A well-constructed user interface can increase the conversion rate of your website or applications by up to 200% and a better UX design can achieve conversion rates of up to 400%. (Forrester)

There are numerous video games on the web, many of which users download and play regularly. Which is why gaming companies are working hard on the user interface of game applications and other aspects like branding, design, usability, and function. Game development companies understand the importance of the user interface. Over and above that, there is an imperative need for such companies to offer users a visually attractive, exciting and convenient-to-use application that gives them a good experience and makes them want to stay.

Even so, the UX and UI trends keep reshaping every year and something new and exciting changes the whole UI and UX design game. Let’s get deep into the dynamics that will rule the UI and UX design in 2024 and maybe beyond.

Integration of AI in UI Design

The implementation of Artificial intelligence in designing user interfaces allows the inclusion of valuable insights, streamlined design processes, and improved user experiences. AI is capable of breaking down massive quantities of data to offer insights into user behavior and preferences. These insights can then be leveraged by designers to make informed decisions about design improvements, layout changes, and feature enhancements.

Moreover, AI personalizes user experiences by analyzing user history, learning their patterns and behaviors, and adapting to their preferences. AI-powered tools such as chatbots and text analysis can also automate certain aspects of user research and usability testing. These tools can collect user feedback, heatmaps, and eye-tracking data to identify user areas of interest, as well as analyze behavioral patterns such as scrolling trends, click patterns, and session duration to identify design strengths and weaknesses.

AR and VR implementation into art and design

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality have paved their way into art and design just like they have in other industries. This means life-like experiences for the users! AR and VR promote human interaction by encouraging better communication among players. Game app developers are now able to design real-time games and enhance players’ experience manifold.

You may also read: AR-powered Games: The Next Generation of Video Games for Immersive Gaming Experience

Adaptive User Interfaces

Adaptive UI uses AI algorithms and data analytics to adjust its interface in real-time based on the user's behavior, preferences, and context. By doing so, Adaptive UI enhances the user experience by delivering the most relevant content to each user. This approach marks a significant shift in design philosophy, as it prioritizes personalized and context-sensitive interactions. For game designers, adopting Adaptive UI can significantly improve user-friendliness, user engagement, and overall satisfaction.

Neumorphism

Neumorphism is a modern design trend that combines the best of skeuomorphism and flat design, creating a unique interface that is both realistic and minimalist. It provides users with a visually appealing and user-friendly interface that is intuitive to use. The technique of Neumorphism involves using subtle shadows and highlights to create a 3D effect that adds an extra layer of realism to mobile app design. This style of design offers a soft, almost tactile experience that makes digital interactions more comfortable, especially during long periods of use.

Dark Mode And Color Schemes

UI and UX design have seen a rise in popularity when it comes to dark mode and color schemes. Dark mode has gained a lot of attention due to its many advantages. It's easier on the eyes, especially in low-light settings, as it reduces the amount of bright light that screens emit. Dark backgrounds with lighter text can enhance readability and focus, making content stand out more effectively. When it comes to OLED screens, dark mode can conserve battery power because individual pixels are turned off when displaying black, resulting in lower power use.

Microinteractions and Animations

Microinteractions and animations enhance player engagement and enjoyment by providing dynamism and responsiveness that contribute to a more immersive gaming experience. Players receive immediate feedback from microinteractions, which notify them that their actions have been recognized by the game. This feedback is crucial for keeping players informed and engaged, whether it involves confirming a button press, acknowledging a completed action, or indicating progress. With the increase in mobile gaming, where touch gestures and small screens are prevalent, microinteractions and animations are particularly important for creating intuitive and responsive interfaces that function seamlessly on touchscreen devices.

Developments in voice user interface

According to the new market research report "Speech and Voice Recognition Market by Technology (Speech and Voice Recognition), Vertical (Automotive, Consumer, Government, Enterprise, Healthcare, BFSI), Deployment (On-Cloud & On-Premises/Embedded), and Geography - Global Forecast to 2025", the market is expected to grow from USD 7.5 billion in 2018 to USD 24.9 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 18.72%. (Marketsandmarkets)

Big tech and gaming companies are investing heavily in voice interfaces. Interaction with voice user interfaces like Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Siri are taking over the design space like never before. Moreover, UI and UX designs are adopting VUIs which is showing another aspect of design that is voice interface and not visual interface this time. Voice interface works with context and not actual design, which enables voice interaction between players and the game with or without a visual component. This is coming forward as a great medium to improve gamers' experiences with the help of Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, speech-to-text, and text-to-speech. 

Adoption of Minimalistic & Functional Designs

Minimalistic UI has been trending for some time now. Overcrowded designs with too much information most of the time become overwhelming for gamers and that is the reason game designers are starting to avoid complexity and indulge in simplicity. To keep it minimalistic, designers are limiting the number of colours and elements being used, trying different proportions and compositions, and focusing on functionality rather than decorative components—this new trend works by keeping gradients lighter and illustrations specific for that minimalistic display.

The expedited digital environments of UI and UX design trends are growing into new dynamics. And, every designer needs to stay updated with relevant information and the latest gaming trends. The incursion of mass data and digital media gives out massive amounts of information and it is up to the designers and developers to leverage that data to its full potential so that it helps them make a great user interface. A user interface is capable of impressing the users in the first few seconds of its encounter as it is this aspect that decides whether the user stays on your website or leaves.

Logic Simplified has the finest, most creative Game Concept Artists, 2D and 3D Game Designers and User Experience (UX) Designers. Hire game designers who are proficient in every facet of game design, including the mobile game UX design concepts and trends that shape the future of game design. For more information, email at enquiry@logicsimplified.com 

Jakob’s Law

Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group came up with one of the many rules of UX design psychology that says that most users do not like changes and appreciate familiar experiences every time they visit a game, website or an application. Thus, it is important to create a balance between newness and creativity. Artistic designers look for reinvention and ways to make their user interface stand out from the rest but this zeal is not appreciated and accepted by many users. And, it is said most internet users like to read and absorb information in a similar fashion.

Hick-Hyman Law

The Hick’s Law states that the time taken to decide increases logarithmically by increasing the number of choices. In other words, when the number of choices increases, the decision time taken also increases. For UX that means if you are giving a user too many choices or options that might not work well for your brand. Instead of bringing engagement, it might confuse them and annoy them as too many options makes it hard for a user to make a decision.

Image source: https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Hicks-law

The Gestalt Principle of visual perception

In German, Gestalt means to form or shape. The principle came into being based on the finding that the human brain has this great ability to fill spaces, find shapes & patterns, and simplify complex designs and structures. It subconsciously arranges parts into whole structures to better understand the surrounding. The principle is guided by laws of Proximity, Similarity, Continuation, Closure, and Figure/Ground that have individual uses in UX that improve functionality and bring clarity in the user interface.

Image source: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/gestalt-principles

Miller’s Law 

Miller’s Law is all about keeping it simple. George A. Miller is a psychology professor at Princeton who wrote a popular paper “The magical number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information”. In his article, he proposed a law that stated “humans can effectively process no more than seven units, or chunks, of information, plus or minus two pieces of information, at any given time.” This law lays attention on the working memory rather than on the long-term memory which means the things that can be proactively nabbed by humans in a moment. When applied to UX design, the law says to keep it simple because more than seven elements on a single page might force the user to forget the rest which might not work in favour of the brand.

Image source: https://userinterfacedesign.ch/millers-law/ 

The Color Psychology

Colors play an influential role on a human mind and thus understanding colors and the psychology behind it is important to create a color palette that works well for the brand and their designs. Businesses nowadays have specific colors associated with their brand which they call brand colors. To choose the right colors for your brand, it is absolutely important to know their meaning and significance and how their shades affect them. Human’s emotions are connected with colors and they are not just a part of art but they also involve science. There are ways in which colors are perceived by the viewer. They are associated with a feeling or mood and that’s not it. These emotions and perception impact a design, gingerly. In a way, they are not just looked at but are thought about, understood, felt, and influences user experience. 

The Von Restorff Effect or the isolation effect

They say our brains group similar objects and basis this prediction this rule states that one different element from the others stands out from the rest unlike in the case of similar objects that are paired together. Applying this effect into UX designing will get users to remember certain elements over the others. This can be done by highlighting most elements and leaving a few unhighlighted so that the unhighlighted elements grab maximum attention. For instance, when you are reading a paragraph you are more likely to remember the words that are in bold or italics rather than the ones in regular font.

Image source: https://blog.42courses.com/home/behavioural/the-von-restorff-effect 

Mental Models

A human brain works in mysterious ways. This approach is based on how an individual’s thought process works in the real world. Well, there are expectations that every user has when they first land on a website, download an app, or play a game. Those expectations and basic knowledge in the head regarding the same are what you can call a mental model of how the user interfaces will work. The customers refer to these mental models in their head so that every time they undergo a new experience, it takes them less time to figure out everything from the scratch. When we relate this psychological trend to UX design, the mental models that a user creates in his brain lets them act in the most obvious manner. And, it is a UX designer's job to come up with a UX strategy to understand the user’s mental models and work around that making the user experience engaging and intuitive.

Brands and technologies perpetually update the mental models. To understand this better, a great example to go with this would be the right and left swipe on tinder that are associated with certain outcomes. Reversing the outcomes with the right and left swiping in any case would just confuse the users. To provide a lucid and smooth experience, the UX developers must comply with the commonly understood drill.

The above mentioned psychological trends are simple ways to provide a meaningful and relevant user’s experience but other than that, it is also crucial for a company to understand the user experience design psychology, in all. Social, behavioral, and cognitive psychology plays an important role in UX. One might have to put oneself in the user’s shoes to get a better understanding of the same. They say without psychology, a great design isn’t great. A design impacts the viewer’s mind in ways we are unaware of. Games, websites and applications have become complex as technologies have become more advanced. Thus, for a UX analyst it becomes absolutely essential to understand the user’s feelings, thoughts, and actions. 

Having said that, Logic Simplified is a game design and development company that has user experience design professionals and game designers for hire who understand user psychology and implement solutions to create a win-win for both the client and the business. We start with the understanding that UX is one of the most important mobile game developer qualities and thereon, build and offer impeccable game design services at highly competitive costs. To know more, drop in your queries at enquiry@logicsimplified.com

In the following article, I am going to talk about how it takes to develop a game from scratch and the challenges faced by the designers through the development process.

A video game designer starts its development process with a game idea. A plan is prepared by a team of game designers, who address crucial information like target audience, storyline, time frame and budgets. 

When the designers devise the theme and how the game will be played, this process involves planning and determining the game’s elements - its setting, storyline, rules, characters, vehicles, terrains, building, environment, interface design and different modes of play. Then comes the step when the designer works with the development team to produce the art assets and computer code to enable the game to be played.

In designing a game, there are several kinds of game concept designers each having a different role in developing a game. These different roles are necessary to fill every detail of the game and make the finished product as smooth as possible. By dividing up the task, the games can be completed faster that too, with high degrees of performance. While every development company is different, following are the most common examples of specialised positions that a game designer can embrace.

Level designer: Level designers are the ones who create exciting and fun levels. They place the enemies, props, objects, etc. through each level of the game. It is the job of the level designer to create levels, missions, or stages. If you ever jumped around a corner when a monster nailed you, and you found a specific advantageous spot to shoot from, know that somewhere it is the level designer who planned that experience for you. They do their best to assure that each situation is fun to play.

Game Artists: Game artists consist of concept artists, 3D modellers, animators, and FX artists. Generally, they develop concept art, 2D elements, give colour, action, and life to the game. Although the concept artists are active in creating the first look, they might be involved in the later stage of the game development process in order to add new features into the game.

Art Direction: Art direction refers to the project’s overall style. They play a pivotal role in each stage of the gaming projects, from constructing concepts to managing production. They work with 2D/3D artists, modellers, animators, etc. in order to coordinate all visual images that will be used in the game. The game designers who are in charge of the direction makes sure that every art asset looks like it belongs to the world of video games. They make sure that all the artwork matches the theme and nothing feels distracted.  

Programming: Every video game builds on code that brings the game to life. Programmers are also further divided into categories because comprehensive coding is needed for each part of the video game production. The game programmers could be liable for anything from controlling the speed at which the character runs and how high or low they jump, how often the enemies will appear and when, and how they will respond when attacked. So, they introduce the game mechanics, build the user interface, add graphics and music, whilst designing the required algorithms that help in run the game smoothly.

Character and story writing: In recent years, the cinematic games where the story takes centre stage have become popular. Often games require a team of writers to complete the thousands of sentences necessary on a video game project. And video games without detailed stories have lots of writing. Good gameplay and storytelling now go hand in hand. They are now considered a vital ingredient for creating a highly immersive and engaging game. Each object that the gamer experiences has a lengthy description that adds to the lore. They are also writers who specialise in creating characters through the course of the story. To keep the players engaged with the tale, these roles are extremely essential.  

Sound designers: One of the hallmarks of good video game design is audio. Games become boring and end up losing all their impact without sound. So, sound designers record sound effects that render the on-screen actions more credible. They begin their work by studying the story, collecting as much information as possible about any music or sounds it calls for. Sound designers create atmospheres, sound effects, sonic textures, and cinematic atmospheres that create the story’s naturalistic and abstract environments, along with the user’s emotional and dramatic relation with the performance.

Animators: Finally, a team of animators capture the motion and reaction of every character or object in the game world. They can work with both 2D/3D artists and bring life and dynamism to the static object or characters. Animators add emotion, personality, and realism to the game. As the sequence is captured, animators are the charge of the movements, and they will use specialized software to put elements of the animation together. Maya, Blender, 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, Flash, Photoshop are some of the most sought after skills in animation design. 

Making of the game from scratch

The game development is the process of designing the mobile or video game from scratch to actual game - a process where the whole team of designers, artists, programmers, etc. are involved in the process. 

Concept development: The designer starts development of the game with a story. The game concept designers, with their creative imagination, develop a story that is entertaining and well-paced. They discuss the ideas to the rest of the team working on the game. Planning the concept of the game is more than just a vague story idea. It includes gameplay, layout, characters, maps, storylines, scenarios, and other details. It is important to have a detailed explanation of these concepts. For instance, designers have to decide what weapons or special powers the character will have and how quickly the character powers will grow as the game progresses. They must be detail-oriented to come up with ideas at this stage.

The designers write all the information related to the game in a document known as Game Design Document (GDD). It is like a blueprint, and the team and the designers can follow during the course of the game development. Everything from the game mechanics, the story of the game, characters, timeline, sketches, etc. are included.

You may also read: Difference between game design & development.

Design and prototyping: This is the stage where the designer’s crazy ideas become a bit more refined. Through all their thoughts, they start weeding, determining which ones are feasible, which ones are not suitable for their target audience, and so on. The team often starts with paper designs to test theories. Prototyping is rough, it’s messy and totally raw. A prototype is a raw test that checks the user experience, gameplay, functionality, art direction, etc. The designers get a rough idea of whether the particular game idea will work or not. The goal is to get a prototype up and test the ideas whether they are actually working and if the game is as fun as they hoped.

Development: This is the stage when the ball starts to roll. In the mobile development process, the designer's idea no longer remains the idea but starts taking the shape of the actual game. At this point, different teams within the game development will be engaged, i.e. developers, artists, and the testers.

The team of designers will have to work closely with all these various teams to ensure that the idea they have in their mind is brought to life just how they want it. For this, the team of developers are ready to tackle the whole project from scratch. This is where the developers will start integrating it into the game engine, working on the actual models that will be used in the game. 

Now comes the team of artists. There will be many creative elements that the art team will have to take care of when creating a game. This involves the user-interface of the game, environment designs, character designs, modelling, animations, and much more, depending on the type of the game. The art team creates all these in an art style related to the game's main idea and the design built around it. 

Testing: Testing is the most important step in the game development process. It helps to make sure that the game is running smoothly and efficiently. Every feature as well as a mechanic in the game, gets tested for quality control. Testing can also help in raising issues that are related to player’s engagement, glitches or bugs. The quality assurance (QA) team plays the game numerous times, writes up detailed bug reports, and takes note if there are any crashes. This is a long but important phase, as gamers are less likely to play games filled with errors or bugs, even if it is for free.  

Marketing: Towards the end of the game development process, the marketing process begins on as many relevant portals as possible. One can either create a website for the game or can promote using social media in order to advertise it. Users get to enjoy the fruits of the thousands of hours that went into creating the game! 

Challenges a Game Designer Faces in Game Development

Following are the game design challenges that usually occur from time to time and emerge in the game development process:

Unique concepts: To come up with an exceptional idea is an initial challenge. It might seem an easy job, but actually, it is the most difficult task. Presently, there are various games available and thinking out of the box is quite challenging. This is because the current gaming ideas influence the thinking process again and again, which therefore prevents the designers from thinking new and coming up with unique ideas.

Avoid feature creep: It is often seen that the designers begin with a concept in mind that is the core of the game. But sometimes they end up creating a complex game that does not really fulfil its motive and gets lost with other various features and functionalities. In order to avoid this problem, a designer needs to have a blueprint of the game development project. This will help them to keep creeping in the right direction.

User retention: Apart from the challenge of attracting a user it is equally an essential challenge to retain the users as long as possible to meet the sales requirements. This is tricky and honestly, the aspect that makes the designers the dominator ones in the gaming space. To overcome this, the approach that works is by adding a uniqueness aspect in the game. Simultaneously it is also imperative that the games should be simple and easy enough so that it can reach almost every average user and hit the kind of traffic they want to reach. 

Not keeping GDD up to date: As the designer moves forward with the development process, the game design is expected to undergo a number of changes. Some things might change, whereas many things will drastically change. Many designers make the mistake of not updating their GDD on the basis of the changes made. This becomes a problem once they move forward in the development process. So, no matter what the changes are, it is crucial to keep the document up to date. 

We at Logic Simplified have an expert team of developers highly skilled in various technological skill sets like Unity 3D, Cocos 2D & 3D, Cocos2D-X, and so on. Our team is well updated with the latest technology to give wings to your vision and use our artistry to develop a product from which you can get complete satisfaction. If you are planning to make a video game or a mobile gaming app, you can hire game designer from us and we will keep you fully covered! We ensure to support you right from the planning phase to the stage where the game is developed by our competent developers and provide continuous support as well. For any query related to game development services, please contact us here or write to us at enquiry@logicsimplified.com

Many people who design and create games for a living can tell you that the production of the game is never as pretty as expected.

Impending timelines, delays in production, stress from video games publishers, and countless hours are just some of the several challenges that occur during the development process. 

Do you know how definite the game development process is? It is not a game of one man but takes an entire team as well as their skills to build a game.

This article walks through the game development process and what it takes to develop a game from scratch. Each game project has 3 distinct stages, called pre-production, production, and post-production. These three main phases in any game development are further divided and retitled for a specific task. So, let’s begin:

Pre-production

In the pre-production stage, planning of the game is done. It is where the designers of the game will be doing most of their work. The process involves the following facets: 

Research: Research is an important fundamentals of the game design process. It will help find potential tools to use, choosing genres, characters to animate, ideas to develop, and much more. Familiarise yourself with the games that already exist in the market. This is because those games will be the competition for your game, and they must have set the standard that a designer must meet or beat them in order to be successful.

Brainstorming: This is the most fun part - where the designers dream big and start thinking about the ideas of the game. While brainstorming, they write down everything that they want to incorporate in their game. This phase of the process is where the designers can explore various brainstorming techniques. It may be either visual via storyboards or a conceptual art demonstrating what the character or environment may look like.

Game concepts: Once the designer decides the game idea, then comes the game concepts. What will be the genre of the game? What is the time frame? Who are its characters? Will the game be in 2D or 3D? Who is my target audience? What kind of environment will it be? Will it be single or multiplayer games? What will be the storyline? How many levels will be there? All these questions must be answered before to create a completely working, doable, and fascinating game environment that a player would like to play and get involved with

Concept Art: Once all the details are decided, next come developing the style of the game. This is done through 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 good work of concept artist is vital because that gives the entire team a visual guide to the overall aspect of the game. 

Map development: Now that the details are in place, the style of the game has been selected, the layout must be considered. Is it an island? Is it divided into sections or territories? The designer makes these choices(unless they are specified in brief). This phase does not have to be too detailed and is simply designed as a basis for the game’s main structure.  

Game Design Document: It is abbreviated as GDD. Game Design documents help in keeping the team organized and in providing direction throughout the process of game development. This includes 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 as well as optimizes regularly.   

Prototype: Now that you have a great game idea, it is time to check if the game will work or not, and whether it is worth pursuing it. This is where the prototype comes in very useful. It is a raw test that checks the functionality of the game, environments, gameplay, mechanics, user experience, etc. Sometimes many ideas do not pass this stage. So, it can save a lot of wasted time and money.

You may also read: Difference between Game Design and Development 

Production

Welcome to the longest and the most challenging process of game development. Designing, texturing, level blocking…..Lots and lots to do, so all hands on deck!

Production is the crucial phase of game development. Most of the time, resources, and effort are spent on developing the game during this stage. In this stage, the team takes the concepts produced during the pre-production stage and transforms them into source code and different assets. Following are the steps involves in this stage:

Design: The design team continues their work from the stage of pre-production. Working along with the artist, they render character models, iterate on the interfaces, design dynamic and interactive level designs and environments, and so on. The models become more accurate and granular. Some ideas get refined at this stage, whereas some are discarded.   

Level blocking: This approach is used to layout, shape, establishing size, scale, etc. of each level. Each block may depict a cliff or a building or vehicle or object. Doing this will give you to rapidly and easily get a feel of the environment you have built and 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.    

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. 

Lighting: Lighting is an imperative element of game design principles. It is an 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. 

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

Artificial Intelligence: Artificial intelligence is used in the game, which reacts to the movements, actions or decisions that the player makes. 

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.  

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.  

You may also read: Mobile game developer qualities to look before you hire them

Post Production

Then comes the final stage of the game development - the post-production phase.

Testing: Each feature as well as the mechanic in the game, need to be tested for quality control. A game which is not tested thoroughly is a game that is not even ready for an Alpha release. Following are some points that a playtester might point out during this phase:

• • Are there any bugs in any levels?

• • Are there traits that can manipulate the game?

• • Is everything rendering on the screen?

• • Is my character getting stuck in a particular spot?

• Is the character dialogue old and dull?

After endless hours of testing and iterating, the game should be all set for a late-Alpha or even a Beta release, on the basis of how polished the in-game features are. At this stage, the players will get hands-on the game for the very first time.

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

Release: The game is developed and it is tested, now the game has reached the implementation stage where the game is finally launched to a wider audience. 

Support and Maintenance: The work does not end by releasing the game. It is just the beginning of a long journey. The game updates are crucial in order to achieve a 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.

Why choose Logic Simplified for game development?

Among the innumerable gaming design studios in the market, Logic Simplified a game designer, and a development company has hands-on experience of designing and creating various genre video games (including PC games, Console games and cross-platform games). To develop a perfect game is not just about executing the steps correctly; it also includes the right techniques and tools and has a perfect team. The game concept designers are well-versed in different methods. They are innovative, highly productive, and introspective. They know the needs of the customers and come up with the ideas based on those requirements. For any query related to game development services, please contact us here or write to us at enquiry@logicsimplified.com

Large Pool of Talented Resources

With a population of over 1.35 billion people and three million students passing out from Indian universities every year in different fields, India has no dearth of talent to offer quality game development solutions. In fact, many game development companies, like Logic Simplified, have already worked with some of the best creative talents around the world, which has greatly helped acquire new skills and build video games of international standards. New technologies like AR/VR, AI and ML, are the future of video games and Indian game development companies have quickly upped the skills to help gaming businesses leverage them to build next-generation games. Today, India has over 250 game development companies and the number is only expected to go up as more and more gaming businesses are now counting on Indian talent to outsource different game development processes.

Also read game development process: A step by step guide.

Reduced Cost of Game Development yet High Quality

If we talk about the cost of a console game development 15 years ago, it ranged from $1mn to $2mn. But today, it takes $25mn-$30mn and sometimes even more to build a console game. With a success rate of 8-10%, it becomes very important to reduce the game development cost, which game development companies in India make it possible for gaming businesses. Game art and animation account for nearly 60% of game development cost and these are labour intensive tasks, but India does well in those areas to bring down the cost by around 50%. A game development resource in India costs $10-$25/per hour in India, whereas the same goes to $80-$200/per hour in the US, UK and other developed nations. Also, most game development companies in India offer flexible pricing options - Time & Material and Fixed Price Model - to suit different budgets of clients and game scope. However, low cost doesn’t mean low quality or delayed delivery, what it instead means is a win-win situation. In fact, today’s gaming businesses are not preferring India for game development outsourcing just because of low cost, but high quality game development services and fastest turnaround time.

Top Class Infrastructure

India is among the top 10 economies in the world now and has a world-class infrastructure for game development in its major towns and cities. The wide availability of ISPs, cellular networks and latest technologies make India an outsourcing-friendly country. With high-speed bandwidth via satellite connectivity, submarine cables, and fiber optic networks, clients barely face hindrance in communication, and therefore always stay on top of their requirements.

English-Speaking Manpower and Diverse Culture Adaptability

India is the second largest English-speaking nation so communicating with English-speaking clients is not a problem here. And why just English, many Indians are also proficient in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Japanese and more too. India is known to be the most diverse country in the world which greatly works in its favour as Indian employees quickly adapt to different cultures making foreign clients highly comfortable working with them. No-language barriers and sound knowledge of international affairs greatly enhance the ease of working with Indian game development studios.

Access to Game Development Services

Game development includes three different processes viz. pre-production, production and post-production. Like most game development agencies in India, Logic Simplified also offers game development services that cover all the processes. In pre-production phase, Logic Simplified helps with game design, concept art creation and prototyping. The production phase involves major activities like creation of art assets, level creation, programming, audio creation and testing. The third phase known as post-production involves activities like bug fixing, localisation and maintenance. Indian game development studios have excelled at providing all or any of the game development processes to reduce operational costs of game development and reduce the burden at client’s side to hire and manage an in-house team that could range from anywhere between 20-100 and even more depending upon the type of game they are developing.

Outsourcing-Friendly Government Policies

Indian has a stable government which offers phenomenal support to outsourcing to promote international business. The government already offers tax benefits and low charges in its bid to make Indian an attractive outsourcing destination. Besides, Indian government has passed the Information Technology Act to recognize electronic contracts, facilitate e-filing and put strict cyber laws to build credibility. India is also a member of prestigious international and regional associations such as The United Nations (UN), The International Monetary Fund (IMF), The World Bank, The World Trade Organization (WTO), The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), and The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

Business Continuity (like during Covid 19 Pandemic)

Indian tech industry has managed business continuity during the tough times of COVID 19 pandemic. Indian gaming industry has also strived to implement business continuity planning (BCP) to continue delivering game development services while ensuring employee safety. Like many game studios in India, Logic Simplified has also executed its robust BCP plans during the COVID-induced lockdown. The flexible approaches like work from home has helped Indian gaming industry effectively respond to the ongoing crisis. BCP is another big reason why gaming businesses around the world can trust India for continuous business delivery.

Above are the top reasons why India is now preferred for game development outsourcing by most game development companies across the world. India has certainly inched closer to China and the next 2-3 years are highly likely to bring it on top of the list of the favorite game development outsourcing destinations. If you also have game development requirements and are looking forward to outsource, Logic Simplified can be your go-to game development company.

Why Logic Simplified for Game Development Outsourcing

Logic Simplified is in the game design and development space for more than 8 years now. All these years, we have catered to various clients world over to fulfill their gaming needs. We have seen both successes and failures and hence know what exactly works in the gaming industry and what’s not. Our team of game designers and developers have built games for all devices, be it for mobile, PC or console, using popular game engines and technologies, such as Unreal, Unity, Godot, Maya, Blender, and many more. We are still working to help gaming businesses cope with these tough times and complete their games on time. We also understand the requirements of modern games of today and thus help leverage revolutionary technologies such as AR/VR, AI/ML and IoT. If you want to find out how we can help you with game design, game art, development, testing, deployment and more, feel free to write to us at enquiry@logicsimpified.com. We are all ears to hear your requirements and offer you gaming solutions we are proud of.

Launched in 2006 by Unity Technologies, Unity has so far been the most popular game engine for building cross-platform mobile games both in 2D and 3D. For its ease of use, a huge asset store, capability to import from many 3D applications ( like Maya or Blender), great community support and a lot more, Unity is likely to remain the top choice of video game companies in 2020 too. Unity game developers can reach out to their target audience to the hilt as Unity supports a wide range of mobile platforms, including iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Tizen OS and Fire OS. It also offers Unity Ads to advertise and monetize users.

Unity often turns out to be a very good choice for startups to build mobile games as it suits their requirements pretty well. You can easily begin with a small team (even freshers) and budget too to build nothing less than modern mobile games of today. Unity also helps AR game developers build highly interactive and immersive mobile games. Some head-turning examples of Unity mobile games are Temple Run, Angry Birds Epic, Angry Birds 2, Pokemon GO, Monument Valley 2, Lara Croft Go and Hearthstone. As far as Unity pricing is concerned, Personal Edition comes for free, the only catch is until you start making $100K USD in annual revenue. If you want to use more advanced features like asset bundle creation, advanced cloud diagnostics, splash screen customization, core analytics etc., you can go for Unity Pro and Unity Plus that now come with the price tag of $40 per month and $150 per month respectively.

You can compare the pricing and offerings of all the Unity subscriptions here. 

Construct 2 is an HTML5 software for building 2D games. The reason why it’s in the list is the freedom it offers to quickly create 2D mobile games without any coding. Many mobile game studios are likely to pick it in 2020 to build visually appealing 2D mobile games for its ease of use, fast development, a plethora of features and multi-platform support (iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry).

Using Construct 2, developers can easily bring things alive as all they need is to place some objects and add some behaviour. Construct 2 proves to be a big time-saver here by allowing to add flexible behaviours, which are a set of properties of an object, such as movement in 8 directions. The interface is also simple and opens a wide range of toolset, which also does a good job in building a working prototype ready in no time for sharing and testing. Construct 2 also supports extensibility by allowing developers to use built-in or self-created plugins. For example, Particles plugin helps create smoke, water and other interesting effects. To write and customize plugins, Construct 2 helps developers by offering a vital piece of advice based on their specific game requirements. For multiplatform export, the game engine supports CocoonJS, PhoneGap and Crosswalk. Some notable games built with Construct 2 are The Next Penelope, Airscape: The Fall of Gravity and Cosmochoria. There’s no monthly fee for using Construct 2 as you need to pay just once and use it for life.

You can check the licensing fee and offerings here.

Cocos2D is an open-source game engine for building interactive 2D games for Android and iOS. Cocos comes for free and offers a gamut of features like Graphical User Interface (GUI), scripting, animation, flow control between different scenes and many more. Using Cocos, you can build very light mobile games (like of 1.5 MB) by leveraging the support from physics engines like Box2D and Chipmunk. Cocos2D has light libraries and allows to view the entire code and make edits to customize as per your needs. Cocos2D lets developers use independent editors for managing scenes using CCDirector class and CCTransition class, creating animations via CCAnimation class, performing actions using CCAction class, creating particle effects with CCParticleSystem, and tilemap editing with CCTiledMap class. Using Cocos2D, game app developers can build cost-effective cross-platform gaming apps that are feature-rich and have good graphics. Cocos2D also offers various products to suit different cross-platform game development needs such as Cocos2D Family, Cocos2d-objc, Cocos2d-x, Cocos2d-html5 and Cocos2d-XNA. Some games built using Cocos2D are Clash of Kings,  Angry Birds Fight,  and Brave Frontier.

There are some other popular game engines as well like Unreal and Godot, but I am going to talk about game art software now as they also play a vital role in game development and we are covering the list of only 5 best software for mobile game development. So, don’t mind if I have missed out on your favourite game engine. Anyhow, choosing the best game engine ultimately comes down to assessing the game requirements and doing an in-depth research of what different game engines have on offer and then making the best best. 

Blender is a very popular and free software for creating 3D art work and 3D animation. Many game artists use Blender for creating 3D characters, 3D environments, and objects (like buildings, weapons and vehicles) as it offers numerous brushes for sculpting. Game artists can also use a node editor to do advanced manipulation of videos and motion tracker. Any 3D model created in Blender and can be imported in Unity, which makes the job much easier for game artists working with Unity developers. In addition, Blender cloud library offers thousands of textures from animals, humans, eyes to clouds, rocks, trees or even wood. Blender also offers a great community support and numerous tutorials to make it much easier for rookies to start using it for creating some amazing 3D art work. In all, Blender is a great alternative to some expensive 3D game art software like Maya and 3D Max. It also provides training to game artists on  character modeling, 3D printing, VFX, rigging and even advanced digital painting.

Spine is a powerful software for creating 2D animations for games. 2D animators have to first attach images to bones and then animate the bones. Since Spine animations only store bone data, the size becomes very low and doesn’t occupy much memory. Any image you attach to bones can be used with different items and effects and those animations can also be reused for characters that look different, which saves a lot of time. While playing in slow motion, the quality is controlled by the Interpolation feature. Spine also allows animators to blend two animations, such as shooting and running, and smoothly move from one animation to another. Using the Dopesheet feature, animators get a detailed view of all the timelines that make up an animation, which helps them fine tune the animation’s timing. Another exciting feature is Meshes which allows to specify a polygon inside an image rather than drawing rectangles. This results in improved fill rate as pixels outside the polygon won't be drawn, which is important for making animation for mobile games. Talking about Spine pricing, it offers three paid versions: Essential, Professional and Enterprise.

You can check the licensing fees and features of all the three Spine versions here.

With this, I have covered 5 best software for mobile game studios to use in 2020. The choice, though, finally comes down to assessing your requirements, like game type, budget, target platforms, 2D or 3D, monetization strategies, etc. Now, if you are looking for a mobile game studio for your mobile game development project, but not able to get started for any reason, you can rely on Logic Simplified to do the heavy lifting for you. Logic Simplified has been providing game development services for almost a decade now, and has learnt from both its successess and failures what exactly works in the gaming industry and what doesn't. You can also hire game designers from us to build AR/VR and AI-powered mobile games to meet the requirements of modern gamers.  As games are what we do all day, we can help you quickly build a mobile game and market it fast, which also helps in getting feedback and quickly building on that for improved user experience. Also, when your game is on schedule, you don’t miss deadlines and save a lot of unnecessary costs. However, if you’re still stuck somewhere, contact us to hire a game development company or write to us at enquiry@logicsimplified.com, our experts will get back to you shortly to get you across the fence and shape your mobile game idea into a reality.

Virality: The Best Acquisition Strategy 

through App Discovery

Build a Sharing Mechanism that’s Super Easy to Find

While designing games online for virality, it’s important to make the sharing mechanism part of the core game loop. But, it’s even more important to ensure that users don’t have to make too much effort when they think of inviting their friends and socializing through your game. An easy sharing mechanism increases a user’s tendency to send more invites which in turn increases the chances of more conversions.  Below are a few tips on how you can increase the average number of invites sent by users:

• • Referral program must be easily visible.

• • Don’t hide the invite mechanism in in-game menus or in settings.

• • Provide multiple social media platforms to easily send an invite.

• Offer users something in exchange for sharing your game, and explicitly explain the benefits.

Right placement of the buttons for sharing, referring or inviting is the key to attract users’ attention to share your game with their friends. Have a look at some of the placement examples used by popular games to increase the average number of invites.

In addition to visibility, it’s also important to make the sharing process frictionless. The three popular ways to implement the invite process are:

• • Native sharing

• • Unique codes

• Facebook Game Requests

Time it Right

The success of your referral program heavily relies on how you time it.  You need to provide an awesome experience to users first and then make it natural for them to share your game. The WOW moment is the key here. The right time to ask for a referral is when users have experienced something great about your game, such as having completed a difficulty level, made significant in-game progress or got access to a new character, weapon, etc. Such WOW moments make it natural for users to share the news with their friends and it’s important for you to design your referral program around them. Also, when users are at a high-satisfaction point, it’s the best time to ask them to rate your app, write a review or give feedback. Out of the amazing experience they just had, they would be highly likely to rate your app high and leave positive reviews on app stores which also play a big role in making your app go viral.

For example, Doomsday Clicker asks its players to share in-game progress through a pop up that says “Show the world your chaos”. Before moving to the next level, users see the pop-up and many of them share their achievements with friends and invite them too to compete and socialize with them. 

In-built Mechanism to Identify where to Place Invite Buttons

As every game is different, so is the point of high satisfaction. Having some in-built mechanism or signals that point towards those WOW moments are very helpful to get the placement right for your referral program. When you know which screens users engage the most with, what achievements make them ecstatic,  the levels and in-app merchandise they crave for, etc., you can tie the acquisition of those things to “social”. Having an in-built mechanism that gives you insight into users journeys makes the job much easier for you to find the best places to put the invite or share buttons. If your game has what it takes to get users engaged, you can definitely make the best of virality as users will be very likely to reach a point: “I like it. I think Mike will like it, too. You only need to identify those points with an in-built mechanism and see virality doing the wonders for your game.

Multiple Platforms for Social Sharing

You shouldn’t rely on just one social media platform to make virality work for you. Let your users share and invite friends on their preferred social media channels to maximize your game reach. Using only Facebook's Graph API adds friction as both the sender and the receiver have to be connected on Facebook. You should build some tech or use some turnkey tool that allows users to share interesting content on their preferred social media channel.

Ongoing Optimization

Keep testing your referral marketing campaign to figure out what’s working and what’s not. You can always optimize virality features in your game by keeping a close eye on how your users are interacting with the invite and share button and if they are happy to share in exchange for the reward you’re offering them. Fluff Fairy and Super Evil Megacorp's title Vainglory are good examples that saw a sharp rise in conversion rates after tweaking the game's messages, invites messages and images.

Likewise, you should test and experiment with your referral marketing campaign on an ongoing basis to keep taking it closer to perfection and cut your user acquisition costs by a big margin.

Virality is all about understanding your game audience and incorporating the learnings to take advantage of the natural instinct of users to show the world interesting content when they exactly want to. So, to succeed, you must make your referral marketing campaign part of your core game loop and let users bring new users. 

There are various ways you can achieve virality for your game but if you’re somehow struggling to implement them in the right way, the best recommendation is to hire game designers and developers who know how to build and make virality features work the best for your game. Logic Simplified is happy to work with you on your game be it game development services or fitting the viral hooks for user acquisition. Once you decide to build your game with us, we brainstorm virality features and implement them in your game to facilitate user acquisition at a fast pace without requiring you to invest too much in paid customer acquisition programs. The very first step towards building your game and virality quotient in it is to initiate a discussion by writing to us at enquiry@logicsimplified.com. We promise to get back to you shortly with solutions that would precisely meet your game development requirements and also help you realize the real virality potential of your game to grow by leaps and bounds.

Let’s get insight into how game design and game development are two different fields, but pivotal to bringing a game idea to life.  

Game Design vs Game Development

Game Design Vs Game Development

Who is a Game Designer?

A game designer is often referred to as the captain of the ship as they use their creative flair and imagination to decide what the final product would look like and how it would behave. So, it’s the designer who first acts on a game idea by creating the initial framework for game artists and game developers to convert it into an actual game. There are various roles that a game designer undertakes to help game developers understand the vision and turn into a reality. Let’s take them one by one.

Role of a Game Designer

Planning and Detailing Every Element of the Game

The game designer considers every aspect of the game including the interface, gameplay, rules, fun elements, features, difficulty level, characters, props, goals, dialogue, and brings in the overall creative direction. Game designers love playing video games and they know what works in a game and what not, which is important for a video game to be successful. 

The Concept Document

“There ain’t no rules around here! We’re trying to accomplish something!” – Thomas Edison

The game designer is like a theorist who collects several ideas in the mind to define the concept of the game. After selecting and rejecting hundreds of ideas, the game designer puts the ones close to perfection in the concept document. But there is nothing perfect and the game designer can only understand that after seeing the game in action, which is why the game designer gets involved in the development from start to finish. The concept document should ideally be used to build a prototype with a rough code, so that the designer can interact with the prototype and do playtesting to identify the gaps to fill. 

Incorporates knowledge of  Gaming Trends

A game designer uses their knowledge of industry trends, competition, audience interests, different game design technologies and popular genres to conceive engaging game ideas. A game designer doesn’t need to know everything a game developer knows, but a game designer must know everything the game developer is capable of. Besides, it’s also important to understand both the power and limit of game technologies to enable innovative gameplay. A game designer is like an anthropologist who understands the desires of their game audience and designs games that satisfy that desire.

Storyboarding

Game designers create storyboards by sketching out ideas for characters and scenes and then placing them in order. The game narrative helps users see the back story, certain challenges to take from time to time and master the skills to progress. 

Gameplay Test Plans

Video game designers also create test plans to balance the gameplay. This exercise is done to make sure the gameplay is neither too difficult nor too easy for users that they soon lose interest in playing the game. The game designer also conducts game design reviews throughout the development process to make adjustments to the game design specifications as the project moves forward and therefore ensures that the visuals are no less than breathtaking.

Game Design for various Devices and Platforms

The game designer also ensures that the game design is built so that  the video game feels home on different devices, screen sizes and platforms.

Above I discussed the major responsibilities of a game designer, now let's see what roles game developers play in game development process. 

Who is a Game Developer?

A game developer is a person who uses tech to transform the game designer’s ideas and sketches into a digital product that users can interact with. Game developer is an umbrella term that includes everyone involved in creating game art and assets. Some of the important roles of a game developer are as follows:

Plan Game Project

After the game designer puts the game’s specifications and features on paper, the game developer starts building the storyline, characters, environment, 2D/3D objects, 2D/3D models, sounds, activities, scoring, progression and many more by writing the code. The development team divides the task in small sprints to build the high priority game modules first. Once the prototype is ready, they enhance the overall look and feel of the video game based on the changes in the game design and the feedback of others involved in the game development process.

Game Engine

The game developer either constructs a base or uses a game engine (usually a third party game engine like Unity or Unreal) to run the game. Game engines are used to render graphics in video games, play animations, make sounds, move 2D/3D objects while conforming to the laws of physics and many others.

Build Mobile Apps or PC games or for Consoles

Based on the decided gaming platform, the game developers start building video games for mobile or PC or consoles. For mobile games, iOS and Android are the most popular platforms, so game developers either develop for one or both or even others like Blackberry and Windows depending on the preferences of the target audience. 

Fix Bugs

A bug free software is a myth. So, QAs take on the role of identifying and reporting bugs, the game developers take on the ones high in priority. Using their logical and problem solving skills, they fix the bugs to enhance user experience. They also do code review, debug programs and refactor code to remove technical problems in the game.

Support

A mobile video game is never complete. So, one or two developers keep providing the support even after the game is deployed. Familiarity with cloud technologies is a preferred development skill as cloud development and deployment has become a popular practice in modern times. Mobile game app development is different from consoles games as everything has to be completed before the game is shipped out. With mobile game app development, the developers get the flexibility of creating a gaming app with the most important features and releasing them, and then keep adding new ones based on feedback and changing requirements through usually monthly updates.  

What I discussed above draws a line between the roles of a game designer and game app developer. Both are important cogs in the wheel of the game development cycle but function differently from start to finish. I hope the article has helped you understand concept vs execution when it comes to game design and development.

Why Choose Logic Simplified for Game Design and Development?

Logic Simplified is in game design and development for over six years now. From our hands-on experience of designing and building different genre video games (including cross-platform mobile games, PC games and Console games), we have learnt over the years what all it takes to build highly engaging and immersive video games of modern times. You can hire game designers from us to imagine your game and come up with a highly creative game design. Our game developers, on the other hand, are equipped with the technical know-how of how to pick ideas from the paper and convert them into a living product. We always like to help our clients brace their games by using new revolutionary technologies, so you can also partner with us to build games that leverage AR/VR, IoT and AI. For initiating a discussion on your game idea and offshore resource hiring, please write to us at enquiry@logicsimplified.com, and we will get back to you shortly to help you with gaming solutions that we are proud of.

As per the reputed market research firm Newzoo, the global mobile gaming industry was expected to generate $68.5 billion in 2019 and engulf half the gaming market by 2022. There’s no doubt that mobile gaming market is big, and a lot of businesses are venturing in game development to tap its huge monetization potential. However, building a mobile game is a serious business and no matter how creative your game idea is it will still fail if the execution is just not right. That said, I am discussing what the right mobile game development process could be so that you can plan your mobile-gaming quest better and successfully bring a new champion in the gaming market.

Three Stages of Mobile Game Development Process

• Pre-Production
• Production
• Post-production

These are three main phases of mobile game development or any game development for that matter. Each of them covers a set of tasks (which I am going to discuss next) that would help you cover the whats and whys to avoid creating a labyrinth for yourself in the process. So, are we all set? Let’s begin the ride then!

Pre-production

Pre-production is the initial stage that begins with a great game idea and conceptualization. On the basis of your in-depth market research, you decide what game will be produced, who your competitors are, will it be for console, PC or mobile and the budget required. I am assuming mobile as this blog is about the mobile game development process.

Pre-production lays the foundation for your mobile game as the most critical aspects are carefully thought upon at this stage, including game’s selling points, core game mechanics,  fun factor, target audience, gameplay, storyline, game design, objects, sounds, UI, 2D/3D, technology, game engine, etc.  

To choose the mobile platform, you need to figure out where your target audience exists. Most game app developers go for Android and iOS as these are the reigning mobile operating systems, but if your market research points out to Windows and Blackberry too, then you can build your game for them as well. In such a case, going for a cross-platform mobile app could be an ideal choice because native apps will take a lot of time plus they will be much more expensive to build. But again, this is subject to which and how many operating systems your target audience is using.   

Now, as a standard, game concept designers, writers, developers, instructional designers and subject matter experts (SMEs) collaborate to create technical details of the pre-production stage to be implemented throughout the development process. And these technical details are covered under as follows:

• Concept documentation
• Game design document (GDD)
• Project plan
• Software Requirement Specification (SRS) Document
• Proof of Concept (POC)
• Architecture – Design
• Art-style
• Test-plan

However, these technical details are not supposed to be exhaustive as they can be revised based on changing requirements. You need to understand that mobile games are different from console games which have to be completed fully before they are shipped out. Mobile games, on the other hand, are more flexible as they can be developed in Alpha, Beta and Gamma stages. What it means is that you can make a prototype ready (a workable product with basic functionalities and features) and keep improving on feedback and changing requirements through updates and further releases. Basically, you break down the whole development in small chunks so as to build fast, market fast and learn fast to adjust from time to time and bring it up to the expectations of your users.

Did we forget something here? Oh yes! The team, its size and roles to undertake.

Well, choosing a team for your mobile game development depends on two factors:

• The size and complexity of your game
• The type of your game

If you are building a game of large scale, you may need to hire a big team, though, you can start with a small team too and recruit more going forward. The complexity of the game also factors in determining the size of the team. For example, if you’re planning to build an Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality mobile game, the team size will generally be greater than that of multiplayer board game developers or a team taking up casual puzzle game development or time management games development or card game development.

The second factor is the type of game you are going to develop. Based on the game type, you can establish specialized roles your team members need to undertake for the successful completion of the game. For example, if your game is story-rich with a big narrative, you would need to hire a writer(s) also, or a 3D modeller(s), 3D animator(s) and concept artist(s) for a 3D game.

In the pre-production process, you get to decide not just on the specialized roles of your team members and the quantum, but the hiring model as well, which brings us to understand the three ways of hiring employees.

Three Types of Hiring Models

Freelancers

In today’s connected world, a plethora of freelancers is available for hire on platforms such as UpWork and Freelancer. You can interview and choose candidates as per your needs and budget. However, finding a dream worker on such platforms may not be as easy as it may sound, at least initially. 

In-house employees 

You can hire an in-house team, but you may not want after considering the high cost and other disadvantages associated with it. You will have to pay a recruiter to quickly interview and hire specialists, bear the infrastructural costs, look into team-building activities and manage the team which will ultimately take your focus off from the core activities of your gaming business. The lone advantage is that you will get to communicate with your team face-to-face every day, which in return can contribute to your end product enormously.   

Outsourcing/Offshoring

There are various reasons why outsourcing/offshoring has become a top choice for several businesses to hire game development services. First, you get to work with people who are specialists and have hands-on experience of delivering projects as yours. Second is low cost as you pay nothing for the infrastructural setup, interviewing and hiring employees, and motivating and rewarding them with parties and yearly appraisals. Besides, you get to hire resources on a need basis, which means you only pay for as many resources you currently need without dealing with a situation of firing and hiring often. Your offshore game design and development services provider will lay out everything explicitly in the contract including terms and conditions and SLAs, so the cooperation, quality and timely delivery are guaranteed.

Now that we know the essentials of the pre-production stage, it’s time to head to the next big stage, i.e.  Production.

Production

Once the plan of attack is ready, you bring your workforce into action to start building game architecture and modules based on priorities. That said, the role of product owner,  product manager and project manager becomes important here as they crystallize what needs to be developed first to bring your game to viability. So, your team spends time on writing thousands-of-lines-of-source code to breathe life in each piece of in-game content and create art-assets, such as game characters, objects, background/environments, animations, audio and visual-effects (2D/3D).

Some popular tools for creating 2D art include Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and SketchBook Pro, whereas for 3D art are 3DsMax, Maya, ZBrush and Marvelous Designer. If we talk about game engines, Unity and Unreal Engine are the most popular ones, but you can go for others as well based on your game requirements. The decision on choosing a game engine comes down to various factors like game complexity, features you need, availability of drag and drop functionality, visual scripting, team size, time frame, genre and budget.

Sprint planning is an important aspect of production as a workable product should ideally be made ready as soon as possible. The best way to achieve that is to work on small sprints and release a module every one or two weeks. Each sprint is reviewed for feedback and worked upon to improve. There will still be bits and pieces here and there to improve, but that’s alright as they can be improved in the next development stage.

Are you thinking about Funding options now?

If you have a tight budget, you can also opt for some funding options from here on by showing your demo product for investor review. Having a workable product ready can attract Angels and Seeds to invest in your game idea and eventually earn high ROI. You can also go for a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, Indiegogo and many others where backers can support your game to make it a palpable reality.  

So now, your team integrates all the modules and takes a plunge to the post-production stage.

Post-production

In the post-production stage, your team integrates 3rd party SDKs and optimizes the game. The stage is now set for game testing services and QAs get involved to identify and report bugs for fixes. And why only QAs for bug fixes, product manager and project manager also collaborate with the development team to improve the texture of objects, make explosions look more real, let the trees sway in the wind as they do in real-life scenarios and more. You finally lock the code and spend most of the time on polishing and completing the game to the hilt. These improvements, though minor, can greatly differentiate between what’s immersive and what’s not.

App Monetization

The next step is to work on monetization strategies. In-app purchases, Ads within the app and paid apps are the common examples of how most game developers monetize their apps for getting returns on their efforts and investments. Let’s take them one by one.

• In-app purchases: These are usually the part of freemium models, where users pay nothing to start playing your game, but they eventually do for various reasons, such as to move to advanced levels because they can’t wait for long to cross a difficulty level or need power-ups or more powerful game assets (like weapons, a more sophisticated car, etc). You can relate to it if you have played Candy Crush Saga and Clash of Clans.
• Advertisements: Ads within an app is also a good idea to make some money, but this may hamper user experience. One way to deal with this is to offer an option where users can pay to remove ads, though, only a few will be likely to do so. You can go for Admob for banner ads, and Unity for video ads that reward users.
• Paid app: You can also ask users to pay some price upfront to download your app. But there’s weird psychology among gamers as they will happily pay $50 for Angry Birds on Xbox, but balk at paying $0.99 for it in an app store. Freemium models are to be majorly blamed for this. Anyway, the key is to understand how your users will prefer to pay and work around your monetization strategies accordingly.

Marketing to help your Gaming App become a new Mania

The next step is to get the app ready for app store optimization (ASO) and submit on respective app stores. You uncork a bottle of Champagne and celebrate what you have waited so long for. Your marketing team takes on from here, but not invariably, as pre-launch marketing can also be done to create a buzz about what’s coming out. Game marketing strategies play a big role in creating a buzz about your game and maximize your reach.

You must dedicate a portion (but sufficient enough) of your game development budget to run marketing campaigns on social media, offer perks to try your game and even run paid ads to reach out to your target audience. Your mobile game resides in app stores, but creating a home on the web can also do wonders to increase the number of installs. What it implies here is a landing page on the web. There is no single environment that users experience, which is why creating a landing page on the web could turn out to be a very effective marketing strategy to reach out to prospective users and coax them to install your gaming app from there. You also get email addresses of your potential users which you can use for email marketing purposes and make them aware of future releases and updates, 

Some of the key components to keep in mind while creating a landing page for your app are as follows:  

• Head-turning headlines
• Relevant keywords
• Eye-catchy images
• Social sharing buttons
• Smartly placed CTAs

It’s a stark fact that in today’s digital world people prefer to spend more time watching videos than reading walls of text. So, you can ask your designing team to create video previews of your game so that the marketing team can share them on popular platforms like YouTube, Daily Motion, Vimeo, and others. Video content is a good alternative to text-based descriptions as users can quickly see the best pieces of your video game and immediately decide whether or not to install your gaming app.

You should also listen to what your users have to say about your game. One way of doing that is to create forums where players can discuss both positives and negatives of your game. This will only help your marketing team understand what’s working well and what needs to be done next to improve user experience and build trust among both old and new players.   

Remember, a release is just the beginning of the long road and it’s very unlikely to create success without marketing activities. I will next write a separate blog on what the right marketing strategy could be to promote and bring a mobile game to fruition.

Support and Maintenance

A mobile game is never complete, so you would still need a small team of developers and testers to take care of support and maintenance. As you continue to learn something or the other from the feedback of your users, you will want to incorporate it in your game via future updates and releases. If we take modern hit games into consideration, two-five weeks is the average time to release updates. Updates are critical as they add more value to your game and greatly help in user retention.

The Game is getting Big and You need Funds to Scale

If shortage of money is holding you back from further supporting, expanding and marketing your game, post-launch is ideally the right stage to reach out to VCs and seek investments via Series A, B and C rounds of funding. Your marketing team is supposed to have built a suffice user base by now to make VCs believe and invest in your product. In case, you don’t want to share profits with others in lieu of investments, crowdfunding is still a good option to go for to scale your game and make it a revenue-generator machine. 

Whew!!! With this, we have covered almost all the major areas of a mobile game development process. Now, if you’re a startup gaming company or even an established one looking forward to getting started on your next breathtaking mobile game idea, finding an expert game app development company might be ringing in your head. Don’t worry! Logic Simplified keeps you covered here!

Breathe Life in Your Mobile Game Idea with Logic Simplified

Logic Simplified, a game development company, based in Dehradun, India, offers game designers for hire, iPhone game developers, Android game developers and windows phone game app developers to gaming businesses of all sizes world over. Experts at LS will help you create a GDD and fill the gaps wherever required, along with offering you a vital piece of advice on tech-stack and scalability. Since gaming is what we think about and do all day long, we can effectively help you with feasible social and viral hooks as well.

We know the importance of responsive apps to feel home on different screen sizes, therefore also offer HTML5 game development services (both 2D and 3D) to fit mobile screens of all sizes. Unity game development is at the core of our game development services, but we have also excelled over the years at Adobe game development, Unreal and many more. In today’s modern times, more and more games are leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to make their game smarter and more immersive, and we are no way left behind in using new revolutionary technologies. In fact, LS has developed AI bots for its own card game app Gamentio and can help you too with AI development for video games. Whether you’re looking for development of multi-player 2D & Mmorpg 3d game or an action game, role-playing game (RPG), shooting game and whatnot, Logic is a go-to studio to meet all your gaming needs, even for console and handheld games development. Is there still something keeping you on the fence? Reach out to us at enquiry@logicsimplified.com to discuss your game idea, and we promise to get back to you shortly to tell you everything that will help you make a decision and begin with your mobile game development process outright.

Note: The list is based on the information recently revealed by NPD (an American market research company) and is only for the United States games market. Also, the list is for YTD ending February 2020.

Here are Top 10 Best Selling Games of the Year so far

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is an action RPG game published by Bandai Namco.  Inspired from Dragon Ball Z sagas, Kakarot is a high-quality Dragon Ball adaptation that tests your combat skills and surprises you with story moments never seen before in any of the previous Dragon Ball video games. This game was released on January 17, 2020, for  Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Epic boss battles across vast battlefields with destructible environments are catchy in the game, along with the storyline that keeps players engaged. Relive the life of Goku and other Dragon Ball Z characters as you fish, fly, eat, train, and battle to level up your power and rise to the challenge. Of all the video games released in 2020 so far, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is the only one currently on the list, with over 1.5 million copies sold in just its first week of release. 

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is a first person shooter (FPS) game that was released in October 2019 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. The game was the 16th overall in the series of Call of duty, but the first to support cross-platform multiplayer and cross-platform progression. The FPS game, which was published by Activision and developed by Infinity Ward, follows a storyline in which a CIA officer and British forces team up to combat against Russians forces to save the fictional country of Urzikstan from invasion. Although the game got some criticism over the handling of the campaign's subject matter, it managed to generate a staggering $600mn within three days of its release and is still among the top 10 grossing video games of 2020.

NBA 2K20

NBA 2K20 is a basketball simulation game based on the National Basketball Association (NBA). This game is the first in NBA 2K series to include all twelve teams from the WNBA. The game was released in on September 6, 2019, for Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. It also came out on Google Stadia on November 19. NBA 2k20, which was published by 2K and developed by Visual Concepts, became the best-selling game of 2019 during its first month on the shelves. It was later dethroned by Call of Duty in October 2019.

Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto V, an action-adventure game published by  Rockstar Games, was released in 2013 for PS3, Xbox 360, PS4, Xbox One and Microsoft Windows. The video game still rocks the gaming charts with over 120 million copies sold so far. Rockstar’s epic gangland adventure offers a vast, beautiful open-world environment to players to commit crimes (in a fictional world obviously) and use their skills to evade authorities. Grand Theft Auto V, which is also supported online with regular updates, is rated very high on its engaging narrative, anarchic humour and several sub-quests, side-missions and secrets. The December 2019 NPD report also established Grand Theft Auto V as the best selling game of the decade.

Madden NFL 20

Madden NFL 20 is another sports game that made headlines for being one of the best selling games in 2019. Madden 20, published by Electronic Arts and developed by  EA Tiburon, is a football video game that simulates National Football League (NFL). Madden 20 was released in August 2019 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows. Unfortunately, no information is available on the revenue and number of copies sold of Madden NFL 20 so far, but NPD’s analysis currently puts it among the top five best selling games of 2020. 

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

This video game sets you in Stars Wars universe, with action-adventure ensured. Players take the role of  Jedi Padawan who fights with his lightsaber to kill slain enemies and improve his abilities to move further in the game. Follow Jedi as he completes his training, masters his lightsaber skills and develops new powerful Force to toss back rocket launchers. Stars Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, which was released on November 15, 2019, and published by  Electronic Arts, had sold eight million copies by the end of January 2020. This new 3rd person action-adventure title from Respawn Entertainment got favourable views from critics and seems deserving to be one of the best selling games of 2020.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

The eighth in the Mario Kart series, this new game lets you participate in kart racing, with 42 characters to choose from. The Inkling Girl and Inkling Boy from Splatoon are the new additions as playing characters to Mario Kart 8, along with a new battle mode, “Renegade Roundup”.  The Nintendo Switch game was released in 2017 and had sold more than 22 million copies worldwide by the end of 2019. The success of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe made it the system’s best selling game ever and it is still played by millions around the globe. 

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a crossover fighting game, published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. The fifth in the Super Smash Bros. series, this game comes with a big gamut of game modes, including a campaign for single-player and multiplayer versus modes. Adding more playable characters to the previous version, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate takes the roster to over 40. Developed by Bandai Namco, the game was released worldwide on December 7, 2018. As of September 2019, the game had already sold nearly 16 million copies worldwide and became the best selling fighting game ever released.

Ring Fit Adventure

Ring Fit Adventure is an RPG game that allows players to convert their real-world actions into in-game movements to battle against a bodybuilding dragon and his minions. The game comes with two accessories (Ring-Con and Leg Strap) and these are must to play the game as your interactions would be tracked by the motion controls. You jog, sprint, high knee and even make some yoga poses to level up and unlock more exercises to cause even more potent damage. Developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch, the game was released worldwide on October 18, 2019. For the number of copies sold, the game touched the over-two-million mark by the end of 2019. 

Minecraft

Having sold more than 176 million copies worldwide and surpassing 1984’s Tetris, Minecraft is the best-selling video game of all time, with over 112 million monthly active players by 2019. The sandbox game was developed by Mojang and released worldwide in November 2011. Microsoft purchased Mojang and the ownership of the Minecraft intellectual property for US$2.5 billion in 2014 and has ported the game to various platforms since then. By default, the game is a person first shooter, but you can also choose the option to play from the third-person perspective. The gameplay involves mining and placing 3D objects, such as dirt, stone, ores, tree trunks, water, and lava, to build things.

With this, we have come to an end of the top 10 best selling video games of 2020 so far. The global list may vary slightly as the data provided by NPD was mostly for the US gaming market. The video game industry is expected to grow over $180bn by 2021, which means game businesses will only bolster their coffer going forward, be it for mobile phones, consoles and PCs. The new revolutionizing technologies, including AR, VR and AI, will also add to the impetus the gaming industry is witnessing for the past few years. For all the dreamers and visionaries who want to build on their game development ideas, Logic Simplified is a go-to game studio even to build from the ground up. We provide Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning game development services as well to bring the smart factor in your game and keep players highly engaged. Game development is in our DNA, and we have already served various happy clients from different cultures world over. You may visit our website to learn about the range of game development services we offer or get in touch with us for any sort of game-related query by writing to us at enquiry@logicsimplified.com.