Building thrilling games for Windows 8 Tablet/PCs and Windows Phone is an exciting proposition. And today we have an abundance of options to build games as modern apps on Windows.
With this blog post, we are starting a series of articles that will help you understand the concept of gaming, tools, products and technologies to master to build successful games with powerful engines.
The first post of this series is being authored by Ujjwal Kumar, Technology Evangelist, Microsoft India
Why Build Games ?
Games are probably the most downloaded category of apps across devices and form factors. Be it phones or tablets, setting up a new device includes downloading some of popular games as a “must do” activity.
Last years data shows that out of all free apps downloaded on any major platform (Android, iOS, Microsoft and Blackberry) 34% were games. Additionally, amongst all the paid apps, purchased on any platform, a staggering 57% were games.
While Interactive games are meant for fun and entertainment, these can also serve as great learning tools for increasing knowledge, simulation of real world problems, marketing / awareness, educational content etc. As much as building your own game can be exciting, game development can be challenging and difficult, as it needs very deep technical skills, creativity and inherent like for computer games!
In spite of the massive developer ecosystem in India, we are yet to produce a world class title that was built and produced from India. However, we see a lot potential in upcoming development studios that have more than a 100,000 downloads on some titles on Windows alone.
Planning your game – Analysis of Audience and Competition
In todays gaming world, practically every type of a game already exists. Therefore, to be successful you would need to think of a unique idea for a game, or present an existing idea in a unique way.
To present an idea in a unique way, you would need to plan your implementation and an analysis of audience and competition can give an edge over existing tons of related games.
Know your audience : it’s important that you understand the target audience. Analyze who and why people will play your game when there are tons of similar games out there. One way to stand out amongst the crowd is to have a “best at” statement. For example, this game is “best at” letting kids learn alphabets.
Truly knowing your audience will help you in building
- User Experience strategy
- Marketing strategy
- Monetization strategy
There are multiple dimensions of analysis before you start your game development.
- Pricing
- Peculiarity
- Platforms
One needs to apply “Design Thinking” before proceeding with any development. However, planning plays a critical role especially in case of game development where user experience is most important
Platforms, Tools and Technologies
Choosing the right platform might be tricky for beginners. Few things you should definitely explore to choose the platform
- Build for targeting smart phones and/or tablets?
- Leverage core platform capabilities to deliver differentiated experiences.
- Your team – strength, skills, areas of development
- Use Frameworks and Engines or Ground up ?
Library – is packaged and usually independent logic written to be used by other applications through an API | Framework– is a foundational support structure on which a developer might choose to base his code in order to save time or increase compatibility or reuse. Target platforms are responsible for supporting the framework | Engine– a separate and often proprietary development environment that allows development in its own paradigm and subsequently is capable of generating projects in other languages or paradigms |
There are multiple Libraries, frameworks and engines available to build games on Windows Platform. Some of the significant one’s are mentioned below :
In a following post of this series, we will explore the native, open source and commercial technologies mentioned in the above diagram in more detail for building games on Windows Platform.