Regardless of the scale, every game development project needs articulate planning.
With creativity flowing deep in their blood, developers can get in over their heads when creating a game. As such, they may experience difficulty coming up with a concrete idea.
In this case, having a solid game development plan is a surefire way to contain your thoughts and avoid deviating from the initial picture.
If you are looking for business expansion and dedicated teams building fit for your game project, you have come to the right place. This article focuses on the eight effective strategies to ensure a successful game development planning process.
Let’s delve into specifics.
Know what you want
Before hiring the ideal developers for your project, you must have a vision and know exactly what you want.
What’s the gameplay? Will the game take on a 1st or 3rd person perspective? What about the synopsis?
Game design planning allows you to grasp the mechanics, structure, and levels needed for the project, helping you achieve your intended development goals.
Fund allocation
Programming a game requires you to hire a software developer(s) and invest in quality hardware/software. For instance, your PC’s GPU should support DX10 and above, while the central processing unit should handle SSE2 instruction sets. Of course, you also need additional tech stacks.
For proper game dev planning, you need to identify how much money is needed for a particular tech stack or task. Otherwise, you might splurge, not leaving enough money to handle other tasks or purchase essential equipment.
Identify the features
Incorporating unique aspects is a surefire way to create games that resonate well with its audience. Doing so means integrating attributes that elevate the gaming experience.
You need to identify your game’s requirements by researching online, talking to gamers, and looking at use cases on similar games. Then, to ensure intricate development management, break down the project and identify attributes ideal for the game’s visual style, graphics, and many more.
Define the work plan and assign tasks
Excellent game development project management involves assigning tasks and creating viable milestones. Therefore, developing a work plan that defines the scope of work and the time to achieve all deliverables is imperative.
Assign tasks to the relevant talents, giving a timeline for each phase. Food instance, 3D artists can create the game’s objects and environment while animators can animate them, giving them a lifelike appearance. Likewise, audio engineers will handle theme tracks and sound while QA testers examine for bugs from the prototype through the alpha and beta phases until the product’s release.
Identify dependencies
Managing dependencies is a crucial part of the organizing process and is instrumental to its success. So, when designing your project management for game development, you need to identify tasks that depend on each other and their associated risks. That way, you understand which tasks to handle before others, and vice-versa.
Considering the numerous tasks involved in creating games, identifying dependencies and connecting them can be labor-intensive. However, leveraging project management software is a proven way to keep your plan in check, avoiding delays and unprecedented changes.
Create a timetable
In any project, poor time management can be chaotic. For this reason, the importance of creating a schedule for each development phase cannot be over-emphasized.
You need to approximate the commencement and completion dates of all development stages, depending on their tasks. Doing so allows the team to have a clear picture of what to deliver and when.
Scrutinize game attributes
As a project manager game development, digging deeper into each game attribute should be part of the organizing process.
You need to scrutinize all features to see which are a must-have and those you can do away with and not compromise the game’s quality. Additionally, you need to consider how much input each feature needs, in terms of money and time, to ensure efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
Set project milestones
Each well-planned project has task timelines, and to meet them, creating milestones is essential. Milestones allow a project planner to monitor deadlines, identify bottlenecks, ensure accountability, and measure success – everything needed to push for a faster time to market.
Conclusion
Organizing a game development project is intensive and not for the faint-hearted. But we are here to help.
Argent has a dedicated team of developers that will help you come up with a detailed plan that ensures the success of your project.
Contact us today, and let’s create an agile plan that steers your project to triumph.