Acquiring funding for game development projects can be a complicated process that requires diligent research, business acumen, and persistence to go through several channels to secure your game’s future. Though many routes toward securing game development funding exist, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, and each project will have different needs.

Crucially, funding for game development is necessary for leveraging expert service providers like Magic Media to bring your game development projects to life. Beginning the journey of gaining game development funding might be daunting, but numerous options are available regardless of your project’s ambitions.

Importance of Game Development Funding

Game development funding is an exceptionally important aspect of the game development lifecycle, from initial concept development to post-launch support. First and foremost, funding for game development projects is used to bring in the talent required to deliver high-quality games, whether that’s expert service providers or direct hires for an internal team. Further to this, game development funding is essential for providing the tools required for your talent to develop high-quality games.

Funding for game development projects is required for all aspects of game development, including marketing, operational costs, research and development, and more. Funding is also necessary to secure service providers to help or fully develop your game. This can be advantageous for many organizations that don’t have the resources or infrastructure to develop a game in-house and instead can rely on an experienced team to handle all aspects of game development.

Game Development Funding and Service Providers

Adequate game development funding can provide access to service providers who can handle aspects of your game development projects or the whole process. Without sufficient funding, studios might need to enter service agreements with inexperienced providers or in some worst-case scenarios, commit to developing the title internally while lacking the resources to create the game to the highest degree of quality possible.

In the contemporary gaming industry, post-launch support is often critical to a game’s long-term success and maximizing its shelf life. Regardless of your game’s genre or platform, ongoing post-launch support delivering new content updates, patches, and regular maintenance will ensure your game continues to serve existing players and attract new ones. Post-launch support is a huge undertaking that can be handled by an experienced and talented service provider. Without funding, the game might suffer from inadequate support and its player base could decline if existing players aren’t catered to.

Methods of Raising Game Development Funding

A popular contemporary method of raising game development funding is leveraging crowdfunding platforms. The basic premise is that a studio would present its game or game idea to the wider gaming community to gain financial support for its development. Though success is far from guaranteed, crowdfunding campaigns in the past have secured record-breaking amounts of funding for game development projects like Shenmue 3 and Pillars of Eternity. Leveraging crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter can also foster a strong community supporting your game from its earliest days of development and creating advocates for your project in the long term.

One of the most common methods of game development funding comes from publishers. Publishers will fund game development projects in exchange for a share of profits and sometimes IP ownership. In addition to the financial gains, publishers will often lend their marketing, distribution, and QA services to help the project progress. It’s critical when pursuing game development funding from publishers that sometimes creative compromises will need to be made to align the game with the publisher’s vision in exchange for the support, as mentioned earlier.

Contact Magic Media today to learn about our extensive range of game development project service offerings, including full-cycle game development, co-development, real-time VFX, and much more. Find out how we can collaborate, and let’s create magic!

In our previous blog, we went through the Magic Media outsourcing project pipeline. We covered the elements of both project workflow and how we go about establishing strong, constant communication to ensure the best and most satisfying results for our clients. 

For this part, we discuss the processes and efforts that our team puts into each outsourcing service, we asked our team and producers about how it is we try to stand out. From the internal quality processes and communication to market research and how we build a team for each project, we aim to exceed our clients’ expectations. Let’s dive in.

Magic Media’s Internal Quality Processes for Outsourcing Services

There are two key elements in the delivery of not just high-quality work but proofed and stable work. We have a gate process for each and every element we work on where team members sign off on work and it is passed up a chain. Each link on the chain, from individual member to senior to lead, to project leads, and creative directors are doing their own checks and validations. This gating process means the level of quality is checked by several different experts who are all looking for the best. This extends to the macro picture of development and milestones, our team are always implementing the gate process to ensure a quality of delivery. 

This is helped a lot by the size and scale of our team, which means we can tailor our team to those more suitable for projects. Those members who have experience with specific clients, needs, engines, or technologies.

Additionally, we of course have our own dedicated QA team who are delivering their own specific QA expertize. We layer checks on all elements of our work to ensure what reaches our client is only of the highest quality.

Bespoke Teams for Video Game Outsourcing

We mentioned the size of our team offers a level of selection afforded to our clients. You don’t just get an expert in game development, you get a Unity Engine specialist or an Unreal Engine specialist. An expert in the methods of your required outsourcing service and specifically an expert in your chosen genre, engine, coding language, aesthetic, and more.

This tailored approach to team building means a team fit for your project. Not just technically but also in the team’s individual interests and passions. We don’t just bring quality and expertize, we bring enthusiasm and dedication!

Standing out in Game Outsourcing Services

As explained by our bespoke team creation, we have the size and international presence to provide a vast array of experienced developers, artists, VFX engineers, and much more. This level means our team are always at the forefront of what is being developed, new methodologies and technologies that are evolving with the industry.

We also like to make the client a part of our outsourcing process. We think through constant communication, the client can see their vision is being upheld by our leads and directors. It’s an iterative process, game development is all about experimentation and trying new approaches. Flexible and agile are two clear descriptions of our team at any stage of game development. And, as our teams jump between projects, they only grow in experience and are able to deploy their talent to an even wider set of genres and styles.

Communication and Organization

We sound like a broken record when it comes to communication with the client but we emphasize it simply because it’s true! 

Our entire team checks in once a day for a short daily where we see updates on individual aspects of the project. Each individual team would then have their own check-ins as well, ensuring that all is operating as intended.

Once a week, our project leads would meet up to check on the big picture, see that we are meeting our milestones and our quality guidelines. And lastly, we meet with our client at least once a week. This is just for a check-in and an update and can happen more frequently if needed. Additionally, we often have special meetings with the client with specific team members or groups for more direct and pinpoint updates.

The project manager would also be in regular contact with the client, providing updates and addressing queries or concerns they might have. This contact is important as well to make sure the project is still on point with the client’s expectations.

Video Game Market Research and Trends

Certain elements of our team would spend roughly 25% of their time in “Leads” which is all about growing our contacts, clients, and team. It’s also about growing our knowledge and understanding of current trends and how the games’ industry is operating. 

Without this kind of attention, we wouldn’t be able to stay at the head of the video game outsourcing industry. Understanding latest trends and why players and developers are looking for these evolving genres, game types, or experiences is key to delivering high quality results.

All of these elements come together to provide our clients with a space where they are heard and their game development dreams are brought into reality.

Get in touch with us today to leverage Magic Media’s expertize and wide range of game outsourcing services. From full-cycle game development to remastering, porting, game VFX, and much more, our team are ready to deliver only the highest results. Contact us today and let’s create magic.

Last time on our Unity vs Unreal Engine debate, our two lead developers discussed their experience with both engines as well as some of the highlights of their preferred engine. Most importantly, we got an introduction into the debate and they each shared why a client should choose Unity over Unreal Engine or vice versa. 

Next up, our lead developers go into some more detail of the features available and how some of these strengths might persuade a client to choose one over the other. Lastly, we’ll have our developers discussing the future of game development and how Unity and Unreal Engine might fit into it!

Could you tell me more about Unreal Engine’s Blueprint Visual Scripting and the Unreal Engine Marketplace?

Blueprints empower designers and technical artists across the entire engine, allowing designers to prototype and modify gameplay without requiring them to learn the syntax of some programming language. It also allows technical artists to quickly iterate their work without long compile times. The blueprints are powerful enough that programmers can use it to make high-level logic more manageable, like UI programming, while also offering a common communication layer for many core systems like animation, AI, and VFX to name a few.

The UE marketplace has technical requirements which ensures anything on it is of a high quality. As a buyer, you know exactly what you’re getting with comprehensive content descriptions and you know it’s going to be of an acceptable quality. It also has plenty of free content, some of which were developed by Epic themselves.

On the other side, what can you tell me about Unity’s Asset Store and Unity’s cross-platform capability?

Unity’s Asset Store is a hub that is packed with resources. 3D models, animations, plugins for game developers to easily plug in and save them time, it’s a fantastic resource for any game developer. On top of that, Unity periodically releases bundles that are brilliant. Very useful and appealing to developers, it helps to enrich your asset library and arsenal. There’s a bit of everything in there, essential utilities to specialized solutions, the Unity Asset Store offers resources to tackle any of the diverse development challenges that occur. It’s an empowering source for developers of any level, for any genre, and any type of game.

In general, we’re seeing a lot of AAA console titles being made with Unreal Engine. However, when we’re looking at other platforms or those trying to appeal to multiple platforms, Unity is relied upon. PC to mobile, to web, to XR and even VR, Unity’s cross-platform support is king.

How do you see the future of game development changing and where do your respective engines fit into it?

UE Developer: As we see new games releasing, more content and quality are expected. The levels are rising hugely, far beyond what any of their predecessors were required. This has always been true, but we’ve never seen this sharp a rise before. At the same time, Unreal Engine has been enabling AAA and AA to indies to release more content with better quality in less time. Fortnite is a great piece of proof of that, I think, showing what the engine can achieve as the game evolves alongside the engine to make use of its latest technology.

Unity Developer: Great question. We’ve the promise of Unity 6 coming later this year which I think will give UE5 a run for its money. A lot of improvements, especially in performance, are very promising. There are a lot of Unity features planned such as cloud/multiplayer/AI features, there’s almost too much to keep a track of but I think it’s a good pace to keep up with how the game development world is evolving! I think Unity still aims to be ubiquitous, covering all possible platforms with solutions for them all. Developers benefit hugely here, having options to use in their development, accelerating their work without sacrificing quality. I think we’ll see a lot more live service games and Unity will be there to support them. We might not have Fortnite, but Unity has its own umbrella of solutions that I think make it very appealing to developers as we move forward.

For the final words, is there anything you’d like to add about Unity v. Unreal Engine?

UE Developer: Unreal Engine is so extensible! You have access to their entire source code meaning customization and modification are open to you. It can be redistributed between team members easily and without any extra costs. I think its gameplay framework is very complete, very extensive and offers a ton of features which are ready to be used out of the box.

Unity Developer: People often see Unity as the easy solution and while it is easy to pick up, it doesn’t lack when it comes to complex projects. You can get something basic running in minutes which is great for starting off and beginners. But Unity is powerful enough for any kind of game, any scale, and the Unity Asset Store is incredibly helpful in both cases. I do think as well Unity isn’t just for games, it has a lot of other applications that make it very useful! While there are other engines like Unreal, none are more beginner friendly than Unity while still having the capacity to scale up into huge games and experiences. 

We have to extend a huge thank you to our two lead developers for their time! We hope you found this insight into both Unity and Unreal Engine useful!

If you’d like to leverage our game development expertize, such as our Unity Game Development service and Unreal Engine Game Development service, contact our team today. We offer a wide array of services alongside them such as game VFX, game trailers, and art production. With Magic Media, you have a one-stop studio for all your gaming, entertainment, and tech needs. Talk to us today and let’s create magic!

A conflict as old and heavily debated like the console wars or console vs PC, we have the Unity vs Unreal Engine debate. To get a good grasp on this discussion and what each engine offers you, we brought in two of our best! One Lead Unreal Engine developer and one Lead Unity Developer, hot off projects themselves in their respective engines. They were kind enough to lend their expertize and industry knowledge to this debate and to help you see the strengths of each engine and what they can do for your game development project. Let’s get into it!

Engine vs Engine: Experiences and Previous Work

We first asked both Lead Developers how much experience they had with their opposite’s engine! Just to see if both would give a fair and equal opinion during this rigorous engagement. 

Unreal Engine (UE) Developer: I actually came from Unity to Unreal Engine so my career is actually divided 50/50 between Unity and Unreal Engine. They’re both great engines that each excel in different aspects. I will say there are some things I miss from Unity. Their 2D tooling is amazing, sprite deformation, and tilemaps are all great examples of something lacking in Unreal. When it comes to any 2D games, I’d lean into Unity and maybe some lower-spec 3D mobile games.

Unity Developer: I have a few months experience with Unreal Engine and I like to play around with it after I learned some of it for a course. I like to try conduct tests on Unity, creating my retro gaming passions on it. I decided to give Unreal Engine the same concept and see what it could do. I have to say it’s a powerful engine and it was almost comical to see it handling simple things like sprite animations and simple UI. The experience was really interesting, it has some great UI tools and the Blueprint programming approach was very helpful.

Why should someone choose Unreal Engine over Unity?

Unreal Engine really boasts a modern technology set. It helps in reducing production time when creating ambitious 3D games. If you’re aiming for stunning visuals, Unreal Engine 5 is your go to. Virtualized geometry is a powerful system that enables artists to focus on the visuals and let the engine take care of a lot of the optimization. Global illumination is incredible for high-end computers and the latest consoles where we’re seeing more realistic and immersive scenes. The level streaming system as well is fantastic for large worlds and allowing multiple team members to work in parallel on the same game environment. 

UE supports multi-platform games by default and has great built-in features for all of the common game elements like behavior trees for NPC AI development, a customizable networking layer integrated into the engine’s core, and a versatile animation system that integrates into their visual scripting system. The performance cost is high so it might struggle for lower-end devices like mobile, but it’s unparalleled in delivering quality.

Why should someone choose Unity over Unreal Engine?

As my colleague mentioned before, Unity is fantastic for creating 2D games. It’s something that Unreal Engine isn’t really designed for. Unity also comes with a range of great built-in tools, it’s got a huge community in support, and a vast Asset Store. In terms of the 2D gaming space it’s the clear winner. Where it doesn’t compete with UE for the best of the best visuals, we see Unity filling the niche of pure versatility. iPhone, Android, WebGL, XR, VR, consoles, PC, it’s able to do everything and anything. 

It’s no pushover in the 3D space either, it can and does perform well competitively with UE. One of the engine’s strongest points is its ability to deploy on multiple platforms without major changes to the core game. No matter the setup or platform, Unity can do it. And, it can run on less powerful devices with a different render pipeline approach, meaning you don’t sacrifice too much quality for a significantly larger audience.

This is only the beginning of the debate, we have much more to come! Keep an eye on our socials for the second and final installment of the great battle between Unity and Unreal Engine.

If you’d like to leverage our game development expertize, get in touch with us today! Our Unity Game Development service and Unreal Engine Game Development service are both built on industry-leading expertize and comprehensive communication. Contact our team today and let’s create magic!

Game porting refers to adapting an existing video game for other platforms. This is a heavily involved process that requires examining the game from top to bottom and making a significant number of changes so that it runs smoothly on its new destination platforms and operating systems.

Game porting is challenging, but at Magic Media, we pride ourselves on our experience and knowledge of delivering ported games to any platform. Through our extensive game porting experience, we’ve learned about its challenges and benefits first-hand, ensuring consistently high-quality ported games with every project we’re a part of.

Considerations for Game Porting

As previously mentioned, game porting necessitates thoroughly inspecting a game before the porting process can begin. One of the paramount considerations for ported games is their platforms of origin and target platforms. Though a game might run impeccably well on PC, for example, diligent work is required to adapt a game for consoles so that it runs comparably well. A game’s input methods, overall fidelity, and user experience need to be weighed against the destination platforms – what their technical specifications are, possible input methods, and ability to provide a consistent user experience.

There are many aspects to consider about specific platforms with game porting. For instance, porting to PCs forces developers to consider the countless hardware configurations possible and how to efficiently test across a range of PC setups. Porting games to consoles requires developers to think about the various guidelines and regulations that each console manufacturer has in place for releases on their platforms.

Testing and Optimizing Ported Games

The process of game porting necessitates extensive testing for each platform the game is being adapted for. Performance must be tested to ensure that frame rates reach the developer’s target, loading times are acceptable, and overall responsiveness. Graphics need to be tested to ensure that the ported game has high-quality visuals in line with the platform’s hardware capabilities. User interface testing is critical to ensure that the game’s UI is adapted for different screen sizes, resolutions, and input methods.

Without fail, every game porting project requires meticulous optimization. Performance will always need to be optimized for target platforms to achieve smooth performance. This is especially true for mobile platforms, which are invariably underpowered compared to consoles and PCs and often require visual overhauls, implementing efficient rendering techniques, and optimizing memory usage. Balance must be struck with graphical optimization too, where developers should endeavor to maximize visual fidelity as much as possible without sacrificing performance. This commonly involves reducing polygon counts, adjusting lighting effects, and reducing texture quality, especially on less powerful platforms.

Benefits of Game Porting

Though game porting requires extensive work, its benefits far outweigh the challenge of producing high-quality ported games. Ported games expand a game audience significantly, which can be particularly powerful for formerly single-platform releases such as PlayStation’s God of War or Xbox’s upcoming Sea of Thieves PlayStation 5 release. Furthermore, this forms additional revenue streams for developers and publishers. Ported games like Grand Theft Audio: Vice City, which is available on over half a dozen platforms, provide numerous revenue streams for its developer, Rockstar.

Importantly, game porting can also extend a game’s natural shelf life and future-proof it to remain accessible for years to come. Stardew Valley, for instance, which many players cite as one of the greatest games of all time, enjoys enduring success despite being released eight years ago partly thanks to its wide availability on consoles, PCs, and a wide range of mobile devices. Furthermore, ports of classic games can find new life on new platforms, such as the first Red Dead Redemption game’s recent release on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4.

For high-quality game porting services, look no further than Magic Media. We offer an extensive range of services for the gaming, entertainment, and tech industries including full-cycle game development, co-development, and game trailer production, in addition to game porting and dozens of other services. Contact Magic Media, and let’s create magic!

Android game development and iOS game development are not just cornerstones of the mobile game development industry but significant parts of game development as a whole. Games for both mobile operating systems occupy a large portion of the gaming space, and despite their outward similarities, there are significant differences between Android game development and iOS game development.

Though both are mobile platform operating systems, the tools, rules, regulations, and processes for developing games for either platform have some stark differences while also possessing many similarities.

Differences in Development

Android game development primarily uses Java or Kotlin programming language, whereas in iOS game development, developers can expect to use Swift or Objective-C. The difference in language is crucial as they’re fundamentally different languages and demand expertize from respective developers. Though an experienced developer will understand the fundamentals, writing code for a mobile game development project as cleanly as possible requires in-depth knowledge of the languages mentioned.

A critical consideration for Android game development projects is the wide variety of screen sizes that Android devices come in. Due to the sheer variety, this can make testing and optimization more challenging and time-consuming. This is less of a concern with iOS game development, where Apple devices come in far fewer forms and screen sizes.

It’s also important to note that both Android game development and iOS game development projects are subject to different rules and guidelines on their respective app marketplaces. Apple’s App Store tends to be more exact in its rules and regulations for app submissions, whereas the Google Play Store is considered by many to be more lenient. Understanding the approval process and rules is equally important outside the expertize required for developing the actual game.

Similarities in Android and iOS Game Development

Despite some notable differences in iOS and Android game development, there are numerous similarities when it comes to any mobile game development project. Both Android and iOS game development projects are widely supported by many popular game engines, most notably Unreal Engine and Unity. This is helpful for developers working on Android and iOS cross-platform development mobile game development projects who can work from a single codebase that can be deployed on both platforms.

Another advantageous similarity is that both Android and iOS games require touch-based interactions. Though developers working on Android game development projects need to be more aware of screen sizes for testing and optimization purposes, the method of interaction for players remains the same. However, refinements would be needed to support screen sizes for various Android and Apple devices, this means that a single design is needed for both iOS and Android game development projects, which can be adapted depending on device needs.

Benefits of Developing for Both Operating Systems

The challenge of developing for both Android and iOS systems is arguably outweighed by the potential benefits. Android and iOS, by far, have the largest shares in the mobile gaming market, making both platforms the most sensible targets for mobile game development projects. Releasing a mobile for both iOS and Android isn’t a guarantee of success, but it can greatly increase the chances of it because of the significance of their combined mobile market share.

Furthermore, releasing a mobile game on iOS and Android provides more revenue streams and more opportunities for financial success. Like console and PC titles, mobile gamers are more than willing to pay for high-quality gaming experiences. Even for free games, cross-releasing mobile titles on both Android and iOS opens up opportunities for success through microtransactions and consistent live operation efforts.

Magic Media provides extensive expert services for projects in the gaming, entertainment, and tech industries. Our services include full-cycle game development for all platforms, real-time VFX, game trailer production, and dozens more. Get in contact today, and let’s create magic!

At Magic Media, we prioritize delivering industry-leading quality services to our clients and that is how we stand out from the competition. With a global team composed of diverse backgrounds, cultures, and skill sets, we offer a wide range of services, from full-cycle game development to specific art production, game VFX, and video production. But how do we achieve this level of quality? What is it really like working with Magic Media?

Let’s dive into the internal processes of Magic Media’s workflow with our clients. Spoiler alert: there are no hidden technologies or secret formulas! Instead, we rely on a passionate and talented team who work collectively to deliver the results you desire. Let’s have a closer look.

Magic Media’s Outsourcing Process

When you choose to work with Magic Media, you can expect a high level of commitment, investment, and passion from our team. Our experts seamlessly integrate into your game development process, immersing themselves in your team and workflow.

To ensure this seamless integration, we have established our own processes that align with how we work. Our game development process is marked by constant communication, agile approaches, and rigorous quality assurance.

Project Initiation for the Game Development Process

Before we begin creating, coding, or utilizing our expertize, the first step in the game development process is project initiation. This is where our team leaders and yours come together to understand your requirements, goals, and desired outcomes. Together, we establish a project plan and communication pipeline to ensure an effective and streamlined operation.

Planning and Scope Definition

During this early stage, we also define the planning and project scope. If we are assisting as co-developers, it is crucial for us to have a clear understanding of the project’s direction. We discuss deliverables, timelines, and budgets. Together, we create a detailed project plan, identifying necessary resources, team members, and setting milestones.

Agile Development Approach

When it comes to the actual development work, we adopt an agile development approach. This approach is highly effective for game development, given its iterative and incremental nature. It also aligns well with our flexible, adaptive, and continuously improving work style.

Game Development Built on Communication and Client Collaboration 

While delivering high-quality services is important, ensuring that our work aligns with your vision is equally crucial. From the beginning of the project, we provide a single point of contact to ensure your voice is heard, and requests are efficiently communicated. You have access to our entire team, and we maintain regular check-ins through meetings, emails, and other project management tools.

We offer micro and macro check-ins at any point to track project progress, address challenges, and ensure we meet your expectations. Through these regular check-ins throughout the project lifecycle, you will have a clear understanding of our progress and how we align with your expectations. This direct line of communication allows us to address any concerns or queries promptly.

The Game Development Process and Quality Assurance

Quality assurance is a constant aspect of all our video game outsourcing services. Whether we are delivering art, development, or game trailers, our team has internal processes in place to ensure the promised quality is achieved.

Before any work reaches your screen, we conduct comprehensive testing, bug fixing, and iterative improvements to meet our high standards and yours. We strive to deliver our work to you with the utmost quality, meeting established milestones.

Market Research

We are committed to continuously improving the quality and efficiency of our work. Regularly assessing the game development process is crucial to stay ahead of modern trends, tools, and methodologies.

Our teams actively research market trends, investigate target audience preferences, explore new technologies, and keep an eye on our competitors. This research ensures we stay current with player interests and maintain efficient game development workflows.

With these insights, we implement new practices. Our talented game development team, consisting of artists, animators, developers, designers, and more, constantly test new technologies and methodologies. Alongside user feedback, our experts are always prepared to deliver engaging and marketable games.

Team Composition

At Magic Media, we tailor each team to suit your project’s specific needs. We don’t just provide a concept artist; we provide an artist who is genuinely interested and passionate about your game’s genre or style. Our diverse and global team ensures that we always have the right person for your project.

We don’t just want to deliver experts who can create industry-leading results. We want to provide you with an outsourcing or co-development team that is genuinely interested and enthusiastic about being a part of your work.

If you are interested in utilizing our expertize in full-cycle development, co-development, game porting, art production, game VFX, or any of our comprehensive services, please get in touch with us today. We are always ready to create magic together!

Mobile game development is one of the cornerstone service offerings of the Magic Media group. Though PC and console games have a significant share of the gaming market, mobile gaming is massively successful and continues to grow in popularity year after year. As such, Magic Media is proud to offer mobile game development services for all our clients regardless of project scope and genre.

No two mobile game development projects are the same, but through our extensive experience, Magic Media has developed a broad approach to these projects that can be modified as needed depending on our client’s project requirements. Bolstered by the expertize of the Magic Media Mobile Studio, we’re ready and willing to take on mobile game development projects of all shapes and sizes.

Magic Media is not just a game art development company; we are a team of gaming enthusiasts who breathe, eat, and sleep gaming. Our driving force is the understanding of the vital role that visuals play in creating addictive and engaging games. We specialize in creating stunning mobile game art, including animations, characters, props, environments, and more, which are the soul of great games.

Preparing for Mobile Game Development Projects

The first step for Magic Media on the mobile game development journey is to gather as much information about the project as possible. We need to clearly define critical aspects of the game, such as its genre, target platforms, target audience, monetization strategy, and much more. Additionally, the success of mobile games often depends on user retention. We consider this as part of work on mobile game development projects and craft strategies related to marketing and gameplay incentives to keep players engaged.

Understanding target platforms, in particular, is crucial information we need to understand from the beginning of a project. Despite the similarities between iOS and Android games, each operating system has different requirements and considerations we know intimately well. For iOS mobile game development, Apple requires using tools like Xcode and TestFlight. Android tends to be more lenient with its requirements, and development is compatible with Windows and Linux PCs, but this also necessitates critical decision-making on our part to decide on the best tools possible to deliver Android games.

Mobile Game Development Testing and Platform Requirements

Compared to their console and PC game counterparts, mobile games require particular attention due to their relative lack of power compared to other platforms and the requirement for rapid testing across a wide range of mobile devices.

Mobile games need to be playable on multiple devices, both new and old, so they require rigorous fast-paced testing to ensure smooth performance across the board. Magic Media has a two-pronged approach to testing mobile games, leveraging the talent of our technical artists and quality assurance testers. Our technical artists work on assets to compress textures and use LOD (Level of Detail) models to ensure smooth performance without compromising on visual fidelity. They play a crucial role in adhering to performance constraints.

Our QA team is an essential part of the mobile game development process. They identify code inefficiencies and bugs and regularly test features and performance across a range of devices of varying power and screen sizes. This compatibility testing consists of testing across mid-range and high-end mobile devices to ensure smooth performance. Extensive user experience testing is undertaken to identify any issues related to lag, user inputs, gameplay fluidity, and anything else that could negatively impact the player’s experience.

Performance profiling is a crucial part of the mobile game development process. Our QA team works diligently to monitor performance and identify any possible bottlenecks in GPU, CPU, or memory usage. Once these issues have been identified, our quality assurance department sends detailed reports to the development team so they can be resolved.

Mobile Game Considerations

Working within the realm of mobile game development necessitates certain requirements regardless of the game’s genre. User-friendly UI is critical to a trouble-free user experience. Considering the limited screen space afforded by mobile device screens, especially compared with TV screens and computer monitors, we believe making the most of the space available is paramount in the mobile game development process. Most mobile games need to rely on their touchscreens for players to interact with their game, so they must be well laid out and easy to understand.

Online connectivity is a primary concern for some mobile games. Slot machine games, for instance, require seamless online functionality to provide stable real-time interactions in multiplayer games. In our experience, even the most seemingly simple mobile games, such as multiplayer word games, require painstaking diligence to provide stable connectivity. Depending on the game’s genre, further considerations are related to gameplay logic, mathematical equations, and real-time data synchronization.

Magic Media is a veteran services provider for all things gaming, entertainment, and tech. We offer dozens of services across a wide range of disciplines including full-cycle game development, real-time VFX, game trailer production, and much more for our valued clients. Get in contact with Magic Media today, and let’s create magic! 

AI game development is an umbrella term to refer to utilizing AI or machine learning tools to assist and improve the game development pipeline. The Magic Media team is always pushing the boundaries of technology and working to stay ahead of trends and so we’ve been taking our time investigating and working with the existing tools to see how the world looks with AI in game development.

But how are these tools used? What can they offer game developers? And a question we’re hearing a lot is, will AI replace game developers? Let’s tackle these questions and dispel some myths about these emerging technologies.

What are the Uses of AI in Game Development?

Currently, the potential of AI for game developers is still be explored. There have already been several strong applications and uses for these tools.

Living NPCs

AI text generation can allow NPCs or Non-Player Characters to respond fluidly to players inquiries and questions. In an open world game like Skyrim, a closed set of information could be fed to groups of NPCs to allow a seamless gathering of information for players. Imagine quests, rumours, and world knowledge being communicated to players in-game through the characters that populate it. 

Assisting procedural content generation

Procedural generation of levels, quests, and events aren’t new to game development. With the inclusion of AI in game development however, we see an explosion of potential. Procedural generation has its issues where the math and algorithm produces nonsensical or irregular patterns that don’t fit. With the refinement of AI game development, we could see a huge jump forward in procedurally generated content.

Building Basic Art and Assets

AI art is a complicated topic. However, our artists have found AI art to be efficient as a reference, inspiration, or jumping off point for their own work. As part of the game development pipeline, utilizing AI in game development means efficiency and a quick source of inspiration.

Narrative Assistance and Writer’s Block

In the same way, AI intruding on the world of creative and functional writing is a complicated topic. But for those who view it simply as a tool and assistant for existing writers, we’ve discovered a fantastic way to break through creative blocks and assist with efficient narrative design.

Assisting on QA

Game development will always need comprehensive, end-to-end quality assurance. AI game development will be no different, no matter how much or how little the machine learning tools are used. For these laborious and often never-ending tasks, the QA team can be supported very nicely by these AI tools.

Will AI Game Development Replace Game Developers?

As far as we can see, and as we continue to see it develop, no. It’s an impressive set of tools with a wide set of uses and implementations. But it’s quite rudimentary without the mind and skill to use it effectively.

AI Game development is still game developer led. Our game developers, game artists, programmers, QA engineers, and more are the ones leading these efforts. We see AI in game development being used to its full potential by those who know how to create games in the first place.

In the hands of a seasoned game developer, artist, and creator, AI game development tools allow for inspiration, efficient ideation, and push the boundaries of existing workflows and certain game mechanics. Even where it works very efficiently, like in QA, we’ll always need the human element. For Magic Media, we’re of the opinion that AI in game development is another tool on our belt. One to be used as needed, pressed to see what it can do, and utilized effectively rather than as a catch all magic solution.

From full-cycle game development and co-development, to VFX, game art, video production, and more, we offer a one-stop studio of services for your needs. We’re always exploring new tools and technologies like AI game development, so get in touch today and let’s create magic.