Eight key disciplines to become a video game developer

August
12, 2021

4 min read

In 2019, 32,262 million pesos entered Mexico thanks to the video game industry , according to The Competitive Intelligence Unit . So if you have thought about making a career in this area, either because you are a gamer or for any other reason, it is important that you know that several disciplines are involved in creating a video game.

In the development of video games, it is necessary to consider the narrative of a story, invention of characters, music, and even scripts, so that with these elements the operators can do it working on software, processors or technological platforms.

• Read: From tennis to the world of corporate gaming and everything from home: this is the story of Tomás Giovanetti

^{Image: Unsplash.}

On the other hand, as in any other industry we cannot forget how important it is to commercialize these products and to connect disciplines so that everything goes according to plan. In short, without taking any further detours, we share the main areas that a video game developer must attend to, which were shared with us by the online education platform, Udemy :

1. Narrative ( storytelling ): it is about the development of the central story of the video game, in which the role that each character will play is determined, as well as their physical and psychological characteristics, superpowers, challenges and obstacles they will face. As well as the scenarios in which it will take place.
2. Basic principles of psychology: both of the characters and of the users. Regarding the former, it gives them personality, defines their psychological profiles and with it their behavior, abilities, powers and weaknesses; On the players’ side, it defines the incentives throughout the different stages of the video game, the rewards they will access and the way they interact with each of the characters so that they maintain their interest and motivation to continue playing.
3. Mathematics: its application is to determine the distribution and creation of models of probabilities of outcomes or continuity according to different actions in each of the levels, as well as to balance the difficulty throughout the game. The objective of this is to avoid the fatigue or frustration of the player.
4. Physics: having to simulate real objects in a virtual world, it becomes necessary to know basic physics (rotation, gravity, friction, etc.), to recreate their behavior, almost exactly, in the face of different actions to give the game realism . For example, if you are going to recreate a river, you will need to know fluid mechanics to reproduce it as well as possible.
5. Marketing: to monetize the video game it will be necessary to go to market to promote and sell it, for which to know costs, the target audience, communication channels, marketing strategies, campaign generation, key metrics to measure its impact, conversion ratios, among others, they will be of vital importance. It will be of little use to have the best video game if people do not know it and above all, do not buy it.
6. Programming: it is a basic one since you will have to develop a lot of code with steps to follow for each of the actions of the characters according to the instructions of the player and indirect phenomena of these.
7. Art: it is the aesthetic part of the video game, here it is necessary to know basic principles of music, lighting, kinematics, modeling, texturing and 3D animation; These aspects are of the utmost importance since it is the most visible and tangible part of the virtual world in which the players operate.
8. Economics: using game theory helps to determine how fair a rule is and establishes criteria to balance the criteria to move from one level to another according to certain gains, for example virtual currencies.