Complete Guide to Mobile Game Development (Updated 2020)

Mobile gaming has been a potential market for leading companies in the world. From Angry Birds to Clash of Clans, there are so many stories in game development. The mobile game development industry has been using advanced technologies to indulge rich user experience with interactive user interfaces because of mobile devices’ increased utilization for playing games.

In another record of data, users who used to spend 152 minutes on their mobile phones in 2014 were increasingly using it 215 minutes a day in 2018. And, this too is expected to increase to 234 minutes by 2021. These are the times when people of different age groups use smart devices like smartphones or tablets. The mobility industry has transformed the ways games were presented to the users before.

Leading marketing company Mediakix reports that about 62% of users installed a game application within the first week of purchasing their brand new smartphones.

A large number of users do not purchase a complete game set up to play their favorite games and play them on their smartphones, laptops, or tablets.

Table of Contents

What Do You Need For Mobile Game Development?

When we plan to develop a mobile game application, code is not the only thing you need to mull on. There are many other significant concerns for any mobile game development company to develop a fully-fledged mobile game.

Impressive Story

The story refers to the media a game development company used to give an interactive overview of the game to let the users know about features and advantages they can leverage with the application. If you know how to put an impressive story at work, then you almost know how to create a mobile game app.

Firm Game Plan

A game development company can document and implement a strategic game idea, so any deviation in the future can not affect it adversely.

Interactive GamePlay

It is significant to have sustainable GamePlay to indulge in a better game development strategy, which defines the actions performed by any particular character.

Advanced Development Tools

Choosing an advanced game development tool can help a good development company efficiently to develop robust game apps.

Capability to Collaborate with External Resources

To gain positive business outcomes from a game application, a company can collaborate with external partners like an app store.

What Are The Different Types Of Mobile Games?

With transforming technology, the range of mobile game applications has widened than before in terms of user experience, usability, and accessibility. Mobile game developers make sure that a single game can have features and properties of other types of games too.

Casual Single-Player Games

Alto’s Adventure, Fortnite, Clash of Clans, etc.

Casual Multiplayer Games

PUBG, Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, etc.

Location-based mobile games

Geocaching, BotFighter, Ingress, etc.

Augmented reality games

Pokemon GO, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, Jurassic World Alive, etc.

Multipurpose games

Miitomo

What Are The Platforms Used for Mobile Game Development?

Mobile game developers are using different types of tools and platforms to develop mobile games. Although all of the mobile game development platforms comprise some unique features, there are a few most used mobile game development or Android studio game development platforms as listed below;

Unity,
Godot,
Amazon Lumberyard,
BuildBox,
Unreal Engine,
CryEngine,
SpriteKit,
GameMaker Studio, etc.

What Makes a Mobile Game Successful?

The world of mobile gaming has gained immense popularity in recent years. With transformative resources adopted by mobile game development companies, technology has played significant roles in delivering outstanding user experience. Mobile games are accessible to everyone with no cost payable. Mobile game companies and game designers are using highly interactive designs that make mobile gaming more lively and interactive. These are the things that make mobile gaming a popular technological asset of this decade.

Total Spending on Digital Products in Canada

Source: The University of British Columbia

Developers of a successful mobile game always know who their audience is and how to develop a successful game app. They synchronize the design and development of the game to create a perfect combination for any world-class level game that would be played by people sitting in different parts of the world.

It cannot be something that people of a community or area do not find interesting. An ideal game always interacts with its users with no complexities or time-taking installations or updates.

Process of Turning Your Mobile Game Development Idea Into Reality

With immense market potential, the mobile gaming industry inspires numerous business leaders to take the initiative to develop more engaging and transformative games. The mobile game application development community should understand what modern-age gamers seek in this age to conform their creations to modern age gamers’ needs and interests.

Organizations in mobile game development are utilizing engaging graphics, secure & structured mechanics, increased number of utilities and have made things feel more realistic. The best mobile game developers consider social gaming in mobile game development a significant factor.

In modern-age games, social gaming has provided gamers with a facility to share their scores to a large community comprising their friends, family members, and other connections.

1. Do Your ‘Research’ for Mobile Game Development

Before going into game development or designing, it is considered a good practice to begin with thorough research of the game development. Research may include a prototype or presentation emphasizing the features of the product you are going to transform into reality.

Building a viable game prototype first rather than diving directly into the development of a full-fledged business idea is considered the best practice in the process of mobile game development.

In the initial game development steps, you can begin by analyzing your competitors’ charts and trends. You can know about the behavior of your target audience to develop games of their interests. A research plan can help you to understand the needs and scope of the game development market.

The fundamental idea of game-oriented research conceptualizes knowing all specific requirements of different methods that participate in mobile game development. Your research would define the need for creating blocks.

Some of the elements of research comprise studying game development components like user studies, community dynamics, design analysis, tool support, marketing, and effective business models.

2. ‘Tell Your Story’ for an Engaging Mobile Game Development

Game stories play a particular role in the field of mobile gaming. To make your users or gamers know about the purpose and features, you can tell a game story comprising a thorough explanation of characters, stages, and rewards.

The utilization of ideation can play a significant role in mobile game apps development and engaging game stories based on a unique idea. You can draw the story of your game in a way that would appeal to your target audience to help you gain benefits.

The story of your game should dictate things like:

Characters in your game like hero & villains
An engaging elaboration of their powers
How do they win & lose?
Additional rewards and possible updates

It is not mandatory to create stories for games such as a puzzle game where you do not need to create unnecessary story elements. Those elements themselves should tell the story of your game.

3. ‘Create a Plan’ for Prioritizing Tasks in Mobile Game Development Process

For any game development project, it is significant to create and indulge in a careful game plan. The prime reason for this approach is to avoid deviating to new ideas from indulging in a thoroughly contemplated plan during the Android game development process. An apt game development plan helps game developers to convey and implement your ideas to the team members more effectively.

A typical game plan may include the below-mentioned elements in particular:

The technical architecture of the game & its development
Art or Graphics
Design or Gameplay
Marketing

Moreover, it is not feasible to emphasize any particular component of the above specifically. Considering an agile process for game development, you can work with all the plan components collaboratively. Any transformation introduced in one element of the game plan can probably amend other game plan components too.

4. Know the ‘Total Cost’ for Making Viable Mobile Game Development Budget

To determine an estimated mobile game development cost and making it into a market-ready product, a game development company considers several factors that may affect the total development cost of a mobile game.

Since the market for game development has lots of opportunities for earning a high return on investment (ROI), it becomes more significant to analyze the factors to estimate the cost for game development.

Below are some of the most significant factors besides of development contributing to determine the total development cost for a mobile game;

Mobile OS, the Game Will Run On

There are differences in the cost of payment integration and administration systems for different operating systems. iOS-based games are typically costlier for integrating the afore-mentioned game components for mobile gaming app development.

Pre-development Expenses

Before you get into your game’s development process, you need to have a game design or gameplay that determines the characters and their actions. Alongside this, you may also need an effective game plan, as mentioned in the earlier sections of this blog. To convey it to your members, you need to document it with the help of an expert.

Post-development Expenses

There is still a significant part of the expenses spent on processes like testing and marketing after game development.

5. Start ‘Developing’ the Game Using the Best-Suited Mobile Game Programming

Development is the most significant part we are discussing in this blog. The process of mobile game development can transform a game design and user-experience with tweaks of code. The first thing rising in a developer’s mind is the environment or platform that the game will run to develop a mobile game.

Choosing among multiple platforms or making cross-platform, is the particular thing a developer is required to contemplate. It can directly affect the number of revenues a game can generate in the future. So it is recommended to choose an OS that you consider the most profitable for your business and most used by the gamers.

6. Creating an ‘Interactive design’ for Profitable Mobile Game Development

The significance of design in mobile games is far more than in mobile apps. The gamers would prefer to use a game application not because it would provide them with some sort of product or services or information that may create impacts on their lives directly but for entertainment and win rewards after qualifying different stages.

It is highly significant to empower the interface with an interactive design to keep the game users engaged in a game app.

7. Plan the ‘Monetization Strategy’ for Your Game

Every game development company probably wants to earn high ROIs from the games they develop. An organization can utilize In-app purchases (IAP), ads, or both ways to monetize their games. Monetization strategy is probably decided based on the genre of the games.

The best time to plan the monetization strategy of your games is in the earliest phases of developing a mobile game. It will avoid any setbacks before launching the game and help you grow revenues for your business right from day one. Collaborating with an ad network can ensure faster growth of your game.

8. Increase ‘User Engagement’ for Successful Mobile Game Development Process

User engagement is a prime way to convert non-paid mobile gamers into paid customers. Organizations can utilize different methods like coordinating emails, push and in-app notifications with interactive messages featuring exciting benefits for game users.

It encourages them to perform actions that may help you to gain more user engagement on your games. Marketing is a critical task when it comes to growing your player base.

Many game app development companies collaborate with a mobile game publisher to gain more user engagement.

Online Games Market in the United States from 2010 to 2020

Source

9. Collaborate with a Game App Development Company

Pitching your game to a successful mobile game publisher can help promote your game in many relevant forums and app stores where you can get an unparalleled reach to many users visiting their platforms. These game publishers provide excellent monetization and marketing benefits to a game developer to gain high ROIs.

Conclusion

Emphasizing all significant components of mobile game development, we tried to explain the mobile game development guide to our readers about how they can indulge the benefits of a strategic mobile game app development to grow their businesses. To provide users with rich user experience, game developers can make a mobile game with regular updates, and new features.

Transforming a game idea into reality is never an easy thing to do. To utilize the next-level game development for businesses, organizations can consult a mobile game development company that knows how to develop a mobile game and grow themselves like never before.