KnowSoda
Life & LeisureVideo Games
How Games Are Made: fun facts and quiz
The essentials in 7 ideas, with fun facts, an illustrated story and a quiz to see how much you know.
The essentials
Who Makes Games
Big games are made by teams of designers, programmers, artists, writers, sound designers and testers, sometimes over a thousand people.
Key fact
A big game can take four years or more to make.
Game Engines
A game engine is the software toolkit games are built with, handling graphics, physics and sound. Unity and Unreal are widely used.
Key fact
Unreal Engine is also used to make TV shows and films.
Game Design
Game designers create the rules, goals and challenges. A good game teaches you as you play, getting harder at just the right pace.
Key fact
World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. teaches its rules without any text.
Pixels to Polygons
Early games used chunky pixels because hardware was limited. 3D games build worlds from thousands or millions of tiny triangles, called polygons.
Key fact
Many games still choose pixel art as a style.
Testing & Patches
Testers hunt for bugs before release, but some slip through. Online updates, called patches, now fix games after launch.
Key fact
Speedrunners race to finish games fast, often using glitches.
Game Music
Game soundtracks react to what’s happening: music can speed up when time runs low or change when danger appears. Koji Kondo’s Super Mario theme is instantly recognisable.
Key fact
Orchestras now tour the world playing video game music.
The Games Business
Games make money through sales, subscriptions, ads and in-game purchases. The global games market earns over 180 billion dollars a year.
Key fact
Games earn more than the film and music industries combined.
Fun facts
Some big story games record over 100,000 lines of spoken dialogue.
Game engines are also used outside games, from car dashboard screens to architects’ virtual walkthroughs.
Super Mario Bros. hides a glitch level, the “minus world”, that loops forever and can’t be finished.
Lara Croft’s first 3D model, in 1996, was built from only about 230 polygons.
In the first Pokémon games, a glitch creature called MissingNo. let players copy items in their bag.
The NES could play only five sounds at once, so composers squeezed whole soundtracks into those few channels.
Grand Theft Auto V earned about 1 billion dollars in its first three days.
Story: The First Easter Egg
The First Easter Egg
1979. Atari doesn’t put designers’ names on its games. Warren Robinett, creator of the game Adventure, thinks that’s unfair.
He secretly builds in a hidden room, reached by finding an invisible dot. Inside, his name glows: “Created by Warren Robinett”.
A teenage player found it after the game came out. Atari decided to keep such surprises, and called them “Easter eggs”.
True or false?
Tap your answer to see if you got it, and why.
-
Question 1 of 10
Big games are made by large teams.
Show the answer
True. Many different specialists.
-
Question 2 of 10
Unity and Unreal are game engines.
Show the answer
True. Used by thousands of studios.
-
Question 3 of 10
Good games often teach players as they play.
Show the answer
True. Through smart level design.
-
Question 4 of 10
3D game worlds are built from polygons.
Show the answer
True. Mostly tiny triangles.
-
Question 5 of 10
Patches can fix games after release.
Show the answer
True. Downloaded over the internet.
-
Question 6 of 10
Game music can change with the action.
Show the answer
True. It reacts to the player.
-
Question 7 of 10
Games earn more than film and music combined.
Show the answer
True. By yearly revenue.
-
Question 8 of 10
Big game teams include only programmers.
Show the answer
False. Artists, writers, testers and more.
-
Question 9 of 10
A game engine is the motor inside a console.
Show the answer
False. It’s software, not a motor.
-
Question 10 of 10
Game designers only draw the characters.
Show the answer
False. They design rules, goals and challenges.
Keep going in the app
KnowSoda learns what you know and brings back what you’re about to forget. How Games Are Made has 6 more ideas at the Advanced and Expert levels.
