Game development has become very attractive and profitable, and many companies will want to start their business there. However, during a promising source of profit, this is a highly competitive environment. To succeed in the gaming market, a company needs a stable and highly professional game outsource studio that keeps up with the latest trends in game development.
One viable solution for building an effective game development team is to hire an outsource studio.
In this article, we will talk about interesting game design services – some are the basis of outsourcing activities, and some are rare but interesting cases.
Concept Art Game Design
Game developers have long understood that product monetization is directly related to concept art. Therefore, a separate profession was allocated for this work. By the way, the demand for specialists and game design services is growing every day.
Concept art is the creation from scratch of the concept, style, attributes, and general appearance of the game, which is at the first stage of development. Most game dev companies have only technical skills and cannot fully implement all the crazy visual ideas. And without concept art, it is impossible to create a story, a general philosophy, or an ecosystem for the game to implement. In large projects, the concept artist sketches the future world, and characters are developed based on the created style.
Therefore, the outsourcing segment is very busy with work in the direction of concept art game design and is one of the core areas of most game design artists.
GUI Game Design Services
Even outside the gaming industry, design plays a huge role in human life: most of the information we receive from the environment through visual perception and attractive design, harmoniously matched colors, and matching shapes can contribute to the overall quality of life.
Any, even the simplest game, has an interface. It can be minimalistic, abstract, harmoniously integrated into the environment’s design, or represented by a traditional HUD with a health scale and the amount of energy or resources. Whatever it is, every interface is designed to serve primarily the same purpose: to clearly and quickly convey some information to the player.
Oddly enough, creating UI/UX is quite a long and exhausting process for an inexperienced artist or designer. The reason for this is a long check for bugs, feedback, and optimization. Therefore, this aspect of development is most often outsourced. Therefore, a UI/UX game designer from an outsourced studio is a real lifesaver for developers stuck on this game aspect.
Game Balance
Balance is one of the most difficult, important, and responsible parts of the work of a game designer. As a rule, developers give the game in the form of a set of mechanics. And what feelings and emotions it will cause in the player, and how these mechanics will interact with each other, is up to the game designer to decide. Game balance outsourcing is a rare but interesting case. Most do not think about how much time it took to calculate and compile damage formulas, the interaction of character elements, and the honesty of one or another fragment in the game. Usually, the game balance is outsourced to fix hidden bugs, incorrect mechanics, or indicators.
A game designer, to some extent, turns into a beta tester who has to play, feel and take stock. But the balance may not be so global; for example, a schedule for launching promotions and events, a separate balance for each cohort of users, etc., are also often found in the lists of game design outsourcing services.
Animation and Modelling Services
Animation and modeling are very complex but important aspects of most games. The game designer draws, models, and animates 3D models in different styles depending on the genre of the game and is responsible for all aspects of the development of the rules and content of the gameplay of the game being created – from the adoption of the design document to the provision of the finished product. Most 3D game design studios are engaged in modeling and animation, but even so, this direction is very much in demand.
The challenge is to transform the concept into a 3D mesh, involving a wide range of skills, making informed geometric decisions, and adding symmetry and texture to the models.
The designer must fully understand the principles of conceptual design and animation and be able to create and animate game characters. Unfortunately, game design services related to modeling and animation are among the most expensive in many outsourced studios. But this is quite logical since this process requires skills in working with various software and knowledge of anatomy and physics combined with artistic skills.
Creating Sprites
Sprite graphics are one of the oldest technologies for character animation. Sprites are pictures in 2D games that make up game characters, monsters, moving objects, etc.
The first sprite graphics date back to the early 80s. But the most interesting thing is that it is still popular in the creation of 2D games, and sometimes in 3D games, when you need to animate a distant object or create an animation that does not fixate on the player’s attention. Sprite graphics are created in three steps:
- You need to create images for animation.
- Next, these images need to be combined in one frame and set up animation from them.
- Position the animation on the screen.
Finding studios makes it easy to have game design portfolio examples divided into different categories, styles, or genres of games.
But this does not mean that sprite graphics are a simple and easy technology. Sprites are highly demanded in modern games because the players have changed. The number of those who are nostalgic for the graphics of the games of the 90s is not so much. Even if playing a 2D game, a modern player wants it to be of high quality and the sprites to be as realistic as possible. Therein lies the problem. A 3D character can be “twisted,” viewed from all sides, changed something, deformed, etc. You cannot do such manipulations with a sprite.
Despite the dominant 3D direction in games, some game design studios create great 2D projects that find their fans worldwide. Sprite graphics are alive and not going to give up their positions. Therefore game design artists who have the appropriate skills are highly valued.
Final Thoughts
As a rule, the longer a game design studio has been on the market, the higher the quality of its services. However, those studios that have been stable in the market for longer have a lot of experience and know how to serve their customers better. They can quickly understand the development processes required in a given project case and suggest the best technologies and strategies achieve project success more quickly. For more detailed information, you can always check the game design portfolio and see the experience and skills of the team.
Another argument in favor of experienced companies is that they can quickly find the right specialists for the project. In addition, these companies can afford to have more than one team of artists or designers and bring them in as needed along with the project.
