Aspects of Great Video games

Most people love video games and at one stage or the other they have played a game or two. Yet there are those junkies who spend hours competing online with other games for a couple of hours each day. This unwavering love for video games, which of recent times has been on the steep rise due to the availability of several platforms used to play video games such as mobile devices, have seen the gaming industry experience massive growth. Actually it is a multi-billion dollar industry which many game developers have always wanted to venture in.

That includes the likes of me. Since I was a kid I love video games. I would often play them after school to an extent that at times I would fail to do my homework. I wasn’t much of an addict though, and during those days, there were few good video games like Mega Man, Super Mario Bros, or Warlords which I would play using our old PC and whenever I had some coins, I would go out to play Pac Man.

It is through playing these games that I developed the interest in game development. I used to marvel of the ingenuity which goes to develop such intuitive games and that always made me yearn to create my own video game. However, during those days there were limited resources unlike today where there are open source frameworks which can help you get started in production much faster.

Designing a Compelling Gameplay

Yet, the lack of resources didn’t deter me from wanting to be a developer. Actually it was the best thing which happened to me after graduating from high school. Even though my parents were against it, I convinced them to let me undertake programming classes so that I could become a developer. Of course they had genuine reasons why they felt that game development wasn’t a good idea of a career.

I did study programming back then and tried coding one or two indie games before I realized that indeed it was a poor choice of a profession. Coding good games requires much sacrifice and time and there are never guarantees that you will ever make a decent living from that. This was the reality which dawned on me after spending two fruitless years trying to make a living in game development. I even got employed in a gaming company, but I sucked at how my ideas were often hacked from the codes that I develop and I ended up quitting the job.

However, I do not mean to discourage anyone who feels like he can make a leaving in coding games. However, there are a lot of factors which makes a video game to stand out from the rest and entire sell big. Big companies usually have their own strategies which makes their games to be more popular and sell big.

Foremost, a good game is all about the design used. The design of the game will take into account the colors, visual space, sound and lighting used in the game environment. You must know how to combine all these to bring a beautiful effect which is engaging and which players can identify with. This is not a simple task to an individual. At times it requires several graphic designers to come up with interacting designs for the game environment. This is a task which can take several weeks or even months to make the best decision.

Importance of Coding

Then there is need for a great story line. Best games like those produced by big companies like Nintendo have great story lines. You must be a very creative thinker to come up with an amazing storyline for a certain game. The story should be well solid and have a good flow from one level to another. It should include various rules for the various elements of the games. When thinking of the story you also need to define the rules which will guide players during each level so that the game can be interesting.

Most importantly, you need to define the various elements of the game. This includes the characters and the obstacles which you use on every level. These elements usually the characters must have various goals to accomplish in the storyline. You need to creatively think about the goals and obstacles, to make the game more interesting with each level being harder to accomplish the goals than the preceding one.

There are other aspects which make a game more interesting, but I just named a few which made it harder for me to continue being a game developer. However, the coding that I learned has had a huge impact in my life. Even though I may have failed in creating a good gameplay, I eventually decided to venture in web development, which has had great impact in my life. Therefore, if you fail in gameplay development, never give up.