Things To Consider When Outsourcing Game Design & Development

In 2021, game development is a highly attractive and lucrative sphere and many companies want to start developing their business there. However, while being a promising source of profit it’s an intensely competitive environment. To have success in the gaming market, businesses need to have a stable and highly professional team of specialists who keep up with the latest game development trends.

One of the viable solutions to get an effective game development team is to refer to an IT outsourcing company. They have seasoned game developers on board and have expertise in the latest GameDev technologies to build robust and modern games.

In this article, we explain which things you need to consider when outsourcing game design and development and how to find the best outsourcing GameDev company.

An Introduction to the Gaming Market

Today’s entertainment industry is comprised largely of a gaming sector that is rapidly expanding. According to the Redeye survey, there are more than 2.7 billion players, and the gaming market is expected to grow with a CAGR of 8% by 2023, exceeding $200 billion by the same year.

Meanwhile, the largest and the fastest-growing segment in the gaming sector accounts for the development of mobile games. Statista says that in 2020 the mobile game revenue in the US peaked at $10.73 billion due to tech advances, digital innovation, and coronavirus pandemics with the highest number of mobile video game players that have never been witnessed before.

The gaming market offers the highest return on investment opportunities in 2021 than ever. However, many businesses are reluctant to enter this market without a solid technological and professional developer background. This happens due to many factors, including high competition in the market, rapidly emerging and evolving technologies, quickly changing gaming trends, and others. As a result, these businesses turn to external game development experts to build their games.

Hiring outsourced game development teams is a viable solution for many reasons. The most important of them are:

• a team of outsourced professional game developers possesses relevant skills and extensive expertise for building mobile, desktop, console, and many others;
• outsourced teams have a broad experience of implementing the latest technologies to build fascinating games such as VR and AR technologies, AI bots, and others;
• to stay competitive in the market outsourced game development teams always keep up with the latest game development trends and know how to make a game engaging to a specific audience;
• when building games with outsourced teams, businesses save up on searching, hiring, and onboarding IT experts. Moreover, businesses can scale their development teams with the project necessities adding or removing certain IT workers from their projects;
• business can hire a whole team of dedicated specialists who will develop, animate, illustrate, add special effects, and perform other activities without the necessity of searching for narrow specialists elsewhere.

As a result, a business gets a team of highly skilled and flexible game development experts for a reasonable price who can build a top-notch digital game in the short term.

What Questions to Ask When Choosing a GameDev Company?

If you’re considering an option to turn to a GameDev company to build your digital game, you need to choose it carefully. A well-chosen IT company ensures the success of your game and that it’ll be developed within the budget and timelines.

Here is a set of questions that will help you to select the right GameDev company for your project.

Is the Company Active In the Market?

Those IT companies that are active in the market have extensive expertise and a large audience. These factors are hard to check with Google as it offers its users only the best SEO matches rather than the best IT companies.

Therefore, if you want to find a profound overview of IT companies, you need to refer to some specialized data-driven platforms like Clutch, GoodFirms, and others. These platforms include accurate information on IT companies, ranging them by rating, country, number of employees, and others and providing feedback from real customers. They are also responsible for the data they present about the IT companies and carefully monitor each review posted, making sure that they are authentic and impartial.

How Many Years Has the Company Been Active In the Market?

As a rule, the longer a company is in the market the higher the quality of its services. Nevertheless, those IT companies that have been stable in the market for longer obtain extensive experience and know how to serve their customers better. They can quickly understand the development processes required in each project case and can suggest the best technologies and strategies to faster achieve a project’s success.

One more point in favor of the experienced companies is that they can quickly find the needed specialists for a project. These companies can afford to have more than one team of IT experts and engage them as they are needed along with a project.

What Are the Company’s Engagement Models?

Most IT companies offer their customers various engagement models. It means that the customers can choose the best option to build their games. The most common engaging models include:

• fixed price model – when a team works within the approved budget with stable and clear project requirements, goals, and deadlines;
• time and material model – involves greater flexibility in a project with often changing requirements. This model suits best those companies who want to quickly release a minimum viable product (MVP) of their game and improve it with each development iteration;
• dedicated team – is the most flexible solution when a business gets a team of carefully selected developers deeply involved in the game development project. With a dedicated team IT clients can monitor the project development and propose its improvements or change something in it while the inner workings will be done by the team.

How Does the Company Organize the Working Process?

The inner workflows should be well-tuned and organized in the company. It means that managers, developers, QA, designers, and other team members should know exactly their responsibilities, tasks, and deadlines.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to understand how the workflow is organized in a certain company. For this, you could ask some questions during face-to-face interviews to get to know the company better. The questions to ask can be the following:

• How do you organize communication between a customer and your company?
• Can I change, replace, add, or remove team members during the project?
• How often do you organize feedback sessions or approval sessions?
• Which project management tools does the company use?
• Can I contact the team apart from the scheduled calls if necessary?

What Are the Specifics of the Company’s Location?

When outsourcing mobile game development or any other game development activities, businesses search for the best value for money compromise. However, it’s not the only factor that you need to consider when choosing your outsourcing partner. Here is what you need to check:

1. make sure that the company can provide a stable internet connection;
2. find out about the national holidays and weekends and if the company works during these days;
3. clarify if the company agrees to do overtime when the deadlines are tight.

Besides that, communication is essential. You need to make sure that your cooperation with your GameDev partners is comfortable. For this, you could have an online meeting with a whole team to get acquainted with the specialists you’re going to work with.

How to Understand That the Company Is Reliable?

An IT company’s reliability is one of the most important qualities that ensure stressless project development and its successful outcomes. To make sure that you deal with a reliable GameDev partner, you need to perform a small research on the company and take the following steps.

Evaluate the Company’s Portfolio

Each IT company has a number of development cases it’s proud of. You can find these cases on the company’s website and check its specifics, technology, and the tech stack implemented to build the solution.

Ask for References and Check the Previous Reviews

When establishing your first contact with the potential GameDev partners, ask them for references from the previous clients. The experienced clients can reveal some working specifics with the company and can explain how to establish effective cooperation with the development team.

Check What Specialists the Company Has

If you can’t visit a company’s location, there is always a possibility to conduct online interviews with a development team. Find out which specialists the company can offer to develop an effective game and which technologies they can utilize to enhance the development process and the product.

Conclusion

Game development is a promising and fast-developing sector of the entertainment industry. Businesses can quickly gain substantial revenues with a successfully developed and launched product. However, it also implies high competition and substantial investments. To cut down the expenses and develop high-quality and engaging games, businesses opt for outsourced game development.

Hiring outsourced GameDev teams to offer a vast number of advantages, including reduced prices, flexible and scalable development teams, implementation of cutting-edge technologies, and use of relevant expertise. As a result, businesses obtain a game product of high quality and potential for a reasonable cost.