help grow your online card game business. 

Starting a business, any business, involves planning, making key financial decisions, and completing a series of legal activities. It also requires funds and patience, in equal volumes. Remember, it all begins with a good idea. And once you have a card game app that stands out in the market as a highly creative and cost-efficient solution, with the social and viral aspects fully covered, you are more than ready for this buzzing industry. 

Launch Your Card Game with Logic Simplified

Logic Simplified is an experienced game development company with a strong portfolio of real money, real-time multiplayer games, with expertise in card game tournament and championship mode. Our card game developers are experts at game logic, offering a full deck of custom card games and ready-to-pick solutions, like Poker, Rummy, UNO, Blackjack, Solitaire and Teen Patti. Get from us highly responsive and feature-rich apps, with stunning designs, seamless 2D/3D animations and quick card swipes. Send us an email at enquiry@logicsimplified.com  or contact us now to launch your dream app. 

The origin of User Experience (UX) design can be traced back to the 1940s, when Human Factors Engineering, or Ergonomics, emerged. The idea was to apply user psychological and physiological principles in the engineering and design of products, processes, and systems. By the 1970s, the concept of user-friendliness of technology gained momentum.

With the internet taking the world by storm in the 1990s, rudimentary websites grew as did the role of hyperlinks and the importance of easy navigation. The urgency to keep online experiences seamless was felt. This is when information architecture and interaction design became essential in UX practice. The 2000s and 2010s brought in digital content on screens of various sizes and resolutions, hence responsiveness gained in significance. 

With UX taking centre-stage, could user-centered design be far behind? User-centered design took a human approach to building websites, applications and products, and not just a technological one. User research, usability testing and even user feedback became a part of the design process. Now, what a user thought and felt while using an application mattered - studied through qualitative as well as quantitative data. Data-driven design is the norm for applications and websites now, led by fusing data analytics with UX design. 

You may also read: Game Design and Development Process: Pre to Postproduction

Why UX Design Evolution Matters

“The growth in UX is still to come. I’m predicting that we’ll be 100 million UX professionals in the world by 2050. This corresponds to 1% of the world’s population. Is it realistic to expect that an entire percent of the population will be occupied with something as esoteric as user experience? Yes, because UX won’t be esoteric in 2050. It will be a key driver of the world economy.” - Jakob Neilson, co-founder, the Nielsen Norman Group. 

Jakob Neilson started UX in 1983 and his 100-year view of UX is evidently bullish and ‘positive beyond belief’. Kbvresearch.com says the Global UX Services Market size is expected to reach $30.2 billion by 2030, rising at a market growth of 37.3% CAGR during the forecast period. In all of this, UX design is ruling the roost.

There are significant reasons to invest in UX design. Companies providing UI UX design services understand the pulse of the ux design industry, and businesses are convinced now more than ever why UX design is the thing to embrace. 

Here are some of the reasons why this is so.

Increased user engagement 

A thought-out UX design helps in boosting overall engagement. A design process driven by an understanding of user expectations is bound to resonate with customers. 

Reduced bounce rate

A bad design comes in the way of a smooth and useful experience of a website or app, leading to potential customers exiting. A good design holds them!

Increased user satisfaction

Intuitive and aesthetically made interfaces lead to satisfied customers, improving a brand’s perception and increasing loyalty.

Enhanced brand image

UX designs bring an element of contemporariness to products which helps with products coming across as in-with-the-times.  

More conversions

Intuitive designs play a big role in driving calls to action, thanks to streamlined user journeys and minimal to nil frustrations. 

Effective CRMs

UX design ideas are helping SMEs manage customer interactions, track leads, and streamline client communication, thus making Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems more effective.

Data-Driven decisions

Advanced UI/UX designs facilitate data collection and analysis. This data then helps businesses make informed decisions based on user behavior and preferences.

Adaptability

Contemporary User Experience trends are evidence of how UX adapts to evolving technology to ensure integration with changing platforms and devices. Latest UX ensures mobile-friendly interfaces in keeping with the growing population using smartphones. 

5 UX Design Principles Which Are Here to Stay

UX practitioners and UX designers have been on their toes trying to keep abreast of the flux in the UX industry. UX design trends 2024 point towards responsive designs with 3D designs for elevated realism, neumorphism for tactile interfaces, microinteractions for enhanced engagement, animated gradients, dark mode for aesthetic and functional appeal, minimalism and the carrying over of the metaverse, Voice user interface, AR, VR  and minimalism from previous years.

Apart from the trends and despite their ever-changing nature, there are core principles of UX design which constantly define the future of UX, including responsibility. 

Here are 5 dominant UX design principles which are here to stay:

Inclusive Design 

What was once a buzzword has today become a necessity in design - Inclusivity. A wider spectrum of users is being seen in this approach, beyond the ‘average user’. Digital experiences need to be accessible to all users - irrespective of age, needs and abilities. This means the design process is not just considering but also including different ages, genders, cultural backgrounds, physical and cognitive abilities in the design process itself - in order to open up digital experiences to larger audiences. 

Key aspects of inclusive design are:

Accessibility: Accessibility works in a two-fold manner. One, it considers a wide range of abilities and disabilities for easy access. Two, it seeks to elevate usability and create product experiences that are enjoyable for everyone.

Empathy: An empathetic approach begins with a better understanding of real people and their real needs. This deep understanding of user experiences translates into UX designs which prioritize user preferences and hence lead to more successful products.

Context and Environment: This mindset shift considers designing for different devices, network conditions, and environmental constraints. What is taken into account is the context in which a user may interact with a product or service.

Sustainability: Design decisions have a long term impact on users and society. Inclusive design aims to create solutions that can sustain changes in technology and societal norms.

User Feedback: Inclusive design gives importance to diverse user feedback throughout the design process. If done early on, issues in design can be identified and rectified. What ensues is a process of continuous improvement.

Growth Design and Hyper-Personalization

Growth design is a methodology that goes beyond the regular product design process, to also include business strategy and growth in it. At a basic level, it does so by focussing on user engagement and retention.

Hyper-personalization is the process of using AI and real-time data to display highly curated products and content. It is a key element of growth design and improves the overall business performance.

1. Relevant content highly personalized to the users keeps them more involved with a product or service, hence driving user engagement.
2. Personalized content, like tailored recommendations, has a greater chance of retaining user attention, and hence the user himself. 
3. Personalized promotions and calls to action based on user behaviors help with conversions. 
4. Hyper-personalization includes constant experimentation, testing and optimization of elements. 

User Autonomy

What is meant by user autonomy? Giving users a level of freedom when using a product or service. What does this mean in the context of UX design? Designing keeping in mind that a user should be able to control their actions, like correct mistakes, undo actions or choose easily. It is like fostering a feeling of control over the User Interface (UI).

Being allowed to exit a flow or simply undo his/her last action plays a significant role in encouraging the user toward further exploration, thereby increasing the chances of the user finding what he was looking for (say, on a product site) and getting converted. 

Usability 

The principle of usability is as simple as it sounds - how easy it is to use a product. A good user experience relies heavily on this UX design principle. It is measured by considering how well a certain user in a specific context can use a product or design to achieve a pre-defined goal. A UX design with a high level of usability means it guides users through the easiest and least laborious route towards that goal. 

Usability is measured throughout the design process. Broadly, there are five components of usability to consider in UX designs:

Learnability: How easy is it for users to comprehend your product the first time they use it? 

Memorability: How easy is it for a user to re-familiarise themselves with a product they are using after some time.

Efficiency: Is the user able to reach the desired goal efficiently and quickly? 

Errors: How many errors do users typically make when using the product? Are these errors serious? Can they be undone, as discussed in user autonomy above? 

User Satisfaction: Does the product provide a satisfying user experience?

Ethical Data Considerations

A good UX design makes our online experience easy, efficient, and enjoyable. Ethical design goes an essential step beyond this to include not just our well-being but also that of society and the environment. It is a kind of “conscious” design that gains the users’ trust, builds brand image, is socially inclusive, acknowledges diversity and values privacy.

With data driving designs from conception itself, issues of data privacy and data bias come into being. Data collection and privacy concerns are a balancing act. Collecting valuable data has to go hand-in-hand with respecting user privacy. This also includes complying with established data protection regulations. The solution is to collect only what is necessary with clear user content. Secure data storage and transmission methods are also important. 

Design decisions can be negatively impacted if bias accidentally enters predictive models. This bias can be socio-economic, gender based or even ethnic prejudice. Diverse samples which are cross-validated mitigate this bias. A multidisciplinary team in data analysis can help.

Validating assumptions and interpretations requires domain experts as an integral part of the UX design team. All decisions to do with design need to be made accordingly. 

UX Design With Logic Simplified 

Logic Simplified is a leading game design and development company with over a decade of experience in providing UI UX design services. Our game designers and  game app developers upskill in tandem with evolving UX designs and principles, always aiming to create products which drive user engagement and maintain user satisfaction. Write to us at enquiry@logicsimplified.com or call us here to know more.

 
Design is often looked at as an art rather than as science. In reality, it’s both. The art of design should be influenced by the science of data and information. - Cameron Chapman, author of two web design books: ‘Color for Web Design’ and ‘The Smashing Idea Book’.

Humans can be governed by two distinct forces when it comes to making decisions and acting upon them. One, we may act based on personal opinions, assumptions and intuition; perhaps a most natural thing to do. Two, we may do so on the basis of insightful data. The latter is what is referred to as a data-driven approach, where decisions are based on analyzed information and not variables like opinions or assumptions.

What is data driven design? Using quantitative and qualitative data to guide designs during digital product development is what is called data-driven design. Data-driven UX design involves studying user behavior, their choices and needs to strategize how best user-centric designs can be made for digital products. Both user satisfaction and business goals are to be kept in mind when doing so.

Think about it! UX designers around the world believe that without data, user experience design does not exist because without data the end product is simply a reflection of the design team's perceptions and experiences. And like it’s famously quoted on www - Designers aren’t users.

Data for UX Design

 
While UX design and Data Analytics are two distinct fields, both are absolutely essential. The foundation of successful products or services is built by intelligently integrating insights from data analytics into the UX design processes.

There are two broad types of data that UX designers depend on - Quantitative data and Qualitative data.

As the name suggests, Quantitative data is all about numbers. This includes objective insights into user behavior and interactions, to identify patterns and trends. For example, to make data driven website designs, designers can analyze website analytics to study which pages have high traffic, low engagement or high bounce rate and accordingly guide content and layout decisions for problem pages. Even when a page is re-designed, UX analytics data comes in handy to know if the new design is working or not.

Analytics tools, like Google Analytics, are excellent sources of quantitative data, like user demographics and engagement. Google Analytics also provides industry analytics to compare the performance of a website or an app in comparison to the industry average, and tools for exploring user behavior flows.

Heatmaps and click-tracking tools visually represent user interactions on a website or an app and are particularly useful to identify popular as well as problem areas for bettering design decisions.

A/B Testing compares two or more designs to help determine the most effective and intuitive design layouts or elements. Continuously running A/B or multivariate tests to improve a design can result in huge conversion increases, apart from deep insights into user behavior and experience.

Qualitative data is non-numerical and subjective. User feelings, opinions, perceptions and motivations come under this umbrella. How best to source this kind of data? User surveys and interviews are the best source for qualitative data. Focus groups can also help gather user feedback to improve apps or websites.

Big Data Strategy for UX Design:

Analyze - Integrate - Measure

What about Creativity?

 
Design is intelligence made visible. — Alina Wheeler, author ‘Designing Brand Identity’

While it’s easy to interpret Alina’s quote as giving precedence to data, creativity remains an integral part of UX design. The ability to see things from different perspectives, to think outside the box and come up with innovative ideas and solutions has no substitute.

The approach for creating empathetic designs pays significant attention to the user’s feelings towards a product. Intuition enables designers to anticipate needs and design accordingly. Thus, a visually appealing web or app design draws as much on intuition as it does on data.

As subjective as it may seem, striking the right balance between data and intuition is a must. Data provides insights, while the designer’s intuition coupled with expertise of UX design principles may guide innovative features for user engagement. Over reliance on data may not help with innovation and a product may thus lack novelty and simply be one among many.

Logic Simplified is a leading game design and development company with over a decade experience in providing UI UX design services. Our game designers and game app developers follow the big data strategy for UX design, creating websites and apps which drive user engagement and maintain user satisfaction. Our design experiments are based on insights and measured through real-time data. We de-risk product ideas! Write to us at enquiry@logicsimplified.com or call us to know more.

Spine is a 2D skeletal animation tool for game development and other animation projects. How does it work? Imagine each character with a series of single 2D images making up its various body parts. These images are posed around each other, and on top of an invisible, virtual skeleton consisting of a hierarchy of interconnected bones. So the character’s body parts are connected through “bones”. Through animation tools and code, each of the parts can be moved independently and the character animated. 

How Our Spine Animation Story Began

Behind every animation created is a story, often not told, and always involving a coming together of various skills. In this particular one, you will read about two things. One, how Spine works as a great 2D animation software.  And two, how our character artist, Manish, and animator, Abhishek, journeyed through the process of making the stunning animation.

At Logic Simplified, the creative minds seldom sit still. What do they do with some time on their hands? They create! Manish came up with this character art on one such day - with its unique personality and aesthetic. A horned beast with a tail, a bow, a quiver full of arrows, poised on semi-hoofed feet, waiting to be animated and brought to life.  

It’s almost as if Manish heard him.
 
Manish walked up to Abhishek, character in hand, and asked him to animate his creation. Abhishek, deft in using Spine animation software, got down to work. But before that, unlike usual tales which have a twist in the end, this one had a few right from the get-go.

The Challenges

An already ready image

 
We had a character image ready with us, but was it Spine-ready? No.

1. Creating a Spine-ready image is slightly different from creating the same for traditional animation. The image can be drawn as you normally would, as a single image, but to animate it in Spine it needs to be cut into several different animatable pieces.
2. For a dynamic animation it helps if the character is simpler and hence easier to turn and animate. For instance, having less fabric attached to its body for less follow-through animation. Ours was clad just enough, and on top of that, we had replaced the otherwise-stationary horns with thick, flowy locks of hair, in our attempt to ‘humanize’ the beast. 
3. Drawing a Spine-friendly character means you also need to draw parts of images that are normally obscured, as the visibility can change as the sprite moves. 
4. A side pose is easier to animate. 

The feet

 
The feet deserve a special mention. Who would have thought standing on tip-toes would be problematic? The pose in the original art was such that it needed to be changed in order to make things doable for the animator. 

Manish had made him stand. Abhishek had to reinvent the pose to what can be called ‘resting but still ready for action’ (if you hire game designers from us, this is how you will find them during lunch hour.) 

The tail had to be dropped, and also a part of the limb. Meanwhile, the feet, if you notice, remained perfectly unchanged. 
 

The Process 

Before Abhishek could begin working on animating Manish’s art, a lot of consultation and discussions ensued. The new character was a change from the older one, and while an artist’s heart is sensitive to such changes in the original, the idea of teamwork and delivering a great animation took precedence. 

This is what the process looked like henceforth: 

1. Abhishek took the character image from Manish in parts. Overlap of images is complicated, hence this anatomical dissection and cutting up of the image into clean parts. 
2. Each image part was converted to mesh. The USP of Spine animation software is how smoothly it converts an image part to mesh. 
3. In each mesh vertices are placed to define how we want to move the character. It is these vertices which can be moved. 
4. Abhishek confesses that the next phase was the most intense. This is when the underlying armature is defined. Bones are created to help the mesh move and provide fine-tuned control. At the very base of the skeleton is the root node, and all bones are parented to it, ultimately. Creating and naming bones is very user-friendly in Spine, as compared to other tools like Unity 2D. Rigging was then done for connecting mesh to bones and creating a skeletal frame.
5. Next, images were attached to bones, another process made easy with Spine. From the images section you can simply drag the appropriate image onto the bone. The image can then be selected to transform, rotate, and resize in order to match the underlying bone.
6. The Inverse Kinematics feature, a constraint feature quite like a parent-child relationship in reverse order, used to pose the animations, was used on the character’s feet. 
7. The animation is composed of a set of “key” frames. Snapshots of location, rotation and scale of a given bone are taken. Then the timeline was advanced to a different value, and the process repeated. The computer then interpolated between the key frames to create a smooth animation.  

In the Background - Artist v/s Animator

Animation is as much about character as it is about background, because there is a narrative to be created. Our character needed a fitting background too, and this is where the 2D game artist and the animator agreed to disagree, for just a bit. 

The character was a half-beast mythical warrior, oozing a sense of power, pride and purpose. Abhishek envisaged a background which showed some kind of conflict, like a war scene. Manish, on the other hand, wanted a forest as the background. An autumnal forest was chosen as the final background, and it works wonderfully! 

The scene becomes a study in contrasts - between conflict and peace, action and rest. The smoothness of animation adds a lulling, relaxing aspect, significantly portrayed through the animation of the hair and the leaves, the gentle wind and the mellow light. The overall effect makes you think - Is he resting or guarding? Is he about to charge ahead or is peering ahead with curiosity? 

Our game app developers could hardly wait to adopt him!

Reasons Why Animators Prefer Spine Animation 

Idle animations are made by not-so-idle experts, as you have seen above. It involves bending, deforming, skinning, timing, visualizing, posing and even constraining. Here are some key features of Spine 2D animation software that stand out:  

1. Meshes - Instead of drawing rectangles, meshes help you specify a polygon inside your image. This improves the fill rate because pixels outside the polygon won't be drawn. This is an important aspect for mobile games.  
2. Dopesheet and simple VCR style controls - Dopesheet is crucial for animating. It carries details of all the timelines that make up an animation and helps make minute adjustments to the timing of the 2D animation.
3. Simple UI - Unlike traditional animation softwares, SPine has easy-to-access tools and a clutter-free UI, making it smooth, light and efficient to work on.
4. Inverse Kinematics - Constraints at the feet defined the animation using inverse kinematics (IK).
5. Free-Form Deformation (FFD) - This feature allows you to move individual mesh vertices to deform the image. It helped stretch, bend and squash meshes in ways that aren't possible using rectangular images. This is a one up on Unity, which doesn’t support the free form deformation. So you can animate the bones, but not the mesh vertices.
6. Animation Reusability - Spine allows animators to reuse the same animation for an entirely new character with similar proportions. The same animation can also be modified, by adding props or new images during or after the animation is done.
7. Smoothness - All movement of bones is continuous. Notice the hair of the character. When an object is moving, Spine is adapting to movement all the time, hence the life-like effect.Bones can be manipulated through code, allowing for effects. 
8. Smaller size - Spine animations store only the bone data, hence their loading and rendering is stable and fast, even on mobile devices like Android or iOS. 
9. Export formats - Spine exports animation data in its own, documented JSON and binary formats which are light and hence ideal for game engines, as compared to old frame-by-frame sequence. 

Spine Animation with Logic Simplified

Spine Animation can be used both for creating 2D animations and for working with those animations in 2D games. 

Animators at Logic Simplified know Spine like the back of their hand, and are fully harnessing the potential this tool carries, not just for creating stunning animations but also for adding to the whole game development process. How so?

Our 2D game app developers value efficiency, flexibility and performance. In all three aspects, Spine Animation software works. Spine reduces overall development time, encourages multiple iterations and also optimizes animations for runtime efficiency, making it an excellent option for game development where smooth performance is a key goal. Spine integration libraries support most game engines including GameMaker Studio, Cocos2Dx, Unity, XNA, Flash, HTML 5, Corona, and more.

Logic Simplified is a leading game design and development company with 12+ years of experience in creating top-notch games. We have assisted over 100 businesses globally, with our expertise in gaming and emerging technology solutions. We are also a sought after Unity game development company. We leverage the latest tools and technologies, and combine them with our scalable design philosophy, competitive cost and flexible engagement models. Get in touch with us and share your project ideas.

If you’re looking for an Unreal Game Development Company, there are some key factors to consider in order to make an informed choice.

1. Company’s Portfolio

A strong game development portfolio showcases the company’s expertise across various kinds of projects. A long-running Unreal engine game development company will provide a comprehensive work history, experience, reviews and client testimonials to help you decide. Innovation is vital to game development and the portfolio should reflect that.

2. Expertise

Unreal Engine is the most open and advanced real-time 3D creation tool. Hire unreal engine developers who have to have the technical knowhow of the game development principles and the artistic skills in order to leverage the full potential of Unreal. A proven track record of solutions will be a good thing to go by.

3. Development Services

The wider the range of Unreal game development services, the better, of course! Look for companies that offer full-cycle game development services, that cover everything from art, animation, VR/AR/XR-based development, right up to game testing.

4. Development Process

Find out about the company’s development process and work methodology. Is it well-defined? From strategy development, content creation, coding to testing, the development process reflects on the successful delivery of the game.

5. Data Protection

An important factor to consider when looking for a game development company is data protection. Look for one that cares about your data security and intellectual property. There is no replacement for solid non-disclosure agreements.

6. Employee Retention

High employee retention statistics reveal the ability of an organization to retain its employees and ensure sustainability. While retention rates vary widely based on the type of business, a good retention rate signifies business efficiency and career-focussed training of employees.

Game Design and Development Process

Let’s quickly walk through what it takes to develop a game from scratch. Each game project has 3 distinct stages- pre-production, production, and post-production.

Pre-production

This is the primary stage when the game is planned. The following steps are involved:

1. Research: Research is important to the game design process. Everything, like tools to use, genres to choose, characters to animate, ideas to develop, is decided at this stage. Competitor analysis is a must too!

2. Brainstorming: The game designers start thinking and exploring various techniques. It can be visual, through storyboards, or conceptual art demonstrating what the character or environment may look like.

3. Game concepts: In this phase, some of the questions asked are - What will be the genre of the game? What is the time frame? Who are its characters? Will the game be 2D or 3D? Who is my target audience? From environment to storyline, number of levels to players, everything is decided at this time.

4. Concept Art: Concept art shows how the characters, objects, buildings, and areas will look. They can be in a realistic style, cartoon style, etc. A concept artist is vital because he gives the entire team a visual guide to the overall game.

5. Map development: This step involves planning the layout of the game - not too detailed but simply as a basis. Is it an island? Is it divided into sections or territories? Unless specified in the client’s brief, the designer makes these choices.

6. Game Design Document: A GDD helps keep the team organized throughout the process of game development. It contains the game’s proposed design like the concept of the game, genre, core game mechanics, gameplay, timeline, illustrations/sketches, story and characters, levels and monetization strategies. GDD is updated regularly.

7. Prototype: The prototype is a raw test that checks the functionality of the game, environments, gameplay, mechanics, user experience, etc. This decides whether the game is worth pursuing or not.

Production

1. Production:It is the longest and most challenging phase of game development. In this crucial stage, the team takes the concepts produced during the pre-production stage and transforms them into source code and different assets. The steps involved are:

2. Design: Working with the artist, the design team renders character models, iterates on the interfaces, designs dynamic and interactive level designs and environments, and so on. The models become more accurate and ideas get refined, or discarded, at this stage.

3. Level blocking: This approach is used to layout, shape, establish size, scale, etc. of each level. Each block may depict a cliff or a building, for instance. Doing this gives an instant feel of the environment you have built and helps make necessary positional adjustments. This is also an efficient way to break down a large level into more manageable blocks which can easily be detailed one by one.

4. Texturing: Textures are the flat images that are added to the model to give it colour and detail. In this process, the whole object is turned from grayscale to colour scale. It is applied to all the static meshes on the objects.

5. Lighting: Lighting is the art of filling each scene with artistic touch and beauty. It is used in setting up the atmosphere, evoking emotions and mimicking the real world.

6. Audio Production: Sound plays a significant role in games. Audio production is the method of adding various sounds as per the game needs.

7. Cinematics: Cinematics are usually an interlude from the game used to inform the player about the mission of the game, goals, hand out clues, character information, maps, etc.

8. HUDs and Menus: HUD (heads-up display) or status bar is the information that is displayed on a screen in order to assist or inform the player of what is happening. HUD provides info such as character’s health, weapons, time, position on the map, etc. Menus direct the player on the goals, in-game purchases details, available elements, and many other things.

Post Production

This is the final stage of game development and includes:

1. Testing: Each feature, as well as the mechanics of the game, need to be tested for quality control. Only after endless hours of testing and iterating, the game is considered ready for a late-Alpha or even a Beta release, on the basis of how polished the in-game features are.

2. Redesign: On the basis of findings during the testing process, there might be many elements that might need to be fixed or redesigned.

3. Release: Once the game is developed and it is tested, it reaches the implementation stage where the game is finally launched to a wider audience.

4. Support and Maintenance: Post-launch support is crucial. Game updates are important in order to achieve consistent user base growth and high retention rates. To keep the game exciting, the game is often updated by adding new modes, features, levels, etc

Our Unreal Game Development Services & Solutions

As a leading Unreal Game Development company, Logic Simplified is committed to creating high-quality, cross-platform games that are safe, ethical, and entertaining. Our services and solutions cover the complete spectrum!

Metaverse Game Development

We are well-known as a metaverse development company. Advanced technologies like AI, cloud computing, IoT, AR, VR, 3D reconstruction, and blockchain are used to create real-time 2D and 3D architectural visualizations that replicate real-world environments.

AI-centric Animation Content Development

Our experience, combined with our expertise in AI and ML, helps us create custom high-quality animations - rotoscoping, visual effects, 2D and 3D animation, storyboard animation, whiteboard animation, character animation, and more.

Expert C++ Optimization

We use advanced C++ features to strategically manage memory, optimize gaming resources, and provide more control over the code. We ensure timely delivery of game apps with exceptional optimization, compatibility, maintainability, and efficiency.

Real-time 3D Game Rendering

Unreal engine 3D modeling is great for scene prototyping. Hire our Unreal Engine developers to craft interactive, data-driven 2D visuals, characters, and designs seamlessly processed in 3D rendering, approaching realism.

VR Character and Environment Development

Unreal Engine's PBR capabilities are far more advanced than other gaming engines. We use them to achieve the highest level of photorealism in video games.

XR - Art and Development

We use Unreal Engine to develop high-quality XR experiences that fuse digital art and real-world interactions.

Cross-platform Mobile Game Development

From casual games to action-packed RPGs, our Unreal developers are experts at creating cross-platform game apps, with proficiency in video game mechanics, responsive UI features, stunning designs, and user engagement features.

Game Porting to Unreal Engine

We facilitate smooth game porting to Unreal Engine, preserving quality and enabling a game to cater to a wider audience, by offering players substantial flexibility.

Console Game Development

As a leading unreal game development studio, we have delivered robust console titles for PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo platforms. From action and arcade to adventure, sports, racing, and strategy genres, we offer tailored solutions across consoles.

Web3 and Blockchain Development

We make play-to-earn games using the Unreal engine. By incorporating blockchain, cryptocurrencies, AI, NFTs, and IoT, we create decentralized networks that give gamers ownership and control over their gaming assets.

Top Unreal Game Development Companies to Watch in 2024

01

LOGIC SIMPLIFIED

 

Logic Simplified is a leading game development company in India, with 12+ years of experience in creating top-notch games. It has assisted over 100 businesses globally, with expertise in gaming and emerging technology solutions. Their expertise in game logic, game analytics, and game monetization translates into a strong portfolio covering Game Art & Design, Casual games, AR/VR/XR games, Mobile/desktop/console games, AI, Blockchain-powered Metaverse Development and IoT.

This established Unreal game development company offers lifelike gameplay experiences through UE5’s advanced features such as enhanced details, stunning physics, precise lighting, and captivating sound effects. Our team of experienced testers provide manual and usability testing services for Unreal games. A scalable design philosophy and flexible engagement models make them a valued partner. They deliver MVP within three months, with end-to-end game development and assured post-release support.

02

UBISOFT

 

Ubisoft is a leading game developer and publisher in France. It has used Unreal Engine for many game development projects, including the award-winning Rainbow Six Siege, created by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. Ubisoft creates high-quality games that resonate with all kinds of players, bring people together, and allow everyone to learn and have fun. Their priority is to make games that everyone can enjoy. Accessibility is an important part of their game development mantra.

03

KEVURU GAMES

 

Since 2011, Kevuru has created a strong game development portfolio for itself and is also an Unreal Engine service partner. Located in Ukraine, Kevuru excels by harnessing the advanced capabilities of Unreal Engine to build immersive gaming experiences. It seamlessly ports projects from UE4 to UE5. It has a rich experience in a variety of styles and genres and has created a name for itself in developing blockchain games, NFTs, and metaverses.

04

SUFFESCOM SOLUTIONS INC.

In the last few years, Suffescom Solutions Inc. has become a leading name in game design and development. The services cover 2D and 3D game art, AR/VR development, animation and some  NFT video games. They work closely with clients and offer excellent services for both complete-cycle and art-only development. They have a strong blockchain, mobile and ecommerce portfolio, and are well known as a Web3 Consulting Company.

05

RISINGMAX INC.

 

Rising Max Inc. is a well-established IT Consulting company in NYC. Their team specializes in creating gaming experiences which fully use UE4’s capabilities.  Their lighting pipeline expertly incorporates UE5's Lumen System, raising the realism of their games. RisingMax Inc. has provided services to clients worldwide, including mobile app development, web development and custom solutions. Small and medium-sized businesses and Fortune 500 companies are among its clients.

Conclusion

Unreal Engine’s free and accessible resources and inspirational community empower everyone to realize their ambitions. Top game development studios are using Unreal to create breathtaking visuals and innovative gameplay. Every improvement introduced by Unreal advances the possibilities of the genre in the future.

Unreal game development is a hugely creative and lucrative industry. These were some of the top unreal game development companies around the world. If you’re joining the Unreal bandwagon, then this is where you begin! ]]> https://logicsimplified.com/newgames/logic-simplified-merges-with-evon-technologies-pvt-ltd/ Fri, 01 Dec 2023 05:36:28 +0000 https://logicsimplified.com/newgames/?p=8860 ]]>

"A combined effect is always greater than the sum of separate effects."

Recently, the merger of  Evon Technologies Pvt Ltd and Logic Simplified was announced, with exactly this synergism at its core. The two companies will be functioning as one. This Diwali, the CTO, Sumeet Arora, and the CEO, Vijendra Chauhan, made this decision known to the workforce of the two companies. The instant applause that followed Vijendra Chauhan’s announcement added an extra note of celebration to the already happy occasion.

Evon’s journey, as shared by the founder, Sumeet Arora, is important to know - not just to understand this forward-looking decision but also to draw a leaf of inspiration from. 

Evon Technologies was founded 17 years ago, as a small business big on skill, passion and a commitment to grow roots in the technology industry. A steady inflow of fixed price projects coupled with a lot of hard work and planning, drove the vision forward. In the next phase of the company, ‘work for hire’ deepened those roots even as all eyes were kept fixed on the global horizon - to foresee and stay ahead in the ever-evolving tech landscape.

The time of the pandemic was challenging in ways the world was not prepared for, followed by high attrition, inflation and a looming global recession. However, in Sumeet’s own words - ‘Evon didn’t just survive, it thrived!’ While the strength of the company doubled to over 400 people, the revenue tripled. Today, Evon Technologies is one of the largest, most trusted, software development companies in Northern India. 

Meanwhile, back in 2011, Logic Simplified was founded by Sumeet Arora as a niche game design and development company. After over a decade of inventive products and the best game development services, the team of 3 has grown to over 100 top designers and game app developers under one roof. Its constancy of growth is testimony to its solid foundation and resilience, as is its global reach in providing emerging technology solutions.

Logic Simplified is now a unit of Evon Technologies Pvt Ltd - with common leadership and a single focus. The two companies are ready to take advantage of synergies. 

Synergies are typically described as ‘one plus one equalling three’, three being the value produced when two companies decide to work as one. Rightly so, it is time for Evon 3.0. 

Going forward in its new vision, as shared by Sumeet, Evon plans to target scaling and further increase its global presence, with international delivery centers and new client locations. A renewed focus on consulting is envisioned. Price-capped implementation, with more liability and ownership, is expected. 

Thanks to the merger, the diversification of the portfolio is a value addition that is a win-win for both. Logic Simplified brings to the table expertise and experience in AR,VR, Corporate Metaverse, Blockchain and Gaming domains. Evon, on the other hand, has been freely implementing Cognitive AI and Reinforcement Learning in its solutions. 

Overall, with more access to industry-leading talent, market and customer base, both companies are charting a new road ahead, strategizing greater growth and productivity, while also hoping to give back to society through renewed CSR initiatives.   

At any given time in any given company, the entrepreneurial ecosystem, expertise and experience make for a successful combination. With Evon Technologies and Logic Simplified merging, we will have all of these, two times over.