Our game development company follows the 5-stage pipeline that encompasses such phases as pre-production, production, and post-production. However, we also include quality assurance and launch as the essential stages before post-production. Let’s dive deeper into our workflow for you to understand the secret of our successful project completion strategy.
1. Pre-production
In this stage, we communicate with the client, brainstorm ideas, elaborate on the development plan, conduct the discovery phase, and create concept art to serve as a reference for artists. If we sum up all the activities we do during pre-production, the list will look as follows:
- market and competitor review;
- identifying a gaming platform;
- choosing the right target audience and monetization type;
- plan resources;
- looking for and producing references;
- analyzing risks;
- working on a coherent marketing strategy.
Since we abide by the world-class principles of game development, we always have a previously concocted game design document (GDD) at our fingertips. There we specify the project requirements, game genre, concept, plot, level design, UI elements, gameplay mechanics, and other essential aspects of your game.
2. Production
This stage is the most extensive and challenging because it marks the start of the work in full swing, including the creation of visual content, coding, level, and audio design, voice acting, plot, as well as the rest, all of which needs to end with a playable prototype. Throughout the production phase, our artists work on high-quality game assets and animate them, while developers integrate everything into a game engine to build levels as well as write scripts to create gameplay mechanics. When the first draft is complete, we show it to our client. Upon approval, we continue the production stage until it’s entirely playable. Then it’s time for quality assurance.
3. QA phase
Quality control and assurance are vital parts of any game development project. Without this phase, you can never be confident that your product performs as expected. That is why our in-house QA specialists conduct the following number of tests to make sure that the game they work on will be of the highest quality possible:
Functional testing. As the name suggests, we refer to this range of test types in order to check the functional aspects, which include:
a. Interoperability testing (to examine the system’s interaction with other internal and external components).
b. Smoke testing (to check whether the deployed build functions as expected).
c. Regression testing (to ensure that new modifications haven’t affected the already implemented system’s functionality).
d. Security access control testing (to identify whether a game is secure).
e. User acceptance testing (to make sure that a game meets a potential player’s expectations and needs).
Non-functional testing:
a. Performance testing (obviously, to check your game’s performance on different devices).
b. Stress testing (to be sure that the game won’t break even under the harshest conditions).
c. Usability testing (to learn how user-friendly your game is).
d. Compliance testing (to ensure that every single aspect of your product is compliant with the norms and rules that a target gaming platform abides by).
e. Load testing (to examine the performance of your game in simulated real-life conditions).
Only when your product passes all these and many more types of testing (including alpha and beta) can it move on to the next stage of its life cycle.
4. Launch
As the final game development phase, it marks the point of no return when your product is entirely ready to be released on the discussed platforms. Moreover, in this phase, our game development studio can help you launch the game on your own under our aegis, which can be a persuasive argument for those lacking experience yet having a huge desire to release a game.
5. Post-release
Having collected all reviews and feedback from players, Game-Ace can process them as well as fix all the issues in the form of an update. When the game is released, there’s still a lot of work to do. So our game development team can continue delivering value for your game even after its launch. Even after the release, we stay in touch with our clients, always trying to improve the game based on the feedback collected from players. The mission of our game development company is to ensure that each client is absolutely satisfied with the result.