Gamedev is a huge sphere, which employs specialists of various profiles. Let’s take a look at the features of the industry, what specialists are involved in the creation of games, and get to know the most popular profession of gamemode.
Game development is the process of developing games. They can be created either by one person – an indie developer, or by a whole team of programmers. The bigger the project, the more specialists of different profiles will be involved and the more money will be put into it. Indie developers can be compared to a Swiss knife: they can both program and design. In smaller projects, they are also responsible for creating the script and testing the project.
In addition to the performers who are responsible for creating the game, there are publishers in the industry – the people who finance and promote the product after release. In return, they get a large percentage of sales. But there are also companies that work without publishers. They promote their product through digital distribution, such as the online service Steam.
Depending on the size of the project, only a few people may be involved in the creation of the game, or maybe more than a hundred. The larger the staff, the less “Swiss knives” in it, and the more often there are narrow specialists, such as level designers.
Gamedev is a lucrative industry.
Investment in the gaming market in 2020 increased by 77% compared to the figure in 2019, reaching $13.2 billion. This growth is justified by the pandemic and quarantine situation – a lot of people found a new entertainment for themselves. The most money was invested in the creation of the game Grand Theft Auto 5 – $265 million. More than 1000 people worked on it and it more than compensated for itself.
Quite the opposite situation occurred with Minecraft. For a long time, Markus Persson developed it all by himself. Only two years later, two friends joined him. And still a staff of three is quite small. But a few years later sales have exceeded 200 million copies, and Minecraft is played by 126 million people a month.
Games are created for different platforms: consoles, mobile devices, PCs, virtual reality helmets. Mobile games are developing most rapidly today. They account for 49% of the market, 29% for consoles and another 22% of the market is represented by PC games.