Best Guide to Find & Hire Game App Developers for StartUps
Are you developing a mobile game app for your startup? Or are you developing a game app for another client? In either case, finding, hiring, and onboarding a game app development team will be effort-consuming.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Finding great game app developers with sound technical skills and superb project experience is never easy. It becomes difficult when you are a startup with less experience in shaping a skilled team for an ambitious game app project. Do you consider hiring a mobile game development company in the next block? Wait; first, you need to understand the development challenges and requirements and the various ways to balance the cost with talent.
Here we will provide a detailed guide to finding and hiring game app developers for your game startup project.
Determine the Game App
What is the game app all about? What unique gaming experience is it going to offer to the players? What kind of gaming experience will set it apart from the competition? These are the determining aspects that you need to consider in the very beginning.
First, think about the game genre you are interested in and study as many game apps as possible belonging to that genre to have a comprehensive idea. Despite their huge and overwhelming success stories, game apps involve great development challenges, so defining the project is the most decisive factor.
This is also the preparatory stage that many developers ignore, considering that all the particular details will be shaped as the project continues. But for a challenging category like game apps building the foundation of the entire project through meticulous brainstorming is the first and foremost thing to begin with.
Decide the Budget
When you have decided on the game app and have made a gross outline, it is time to estimate the investment you can spend on the project. First, to determine the budget, you need to decide the game features that are must-haves for the game app. You can roughly figure out the development hours and corresponding budget.
The Target Platform for the Game
Now you need to decide on the target platform on which you will release the game app. The platforms can vary from a gaming console to mobile platforms like iOS or Android, desktop, or multiple platforms. While mobile gaming is driving growth for game publishers, the desktop is equally popular as a game platform. So, cross-platform development will be the most balanced choice.
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Decide the Game Engines
Decoding the right tech stack for a mobile game app begins by choosing the perfect game engine that is befitting to the challenges and requirements of the game app project. Several leading and closely-contested game engines are in the market for building both 2D and 3D games.
There are top-notch game engines like Unity, Unreal, Cocos2D, and several others for developing great games across leading platforms. You can also try simple drag-and-drop game development tools if you want to start with a small game app project. Instead of compromising with the tech stack, it is always advisable to use limited game features while keeping options open for adding more through future game updates.
It would help if you found game developers versed with the right game engines and game UI design tools based on the chosen tech stack and game engine. Since game designers handle a crucial aspect of a game project called game mechanics, you need to keep a hiring plan set aside for them. Game characters, environments, visuals, textures, and effects make a game lively and enjoyable. So, you need to hire developers and designers with a solid command of every aspect of the gaming experience.
Hiring In-house Game App Developers vs Hiring Freelancers
Let’s make no mistake by undermining freelance game developers’ initial cost advantages for a game development project. But then, freelancers’ shortcomings and risk factors are equally huge. You have far less commitment, and you need to take risks as far as securing the project’s intellectual property is concerned.
On the other hand, reputed game development companies with their brand image and recognition are less likely to sidestep commitment and standard protocols and security measures. But the main question that often pulls the string for hiring well-known development companies is the budget. This is something we need to elaborate in detail.
What is the available budget for the game app? Is it pretty enough to take care of the entire project and initial marketing after considering the developers’ average hourly rate for the required skills? If the answer is yes, you can go for hiring the industry-best experts from reputed development companies, following balanced research on cost and capabilities.
In case you do not have the right budget at your disposal, you can still opt for hiring the best development companies just by opting for an incremental development approach like Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Building an MVP for a game app is not rare, but it involves critical prioritization of key features so that the core gam8ng experience is not compromised from the beginning.
Developer Location and Pricing
For hiring game developers based on your game app budget, the location of the developers also plays a crucial role. Remote hiring of a game development team is always good when you can get a talented team for decent and competitive pricing.
This requires reaching out to several leading development companies in parts of the world where outsourcing has already been established as a key growth factor for development farms. Make a shortlist and then, in a reductionist method, bring it down to a selected few and follow this up with remote technical interviews, pair programming sessions, and skill assessment tests.
Parting Note
The above guidelines for hiring the best mobile game development company for your ambitious game project have been tested over the years. Game apps remain the most competitive category; hence, you cannot take anything for granted when hiring developer talents for your project.
Author Bio:
Juned Ghanchi is the CEO of IndianAppDevelopers, a top mobile app development company in India with a global presence in the USA. He explores all things in the software industry and oversees company growth as CEO.