Video Game Design vs Video Game Development

The gaming industry is constantly evolving and growing, but in the last couple of years, its leap forward has been especially tangible. This can be attributed to the pandemic, because people were “imprisoned” at home, and they just had to find various entertainment for themselves. This is how the number of video game fans has grown.

There are currently over 2.5 billion gamers in the world! This is an impressive part of the world’s population. On this growth will not slow down, but, on the contrary, accelerate. At least that’s what the experts say. In parallel with this, the popularity of gaming professions, such as graphic designers and game product developers, is also growing. We have to figure out what these specialties are and how they differ.

Features and concept of video game design

Each of the professions in the gaming field requires a certain set of knowledge and skills, as well as personal qualities. Although all of them are interconnected, their task is the same – to create a high-quality gaming product, bring it to perfection and present it to the users.

To understand what is game design, you can consider the main features of this type of activity, namely:

• at the beginning of the work, the video game designer determines the target audience of the product, as well as its genre;
• then the specialist develops the concept and rules of the game;
• after the overall theme is ready, the designer moves on to the plot: deals with the characters, the map, storylines, ways to win and lose, levels, as well as the user interface and the features of its creation.

Specialists usually first make a draft version of the work, providing it for evaluation to the developers, and after its approval, they already move on to the technical and artistic part of the work.

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The essence of video game development

By creating a game is meant the process of developing a game product from scratch to its very completion. This can be done by one person or a whole team. And here are the processes carried out along the way:

• coding;
• programming;
• testing;
• rendering;
• additional verification steps.

It is the developer who brings the idea and concept into the game. The main skills of a specialist are programming and coding. The video game cost depends on the complexity of the project, its plot, as well as on the number of people who have to work on one product.

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The main differences between the professions of a designer and a game developer

To understand which specialty suits you, and define the features of each of them, you can familiarize yourself with the comparative characteristics below:

1. Education. For a game designer, a bachelor’s or associate’s degree in “design in the field of video game design” is sufficient. As for the game developer, he needs to master the programming and modeling of the game. He can also get an associate’s degree in game development. He should have excellent knowledge of computer science and understand software.
2. Training program. The game designer program is presented as follows:
   1. advanced game design;
   2. modeling of 3D and 2D objects;
   3. simulators and complex video games;
   4. animation;
   5. 3D sculpture;
   6. texturing;
   7. statistics and analytics;
   8. game engines;
   9. advanced game design.
3. As for the game developer, his basic curriculum is made up of:
   1. API and advanced algorithms;
   2. mathematics;
   3. advanced game design;
   4. programming in 2D and 3D format;
   5. virtual reality;
   6. design;
   7. testing;
   8. serious games and simulations.
4. Skills. The designer needs to be able to create original designs for each game, have analytical and creative skills, the ability to coordinate actions, understand 3D modeling, have visual and graphic skills, be able to present his work, and have communication skills. It is important for a developer to be able to coordinate work, to program, to have excellent knowledge of computer language and programming languages, to be attentive to details, to be assiduous, and to know advanced level algebra.

Each profession is equally important in creating a video game.