How to Make a Video Game: A Step-by-Step

how to make a video game

Video games are an excellent medium for impactful storytelling. Through an interactive world, the audience is able to engage with a narrative that is personal and powerful. Because of these intricate sagas, and the abilities need to make them realities, a lot of work goes into creating them. In today’s blog, we’ll go through the steps of how to make a video game including generating the content, picking the genre, and coding. 

Different Types

Video games aren’t a one-size-fits all kind of thing. Instead, many choices need to be made before a game is even coded!

Platform

Video games require specific computer hardware in order to operate. Programming games to certain platforms allow them to have a competitive edge in the video game market. 

Genre

When learning how to make a video game, genre plays a key role in determining the game mechanics and storytelling. In fact, choosing the genre is often the first step. 

How to Make a Video Game

Follow these steps for an insight on how to make a video game. 

  1. Pick a Concept. This includes deciding the genre and the main feature or mechanics of the game. 
  2. Create a Game Design Document. This is a brief for the entire project and outlines details such as world building, story, and marketing strategy. Deciding what platform and programming language to use is also a key part of this step. As well as deciding the size of the development team and desired resources. 
  3. Get building. Using your document as a guide, you can begin to develop the framework of your game. Time to start scripting code!
  4. Test your prototypes. Creating and trying-out different aspects of the game allows you to find discrepancies and other early game issues.
  5. Implement your findings. Use bug reports and user-feedback to improve your game. 
  6. Marketing! Time to solidify the main draw of your game — the most important thing is to get it into as many people’s screens as possible. 

About the Author

Lydia B.

Lydia B.

Lydia B. is a Marketing Coordinator and Music Club Coach for Gooroo, a tutoring membership that matches students to tutors perfect for them based on their unique learning needs. Gooroo offers Math, English, SAT, Coding, Spanish tutoring, and more.