Production as a GameDev
Being able to produce volume and quality as a GameDev will always be difficult. On the one hand you are building virtual built-environments, and on the other building a compelling narrative and aesthetic that will result in sales (or usage).
This is where CI/CD and DevOps comes into play, by using Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery you and your teams can work faster in a more efficient – and more fun – production environment. To learn more about DevOps read on!
As creatives the environment matters – any developer would accept that having the right environment which facilitates their work results in more productive days.
Investors care about the environment that you build for your studio too, because any business that treats their own staff poorly will suffer poor retention and project delays. We see these challenges in retention most often with our clients who have a pressing need for expertise (needless to say because they’ve just lost expert suppliers due to poor relationships).
In terms of maintaining a pleasant production environment as a GameDev we will only talk about code in this piece, namely because we’re rather Quirky (or rather, Unique) and that will show! In terms of code however, the world leading dev platform known as Red Hat OpenShift is what leading banks, transport, government use to successfully deliver bespoke software systems.
Working faster by working together
What we love about Red Hat Openshift is that you have hundreds of dev-tools at your fingertips, in a cloud-native suite that has world-leading support to back it.
In other words, it is perfect for building bespoke systems – be they for business, or pleasure.
Openshift (currently) uses Jenkins to automate elements of bug-checking and bringing code into production and this saves you a large sum of time. Bug-checking can easily cost a third of any projects budget (we’ve seen this even with projects running into tens of millions) and so this is not to be sniffed at.
Further to this OpenShift is DevOps friendly, which allows your studio to produce a continuous stream of updates and code to your projects. This in practice means it is perfect for building multi-platform games (even those that are already released) – from DLC to mobile games large and small, OpenShift keeps things running.
Open communication is central to DevOps and CI/CD – having a culture of working together to jointly solve problems, to embrace and address challenges we find when working on projects.
Red Hat OpenShift is used to to run Cloud-Native as well as Local development environments and this flex also means that your teams can more easily code and create how they want to. This helps you deliver projects faster because people can work how they want to.
Is building games faster a good thing?
It depends on the nature of the game, but broadly speaking if you’re running a games studio with a view of it being a business – yes.
Delivering projects faster and more consistently allows for longer projects to have significant savings over their lifespan. These savings can be kept for a rainy day, re-invested in the project or otherwise distributed among your staff to improve retention.
It is also valuable if you are seeking external funding to deliver the next project, even as a singular GameDev that is using something like National Lottery Funding.
By working in a way that is SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely) you enable your studio to release games ahead of your competitors and in advance of key release-dates where customer spend the most.
Your staff (be they employees or contractors) are also kept enabled and engaged by seeing there is progress in their part of the project, which further improves retention. And where you complete work early you can start to work on additions to the game!
Productivity is central to success as a business; therein for developers using DevOps is a close relative to success. By making the most of your time as a GameDev you ensure your project can keep moving forward to its ultimate destination.
