I wish I had the tools available today when I joined gaming 12 years ago. Still, 3 sins can ruin your game production. (I must admit, I’ve committed all 3 sins) 1. "Why buy this tool? A weekend and energy drinks, and I'll make a new one. It'll even make coffee!" Avoid this because: • 61% producers aim for 1–2-week releases. • that's a lot of energy drinks. • not enough weekends. 2. “Our custom tool? It's so unique, only three people in the world understand it. Two of them just quit.” Avoid this because: • 53% longer to onboard with in-house tools • less focus in creating the game experience • the remaining one writes in hieroglyphs. 3. "This third-party AI pathfinding? My pet could write better algorithms. Hold my keyboard." Avoid this because: • 66% of development timelines fall short. • solving solved issues wastes resources. • wheel reinvention proves its necessity. "Okay, your idea, Sergei?" - I hear you ask. Your focus: content, not custom tech. 65% of all studios now prefer to 'buy vs build' their game technology. The game industry has matured, offering new, powerful solutions. Repost ♻️ This to help avoid the sins. P.S. Are you a 'buy' or a 'build' person? Src: Rendered Venture Capital & Griffin Gaming Partners.
"HoldMyKeyboard" - I love that. I could have used is many, many times in my career as colleagues went of to implement something themselves so save $50 (or even $500) buying something in. I'd add in a few more tools in there (apologies if they are there and I missed them): Adobe Substance Painter/Designer, Photoshop, Illustrator or Affinity Designer, Inkscape, GIMP, Paint(.NET). Cascadeur, Reallusion Character Creator/iClone. Ink, Articy, Twine, Arcweave. Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, GitHub/GitLab, Slack, Teams, Trello, Figma, Excel. I'm not seeing any any audio tools like Audacity or and DAWs. Or services like Freesound or Soundly (Epidemic and Artlist can't be used for games I discovered). Fonts are a key decision too for games, and while most buy them in or use free ones, you can create your own in FontForge or Glyphs, or even simple ones in FontStruct. It's amazing how many tools can be used to put together a game. Thanks Sergei.
I'm very skeptical... I've not heard of ANY of these 'art' tools. Why are half of them AI? Where is Photoshop, or Krita, or Blender, or Substance Painter, or Substance Designer, or Procreate?
Oh, I love this! Takes me right back to the days when I thought Pac-Man was the height of technological achievement. I mean, just imagine! Tools today, eh? Back in my day, our "cutting edge" was deciding whether to blow on the game cartridge or give it a good thump. And now, you're talking about AI pathfinding and custom tools like they're the local chippy. Honestly, this bit about making your own tools is hilarious! Weekend and energy drinks? Blimey, if I had a pound for every time I tried that, I'd be swimming in Red Bull. The bit about custom tools and hieroglyphs—spot on! I always thought if someone handed me a game manual in ancient Egyptian, I'd have a better chance of deciphering it than some of these custom tools. But Sergei's got a point, hasn't he? Why reinvent the wheel when you can just pop down to the tech shop and buy one that actually works? 65% of studios are on the same page, and who can blame them? Less time coding hieroglyphs, more time enjoying a nice cuppa while the game practically builds itself. So, what's it gonna be? Buy or build? I know where my money's at—right on the shelf with all those shiny, pre-made solutions. Game on!
Consider Bitpart.Ai for character engine
I agree with everything you've said there Sergei Vasiuk and thanks for sharing Pragma! At Pragma we've built a backend engine that offers studios a unique "Buy AND Build" approach. Essentially, we give you the framework for different features i.e. matchmaker, player data, accounts, telemetry etc and then share the source-code so you can write custom code for your game design. This allows you to move away from 'black-box' platforms. The really cool thing is you can even write custom features inside the Pragma engine, and then Pragma will treat this like a first-class service with DevOps and LiveOps. I would encourage anyone working in games to take a look, it's very cool technology built by the key engineers at Riot, Epic, Phoenix Labs and more. Happy to talk with anyone who's interested! :)
Nothing about audio? Ouch.
I would definitely be a buy person as I find it more efficient to solve a problem or answer a business need with a solution created by people devoted to solving it. My main focus would be on the trigger/need : do we really need to buy? Or can we find an acceptable workaround?
Thank you for mentioning our portfolio company Layer AI 💖
LinkedIn™ Top Gaming Voice🕹️Director of LiveOps @Wargaming
1mo📌 📌 If I missed any tools for game development, publishing, marketing etc., please share them, and I'll adjust for version 2.0 later.