How Many People Does It Take To Form a Mobile Game Development Team?
Are you interested in knowing how many people are required in a mobile game development team?
Mobile games, in 2022, have generated 91.4 billion US dollars in revenue, accounting for 45% of the total global gaming market revenue. Moreover, mobile game users are more likely to spend on in-app advertisements than all the other users, accumulating 89.6 billion US dollars across Google Play Store and Apple App Store in 2021.
These statistics on the global mobile game market show the potential it offers to its early investors, however, the mobile game market is quite crowded and competitive. To mark your share in the growing revenue, you have to build a mobile game that captivates the gamers’ interest.
Market-competitive games are built using the latest technologies and offer an intriguing graphical experience. Such software is written by competent developers. In this blog, we will help you understand how many people are required on your team for successful mobile game development. Let’s start.
Mobile Game Development
You will go through different development stages using different approaches to build a mobile game application. The mobile game development approach you adopt will factor in deciding the number of people on your development team.
You will likely go through the following decisions on app development approaches and practices while planning a mobile game app development.
Mobile Operating System
The first thing that you will decide is the user market you want to target. Android and iOS are the biggest players when it comes to mobile operating systems. If you plan to develop a mobile game for one specific mobile OS and the user market, you will be developing a native mobile app.
A native mobile app offers an exceptional user experience as it is developed for a specific OS and makes use of mobile devices’ hardware giving optimum performance. Evidently, the skillset is more niche-focused and may require a higher budget when you are looking for native app developers.
If you plan to build an iOS game app, you will need a game developer proficient in the iOS development stack. You can either write native code for a game using a programming language like Swift, and IDE like Xcode, or you can use a game development engine like Unity game engine to develop a game efficiently through built-in libraries and utilities.
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Similarly, for native Android games, you will require a developer experienced in Kotlin or Java and supporting tools like Android Studio IDE, etc.
You can also develop cross-platform games to target a larger audience through a single app. You will need game developers experienced in web technologies like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc., and frameworks like Xamarin, React Native, etc.
Some game development engines that you can use to write games and then build for specific OS are Unity, Unreal Game Engine, and Solar2D. These development engines support both iOS and Android.
2D or 3D Graphics Visuals
Another thing to decide is between 2D and 3D games. You will require graphic designers or animators to do the job.
A two-dimensional animation is relatively simpler where objects are shown along the two x and y axis and placed frame by frame. A 3D animation gives a more realistic view where objects are designed in a 3D environment giving them more depth on the screen.
There is a possibility that an animator knows both, 2D and 3D animation, however, it requires a lot of practice and expertise. You will need to hire animators accordingly to help you design the game structure, including sketching visual elements, giving them textures, adding lighting and sound effects, etc.
A game artist animating in two and three-dimensional environments uses a combination of tools, including Adobe Photoshop, Maya, Adobe Illustrator and After Effects, Blender, etc.
A 2D game artist uses Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects to create visual storytelling and visualize abstract concepts.
These game animators will work closely with your game developers to propose a visual abstract of the game in accordance with the technical specifications and limitations.
Read more on designing a game mobile app on our blog here.
API Integrations
Application programming interfaces or APIs let you add multiple features to your mobile gaming app as third-party services without writing them from scratch. You may need to add API integrations for push notifications like SNS, authentication, and authorization like Cognito, etc.
Although API integrations make application development faster, you must practice caution while integrating external dependencies. It is better to develop the core features of your mobile game from scratch and in the form of APIs.
This development approach makes parallel programming of app features possible, the development process is accelerated and with a better developer’s experience. Failure risks are also contained.
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For API development, you will need developers skilled in API architecture like REST, GraphQL, etc.
Read more on developing APIs for a mobile app in our blog here.
Cloud Computing Architecture
The global cloud computing market is expected to reach 1,614.1 billion US dollars by 2030. The reason for a growing cloud computing industry is the range of benefits it offers to businesses developing innovative software solutions.
Cloud computing infrastructure enables businesses to adopt cloud-based software-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, and infrastructure-as-a-service. This means there is no longer a need to install and maintain application servers, database storage, etc. on-premises. Moreover, software tools and platforms like IDEs and OS can be accessed over the Internet.
Cloud service providers are responsible to install, configure, and maintain these development resources, while the software developers can focus only on building a high-quality mobile application.
Amazon Web Services for Mobile, Google Firebase, etc. are some of the prominent providers of a mobile backend as a service. Read more on the mobile backend as a service on our blog here.
DevOps Integrations
DevOps make the mobile game development process more stable with continuous integrations and continuous delivery. Moreover, it allows game developers to perform testing of each feature before deployment and monitoring in the user environment.
If you plan to adopt the industry practice of integrating DevOps in the app development lifecycle, you will need professional developers to build a DevOps pipeline for your development process, including the appropriate DevOps tools.
Read more about the top DevOps tools that can fit your development requirements on our blog here.
Team Roles for Mobile Game Development
The above discussion on different mobile game development approaches and practices concludes that you will need the following roles in your mobile game development team:
- Project manager – You will need an experienced project manager to meet budget and time deadlines. Moreover, you will likely adopt an agile approach to mobile game development. A project manager will help you implement the right agile frameworks and tools to set the right tasks for team members, track their progress during dev sprints or iterations, enforce team collaboration, etc.
- Mobile App developer – An iOS or Android developer, if you are planning to develop mobile games natively or a hybrid mobile app developer for a mobile game app that runs on cross platforms.
- Animator or graphics designer – A 2D or 3D designer to design game characters and visuals. They will apply the visual and audio effects and propose prototypes of the game design structure.
- DevOps engineer – A DevOps professional will help you integrate industry-standard practices to build game apps faster and meet market requirements swiftly. Source code version control, continuous testing, continuous deployment, better team collaboration, etc. are a few of the DevOps practices.
- App tester – An app tester will test your app for any inconsistencies in the design or the presence of programming bugs. He or she will ensure the game app runs as planned by running test routines, including security testing, penetration testing, unit testing, integration testing of different modules, etc.
- Business Analyst – A business analyst will help you design your business plan, prepare the documents for software requirements, plan features to meet these requirements, monitor the performance of game apps in the market, suggest improvements while working with the product manager, etc.
This means that you will need a team of five to six people for mobile game development. If you plan to build native game apps for iOS and Android in parallel, you will need to hire two developers.
If you are developing a hybrid web app but want to make the process faster, you can hire more than one game developer. The same is the case with game animators and app testers. The final number will depend on your game development approach and the hiring budget.
How to build a mobile game app development team?
Now that you have explored the different expertise required for mobile game development, the next question is how and where to find people with these capabilities.
You may not want to hire an in-house developer and graphic designer given the additional expenses that you will have to bear, including office space and equipment maintenance, etc. Moreover, there are limitations to the hiring process since you will select people from a specific region, and you may have to compromise on skills and expertise.
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The freelance market is another option to hire game developers and designers for your mobile game development project. However, it is a risky one. You have no surety for the freelancer’s credentials, and the vetting process is your responsibility completely.
Moreover, freelancers often work on multiple projects to form a stable income stream for themselves. There is a chance that your hired freelance game developer is not giving his or her 100 percent to your project.
There is also a risk of a freelancer leaving your project midway for any reason. There is not much that you can do except for hiring another freelancer.
A better option against hiring full-time developers is partnering with a software development company experienced in the design and development of market-leading mobile games. You can find such mobile development agencies on websites like Clutch and you can view their past projects and clients on their business websites.
You can either outsource your complete game development project to such software development companies or hire mobile app developers from them according to your project requirements. In this way, you are able to scale your resources according to your requirements and not unnecessarily.
Final Thoughts on Team Size for Mobile Game Development
The mobile game industry is flourishing, and now is a great time to invest in an interactive game development project. However, the success of your game will depend on how competent is your game development team.
You can start your game development project with a project manager, business analyst, one or two mobile game developers, a graphic designer, and a tester. You can then scale up the number of developers, designers, and testers as your project progresses.
A good approach to forming a competent team is to partner with an experienced software development company like DevTeam.Space, which is a community of field-expert software developers.
You can easily partner with these developers by writing to us your initial game specifications, and one of our account managers will get in touch with you to discuss further details on how we can help you build a great mobile game application.
Frequently Asked Questions on People Required for Mobile Game Development
You can use mobile game engines like Unity, Unreal Engine, AppGame Kit, etc.
A single game developer can certainly develop games, however, there is no guarantee this game will be successful in the competitive market out there. The chances of a successful game are more when there is a team working together on different aspects of design, development, quality assurance, and marketing.
You will need a programmer, designer, project manager, and tester as a bare minimum game development team.
Alexey Semeney
Founder of DevTeam.Space
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Alexey is the founder of DevTeam.Space. He is award nominee among TOP 26 mentors of FI's 'Global Startup Mentor Awards'.
Alexey is Expert Startup Review Panel member and advices the oldest angel investment group in Silicon Valley on products investment deals.
