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Why the Importance of Gaming Developers Cannot Be Underestimated

Videogames have come a long way over the years in a variety of ways. From overall complexity to graphics, theme, storytelling, and user impact, videogames are now fully-interactive experiences that take players on a journey of entertainment.

Most of us play games without even thinking about the process and people it takes to bring these products to market. It’s beneficial, however, to understand the importance of gaming developers and the extensive skills required of these creators that make our favorite games a reality.

Developers Create the Games We Love

If you’re reading this article, chances are, you’re an avid gamer. Perhaps you love playing the latest videogames on your newly unboxed PS5. Or, you might enjoy a great slot game with fantastic bonus offers at top casinos like King Johnnie Casino.

One common denominator is the fact that entertaining gameplay and pristine graphics are essential components of what defines a truly fantastic and unforgettable gaming experience. But you shouldn’t overlook the fact that to reap the benefits of such a great end-product, its development meant people invested a great deal of time to create this labor of love.

What is Game Development?

What used to be a solitary job, mainly for coders, writing lines of code to make functional digital games in monochrome has now become a massive undertaking for teams of professionals. In the early years of game design, the creators were primarily coders, writing the least amount of code possible in order to fit it into the limited memory of more primitive computers.

In the 21st century, game development is a complex art. This highly-creative process is now not limited to programmers, but rather to teams of creative individuals with a variety of skills and talents in storytelling, user interactions, graphic design, and overall player enjoyment.

It Takes a Village

Some development teams are small, with only a few members in a small office. Other teams, however, can have dozens of members that are spread across the globe. Game development is a complex beast with many different people playing roles in the process.

• Game Designer
• Level Designer
• Tester
• Game Developer
• Render Engineer
• Texture Artist
• Sound Engineer
• Project Manager

Without each member of the team playing their part well, a videogame will never come to fruition. From the more creative aspects of music, mood, style, storyboarding, and animations to the technical side of things involving actual coding — there has to be true synergy between all members of the team in order to make a great videogame.

Industry Complications

If you’re a videogame history buff, you may recognize one of the shining examples of failed game design and what happens when the industry doesn’t give developers enough time to polish and complete their projects. I’m, of course, talking about the E.T. game from Atari.

The E.T. game was rushed to market for the Christmas season and was so terrible it nearly destroyed the gaming industry by ruining the public’s trust in a new form of entertainment. Because this game was pushed to market before development was complete, you can still find landfills full of these discarded games that could never be sold. The utter failure of this game release remains a cautionary tale for the industry in the annals of videogame history.

Rushed game development is still an issue, and one of the most prominent modern examples can be seen in Cyberpunk 2077. Due to bad decisions made by CD Projekt, the game was released with numerous bugs and one of the most highly anticipated releases of 2020 became another cautionary tale for what happens when game developers rush projects and lie to consumers.

Just a quick Google search for “Cyberpunk 2077 bugs” will turn up hours of YouTube footage showing how buggy and unfinished the final release of Cyberpunk 2077 was. Gamers were outraged and many voiced their disappointment with this failure loudly on the internet. Of course, the developers have since patched and fixed most of these issues, but the damage was done. The reputation of CD Projekt is a shadow of its former self.

Game Development is Important

Game development is an extensive process that involves all aspects of game design, development, and eventual release of the game. So much goes into this process, such as game mechanics, the design of levels, player rewards, user engagement, and the overall story itself. Along the way, creators must collaborate on concept generation, design, build, and testing in order to release a product that consumers will love and that will stand up to the test of time.