What is game development software?

Game Develpment Software enables businesses, freelancers, and academic institutions to build, distribute, and monetize games. These systems streamline the development process and reduce operational costs through automation and predefined gaming templates. Most game development software solutions include additional capabilities such as user behavior analytics, marketing management, and social features. 

The benefits of game development software

• Reduced operational costs:  Game development platforms help organizations quickly write game codes with the help of predefined templates to reduce project time and required resources. These templates reduce human coding errors, and drive development costs down through the use of reusable code. This helps project leaders minimize project costs by streamlining involved processes.
• Increased collaboration: Game development platforms allow coding teams to seamlessly collaborate and efficiently manage projects through functionalities such as task management, live chat, asset management, and more. These collaboration tools also let managers track the team's performance and ensure timely project completion.

Typical features of game development software

• Code-free development:  Allows developers to create wizards and visual interfaces for game development without writing code. 
• Animation:  Allows developers to create, customize, and add animations to a game. 
• Integrated development environment:  Provides a graphical user interface for testing, debugging, and compiling the code. 
• Physics simulation:  Implement laws of physics within a game. 
• Prototyping:  Create, manage, and provide access to prototypes.

Considerations when purchasing game development software

• Integration with third-party solutions:  Integration is one of the most critical factors for businesses to evaluate when purchasing game development software. Since developers often need access to best-of-breed functionalities - such as asset management, advanced analytics, video editing, and content modeling - available as third-party integrations, it's important for businesses to select game development programs that work with their existing or desired tools. 
• Pricing considerations:  The game development software market offers hundreds of solutions with varying pricing models (e.g. subscriptions, one-time licensing, and per user, per month). Pricing also varies based on software capabilities, inclusion of advanced features (e.g. virtual reality, 3D gaming, artificial intelligence), customer support, training, and database management. Buyers of game development programs should carefully determine what is included at which price points to calculate their total cost of ownership before making a purchase. 

Relevant game development software

• Games will get smarter with artificial intelligence (AI) technologies:  Mainstream adoption of AI technology in the gaming industry will transform the market, resulting in smarter and more engaging products/experiences. With the help of AI-enhanced recommendation engines, developers will be able to suggest additional/new products to customers based on their past playing behaviors and purchases, increasing both customer retention rates and revenue. According to our research , over the next three to five years almost all software applications - including game development platforms will contain some level of AI functionality. 
• Virtual reality to revolutionize gaming:  Successful use cases of virtual reality games have sent waves across the gaming community; games like Pokemon Go have set a new standard by providing an immersive, augmented reality experience. In the coming years, we expect virtual reality technologies to have a greater impact on educational games by providing interactive learning exercises to achieve higher engagement levels. According to our research , 33% of small businesses will adopt virtual reality technologies to train their employees in the coming years. Expect the gaming industry to increase its focus on these areas to capture this growing market of educational gamification.