Games Industry Facts

• A typical computer game costs approximately £19.99-£49.99 to buy and anywhere from £300,000 to £5,000,000 to develop!
• A game, depending on its size, scope, content and platforms takes from 6 months to 30 months to create, most games are developed in around 18 months with team sizes for a games development project varying between 12 and 60 staff. These teams are made up of programmers, artists, designers, scripters, audio engineers and producers. Games are usually created as one or more versions, each for a specific hardware platform, (for example PC, Xbox360 and Nintendo Wii).
• There are approximately 200 hundred developers based in the UK with team sizes varying from 20 to 200 people. Across the world there are around 2000 developers some of which employ over 1000 staff!
• The UK is recognised as one of the best training grounds for development talent with UK games developers being employed across at developers across the world; as far a field as Shanghai, Australia, Canada, Japan and North America.

Development stages

• The creation of game might seem quite easy but in actual fact today’s games take a great deal of time and resource. Most game development is broken down into a series of milestones the key ones of which are as follows:
• The concept - typically drawings, words, models, code and basic prototypes that describe the nature, objectives and features of the game..
• Design document - a detailed plan of the game’s features and how it will play are generated from the concept and presented to potential publishers.
• Technology demo – a prototype that demonstrates the game’s technology, illustrating for example the appearance and movement of the characters or objects on the screen. This is produced for review so as to decide if concept is marketable.
• Playable prototype or Vertical slice – normally a few levels of the game are produced with many of the game play features in and working, this allows reviewers to get a feel for the game, the level of fun, the saleability of the title and technical risk involved in fully developing the game.
• ALPHA/BETA – these are the next major milestones that represent near completed games, these are subject to extensive game-play, compatibility and bug testing by both the developer and the publisher
  Master – a completed, bug-free game approved by the platform holder and available for manufacturing in readiness for sales on the high street.

If you’ve read this far, you’re almost certainly a ‘gamer’ at heart. Why not look at the other sections of this site to how Train2Game and its Design and Development training courses can plug you in to a bright new future - no matter what direction your life’s taking now...