In recent years, the game development outsourcing market has grown along with the video game industry. Although outsourcing for any content was once seen as borderline heretical, now, it’s considered one of the best decisions.
Of all the areas of outsourcing, game development is already experiencing the highest demand. In the current generation of video games, the environments are vibrant; textures are denser and more complex; lighting effects require layering to capture realistic dynamic lighting and how it acts on different surfaces.
In addition, technology is constantly evolving, and the graphics are becoming more and more advanced. Therefore, if you take the pros and cons, it’s likely you’ll see it’s far more effective to hire an outsourcing studio. One that has all this technology, resources, and expertise.
Outsourcing? Co-development? What are they?
In video game development, specialized knowledge in various fields is required. Video game design is a full-cycle development project. Which entails a team of specializing in their tasks. They cover every element of design like planning and detailing new elements, the settings, rules, story flow, props, vehicles, character interface, modes of play, and more.
This form of collaboration has many advantages, so video game co-development and delegated tasks are becoming more common in the video game industry.
Outsourcing means delegating development
The concept of outsourcing involves longer-term collaboration with an outside contractor to perform certain organizational functions, while the employing company can focus on its core business. it’s common to outsource full-cycle development. Still, it’s possible that outsourcing involves only part of it, such as creating art and animation or just the QA testing process.
Co-development is sharing tasks
Game co-development means collaborating with an external partner to build game modes, features, or a complete game segment. The client and the employee team work together to develop the game. The latter following the creative vision, designs, and general direction provided by the leadership team.
There are several types of co-development studios. Some offer only a part of the development services, such as creating art or animation; others offer a personalized service such as sound design or programming.
At Starloop Studios, we have several specialized teams. We can deliver in any area of the development process without any additional training.
Fieldrunners Attack! Video game, one of Starloop Studios Co-development projects
What are the advantages of game co-development?
First, you can choose a series of studios and have access to many specialists from various fields, with whom you can collaborate at a reasonable price. In addition, this option is less expensive than if you’d hired them traditionally. Second, the benefit of shifting responsibility, partially, to another party is huge in delivering quality and avoiding crunch time.
Economic savings
Co-development often allows for a reduction in costs because the employer uses the services of the hired team only when he needs to and only for specific tasks. Thus, you no longer need to pay a monthly salary, social insurance, holidays, training, or additional taxes. There is also the possibility of negotiating a reasonable price, depending on the services you need.
These teams provide their own software and hardware, which saves you having to provide these assets. For art alone, the software licenses could land between five and ten thousand US dollars per artist.
Focus on other areas of the company
Some might think that the project might become harder to handle and less productive by working with an outsourcing game studio. However, the reality is that you have more time to deal with other company areas. This time can be used to develop your business and thus increase your efficiency and potential profit. At Starloop Studios, minimum involvement on your part is required – only to make sure we are on the same page. Hence, your internal team can stay focused on their core tasks.
Quality service
In the 2021 insights report by XDS,
the essential factor taken into consideration when choosing to work with an outsourcing studio is the quality of services.
The advantage of co-development is that these companies already have expert teams in all areas of game development, which means that only the highest quality will be delivered.
We know how many challenges can be involved in the project development process. By collaborating with professionals, they can solve specific problems that may arise. Also, co-development allows publishers to fill in the gaps and use various skills that may not be available in their company.
Top 3 most important factors Developer/Publishers seek when selecting an outsourcing game studio
Professional tools and technology
To keep up with the continuous improvements in games, you need the latest technology and tools that allow you to create remarkable video games. That could mean huge costs. But collaborating with game studios that use the best game development software could help you build next-level games without investing in technology.
As tools commonly used to support external development, Unity and Unreal have replaced the proprietary game engines as the favorite of service providers and developers/publishers. Games created with Unity, especially indie games, are more common among outsourcing studios, while Unreal is preferred by large studios that develop AAA titles. This isn’t a rule, but a preference observed over time.
Greater creativity and innovation
Communication between departments produces the best ideas, so hiring a complete team is always an excellent solution for your game to meet the requirements of creativity and innovation.
If you want to develop a video game without tiring the creative muscle of your in-house team, write to us your idea, and our in-house experts will be ready to fulfill your game development needs.
Faster project development
The quality and team’s work capacity are essential, but the number of team members is also vital. Fifteen people build a house faster than two. Many specialists could do the same task faster and meeting the deadline is crucial for success.
Expansion and scope of the project
Sometimes, the in-house development of a game limits your idea. No matter how hard you try and how well you plan, it is impossible to tackle these tasks without overextending. It is easy to omit this benefit of co-development, if you don’t have a long-term view. However, if your goal is to create a game that performs at a world-class level, you’ll need a complete team of specialists to work on expanding your work.
Why outsource co-development with Starloop Studios?
Strong partnerships and a meeting of minds can result in engaging games.
By collaborating with us, you will have instant access to a team of specialists who don’t need additional training. With 10+ years of experience in the video game industry, our creative experts provide solutions to meet even the strictest requirements.
Contact us and schedule a free consultation with one of our head Starloopians to learn more about how we transform your idea into a visually spectacular game.
What professionals will co-development deliver to your game?
Strong partnerships and a meeting of minds can result in engaging games. Co-development enables you to increase your current team with senior programmers, experienced artists, and skilled game designers.
Project Lead
Lead games designers are responsible for how a game looks and what it’s like to play. One of their tasks is to coordinate the team that creates the characters, props and to indicates what will happen in the game. In addition, they decide what changes are made in the game, level up the team progress, allocate the budget and ensure that the deadline is consistently met.
Sometimes, they may have additional professional tasks like helping writers, lead animators, creative directors, and gameplay designers.
Project Manager
The project managers take responsibility for reaching objectives, creating and meeting targets, and managing the day-to-day video game development process. They create and implement methods for seamless project execution, allocate available budgets, calculate potential risks, time constraints, and resources. A project manager must have leadership, communication, and negotiation skills to solve the video game co-development process challenges and motivate the team members.
Developers
Video game developers’ job is to code the base engine from the ideas of the design team. They may also be involved in character design, level design, animation, and unit testing. Game developers must be proficient with programming languages, including C ++, Java, and C, depending on the game engine they work with – the most popular being Unreal Engine and Unity. They are responsible for fixing bugs and troubleshooting design issues.
Game designers
Game Designers are responsible for deciding how games work. They craft the core mechanics of a game, which means they create the rules of the game. These rules guide how players achieve goals and are often tied to more complex procedures that generate gameplay content. Game designer responsibilities include the user interface, documentation, narration, content, and packing of video games. In addition, they are responsible for creating the game character, graphics, roles, voices, visuals, and all graphics-related work. In an outsourcing game development studio, all these responsibilities are not just for one person, but each game designer has their responsibilities.
QA testers
An authentic and enjoyable gameplay experience would not happen if players encountered bugs and errors. The role of QA Testers in co-development is to test specific aspects of a game, communicate detailed reports of each bug they find, and then re-test when the development team has fixed it. Their responsibility is not to play video games and have fun, as some may think. Instead, they look for performance bugs, spelling mistakes, graphical or audio glitches, and copyright issues.
Artists
The role of Game Artists starts from drawing the sketches and transposing them following the vision of the video game. By creating 2D and 3D animations, Game Artists communicate the video game’s story.
Game Artists have various areas of specialization, including character design, architecture and landscapes, lighting, modeling, special effects, and texturing for 3D animation.
Starloop Studios is proud to be part of the Magic Media group, an international group specialising in entertainment and gaming industry services. Our wide range of offerings includes VFX, blockchain gaming, game art services, and more. Reach out today to avail of our expertise and A-Z services for your projects.
