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Game Development: Choices and Challenges in Monetization

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Mariano Smith
Game Development: Choices and Challenges in Monetization

Game development and design have become one of the most-sought fields in the past few years, as every single sector out there is finding ways to integrate the skill sets that they offer into their respective fields.

Let’s be honest here: You spend at least a few thousand dollars per term learning the ropes as part of a bachelor’s course, spend another three to four grand for your rig, and even spend a tiny fortune to keep up with the latest developments and certifications in your field.

To be fair, your standard and quality of life as a game developer will become way better after all of those sacrifices and hard work: The median salary of a game developer in the US is at $44,000 in a single month, before taxes, and we are just talking about entry-level positions here without being in a company that cranks out triple-A titles out there.

For those of you who are not in the US, you may be getting a bit less, but your way of life would still be way better than your counterparts who may be working in other fields.

Even if one restricts the fields and job offerings of a game developer to the traditional arena, one can still find a metric ton of descriptions and tasks to choose from: You can be a game writer, storyline developer, game artist, and content designer, among all the other things that you can do as a game developer.

Generally speaking, to become an effective game developer on any team worldwide (regardless of cultural and social background), while you have to equip yourself with a solid and extensive background in basic elements of game design and game programming, you also have to be an excellent storyteller and an adept user of art skills that will help you in the ideation, conceptualization, distribution, and monetization.

Now that you have entered the world of game development, you go back to one question: How do you earn money for your company (and yourself?)

First, you can sell the physical or digital versions of your game, either through exclusive deals, special distribution techniques, or a combination of both. If used correctly, the developer can reach the target audience directly and sell one’s game in a quick and precise manner. As a matter of fact, many games still garner huge profits from this model, owing to the presence of platforms such as Steam and the PlayStation store.

Second, you can display advertising, either via banner or video pre-roll. One of the games that utilize the feature effectively is War Robots by Pixonic: By giving much-needed resources to those who watch the ads, the company is able to ensure maximum player retention while at the same time optimizing the advertiser’s reach and the company’s profits. Yes, if you have the correct audience, you can simply make your company survive by making your players watch ads and play the game all at once!

Third, in-game purchases (hard and soft currency, premium consumables, limited-edition equipment, and cosmetics – we all know them under the term “skins”) and add-ons (better known as “downloadable content” or DLCs in common parlance) allow the game developer not just to inject new content into the game and balance it (this is a concern in competitive gaming titles), but also to earn a ton of profit by making players pay for it (thus the creation of terms such as “free-to-play” and “pay-to-win”).

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), Fortnite, Valorant, League of Legends (LoL), and Dota 2 are some of the games that focus on cosmetics as a major profit stream, while Fallout New Vegas, Bloodborne, and Destiny are prime examples of the DLC model.

Fourth, recommendation engines, subscriptions, and paywalls are all standard ways of monetizing a game. As long as the game developer is able to keep the audience entertained and interested by introducing new content and optimizing existing ones, you could potentially have a loyal base that will keep using your product, regardless of the developments and changes that are happening around you: MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft are built on the subscription model, Steam is a recommendation engine, and Destiny can be considered to be an example of a paywall game, with its high reliance on DLCs.

Finally, branded content and merchandising allow for exciting ways to monetize a game. There are many examples to choose from, though one of the most recent developments that embraced the headlines is Louis Vuitton’s collaboration with Riot Games to produce League of Legends merchandise.

Surely, if you have a vast and loyal existing fan base, it would be easy for you to integrate merchandise sales through the creation of physical and virtual stores that would sell your stuff. Another method would be to integrate a digital element into your physical items so that users would have more reasons to buy them from your store and in turn, increase their attachment to your game and the universes/worlds/lores that you have created in it.

Many of these existing monetization schemes could be enriched and integrated with NFT-based technologies, thus opening up a novel way to ensure those game developers earn a steady stream of income through their games. In addition, NFT-based gaming design platforms allow game developers to gain another stream of income through possible collaborations with other companies and peripheral advertising (aka advertising logos and products on those digital items).

For example, a piece of digital clothing created through a dedicated NFT-based digital creation system such as Digitalax can be used by a player within any game as long as he or she has the necessary key code to activate it – after all, each of these “skins” are already verified to be unique and authentic through cross-checking at the blockchain level.

Now that you know the paths that a prospective game developer has to undergo and the endless possibilities that come with choosing the field, do you want to pursue it in the future?

MODEL: https://spilgames.com/11-monetization-strategies-for-game-developers/

REFERENCES:

https://www.gamedesigning.org/become-a-game-designer/

https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/how-to-become-a-video-game-designer

https://www.cgspectrum.com/blog/what-is-game-design

https://www.gameindustrycareerguide.com/video-game-programmer-salary/

 

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