Game development outsourcing basically means delegating your work to external studios, artists, and developers. Developing a killer video game can take several years involving more than just game concept development. To put in a nutshell it comprises of scripting, programming, animation, character design, level creation and testing. Game development outsourcing lets you effortlessly cut down the costs and time needed in developing the game.
Many game development firms in the industry initially took to outsourcing as a short-term cost-saving measure only to adopt it as an essential business strategy for their firm later. Top game development companies including Blitz Games and Ubisoft Reflections reportedly go for outsourcing various aspects and elements of their gaming projects.
An assortment of development jobs right from 2D or 3D animation, motion graphics, visual effects to character design are increasingly being outsourced. Gamers are undeniably very fussy about the look and feel of their game and virtual world in general. Success of the game largely depends on the appeal of the gaming art, visuals and sound effects.
Game development is without a doubt a task for specialists in technology as well as creative minds. There is no shortage of choice in technologies and the professionals choose the best available resources to create top-of-the-class online and off-line games. A fairly good awareness about the capabilities and limitations of technologies applied is essential to result-driven game development outsourcing.
Outsourcing game art to a game development company will ensure that you have highly qualified experts on board the project to deliver a brilliant product. When you outsource, you would also save your time, efforts and money as well. Outsourcing is no longer an odd practice in the video game industry.
Despite growing popularity of game development outsourcing within the gaming industry a large number of companies are still doubtful when it comes to outsourcing for their video game production. The downsides of outsourcing are a little more apparent and immediate as in low-quality art assets. So should all game development companies adopt the practice of Outsourcing?
Let’s explore the benefits of outsourcing in the world of video games, and explain why the practice is necessary for the modern-day gaming industry.
1. Saves Time
We all have heard of the adage that ‘Time is money’. Time is saved in a big way by outsourcing your work to game development company. Irrespective of the size of your studio you will access a team of artists and developers quicker than recruiting the in-house game development staff. This will give your company a lead over other competitors in the industry. The additional time can be gainfully utilised to create more content or refine the existing one for a better gaming experience.
Consider this, if you go for recruiting, screening, interviewing, on boarding, training, and getting your employees gear up for the project, then the time spent on these activities is huge. This might lead to production delay, increase costs and also stress out the support functions inside studios.
2. Offers Flexibility
Game development outsourcing allows game companies to add or remove resources temporarily as per the requirement of the development project. The firm can recruit more developers when needed and release them in case the project or that segment of development is completed without any hard feelings and hassles.
The demand for game developers is huge in present scenario and this can be easily fulfilled by employing the services of an external agency. Companies will be free of the worry to replace or find more suitable developers for the project as this job will be managed by the outsourcing service provider.
Additionally, external development will remove the worry of internal art managers of video game companies to keep the artists and developers motivated if they don’t like the project given to them. This concern too is transferred to the external agency.
As a result the in-house team of video game companies can now focus and work more efficiently and effectively on important and interesting tasks of the game development project. The more mundane and repetitive tasks can be offloaded to external team of game development company.
3. Saves Money
In today’s tech-savvy world, game development outsourcing has become a promising trend worldwide. Game development outsourcing lets you explore the creative talent pool across the world. If you have decided to outsource your game development project or a part of it then you can save a lot of money as you will not be required to staff internally for the development project.
4. Value
Game development outsourcing is a good way of getting the more time-consuming repetitive chores get done quickly by the external teams. It is possible by assigning temporarily several artists and developers to the same task simultaneously.
As a result, more assets can be produced in a shorter duration of time. These assets are created in parallel which shortens the game development cycle. The total time spent of each staff is comparatively less, making it easier for them to meet deadlines and milestones of the developing process.
In the absence of outsourcing, this would be rather difficult to achieve in-house. The work then would have to be split up and redistributed among several artists. This would have taken longer time and efficiency of the whole studio would have been a casualty.
5. Attrition effect is reduced
Outsourcing your development work also helps to preserve teams’ social dynamics. Now, managers have an optimum sized staff with decreased chances of conflicts and higher productivity. Additionally, game development outsourcing also enables production to continue while in-house staff is away on holidays and vacations, even during weekends if necessary.
A high level of employee attrition point to inconsistency, uncertainty, and even distress among team members. The optimal use of outsourcing would let a company to maintain continuity and stability an essential element in team management.
6. Professional Expertise
Game development outsourcing helps your company reach a global talent pool of artists and developers at competitive prices. It assures of quality in game development by deploying the best resources.
Closing Thoughts
Therefore, a company engaged in multiple activities then outsourcing their game development projects fully or partially makes a lot of sense. Initially, the practice may seem a bit risky but, in fact, the benefits of outsourcing in the gaming industry far outweigh the perceived risks.
Games would certainly be much shorter, have less diversity or may have low quality graphics if the development work is not subcontracted externally. They might turn out to be much more expensive because of the efforts the studios and companies will have to put out to build it.
Consequently, fewer games would be made and many developers would run into even more trouble remaining in business. All this makes sense as to why the gaming companies should adopt outsourcing as one of their most important business strategies as soon as possible.
Great read, it is true that game development outsourcing has come to terms with outsourcing as a business strategy for profitability and survival.