Online gaming and casino games in particular now take a much bigger segment of home entertainment compared to just a decade ago. When skipping through the Triumph online casino review, a good-eyed reader will notice the focus on the catalog of available games and entertainment. In many cases, the variety of slots and other games make a casino interesting to visitors.
The popularity of casual gaming is a great indicator of the popularity that many online games gained recently. Facebook apps, mobile games, casinos in the UK with websites, and many other platforms where you can play focus strongly on monetizing various interactive entertainments.
Changing the landscape of game dev
Many contemporary developers switched wholly to producing tightly designed, compact games that can be integrated into any platform without hiccups. While such games may feel small and simple, there are huge teams of devs standing behind every single title. When the production scale is so big, various issues present themselves regularly.
Let’s talk about some obvious pitfalls that many developers face.
Overpromising on deadlines
The scope of an online game may look modest when a project is in the planning stage. However, additional features and add-ons can quickly balloon the development time. Unforeseeable incidents and accidents also happen to make planning quite hard. Since a team of developers must create new projects much more frequently compared to teams that develop a single product, chasing after multiple orders can be quite tricky in terms of time management.
Too many features
Even in casino games with relatively simple UI and design, a team of devs can easily start going away from the original concept by adding various mini-games, animations, sounds, new images, and other miscellaneous stuff. It is great to deliver a memorable product that grasps the attention of players but there is always a deadline!
UI that you cannot see
Smaller games that are developed by people who focus on design often have clunky and unresponsive interfaces because artists wanted to incorporate buttons and control elements in the imagery and hide some of the buttons or completely change their appearance making a game confusing to both veterans and newbies. Do not make that Spin button look like a branch. Yes, we like jungle-themed slots but only to a certain degree.
Licenses, licenses, licenses
From fonts to sounds that you may want to use in a game, everything must be carefully checked. You don’t want to start a legal battle against someone who owns music that you play on the winning screen or icons that were so incredibly suitable for your UI that you decided to use them without checking. Very often some online games become completely different due to fights with rights owners.
Too hard for a newb
Casual games must be simple and only moderately demanding. Many people play such games during commutes or to make waiting for something less unbearable. When it comes to casino slots, they must be simple enough to make understanding the odds easier yet complicated to a degree when players want to spend hours spinning the wheels.
Too late for the hype
Another important thing that many developers often fail to understand is how hype works. For example, a game about Spider-Man that requires a lot of legal paperwork and negotiations will be interesting for players only during a very short window when the main movie is released to the theaters. Right after that, the hype will drop off and a whole development cycle will be wasted.
Underhiring
One of the biggest pitfalls that many development teams fall into is not hiring enough staff to deal with tasks that may feel less important than others. For example, a team making a simple slot game about treasure-hunting may think that writing is something that can be outsourced. However, when there is a story, there is a demand for high-quality writing that often must be done in-house. Lacking key-staff members is, sadly, a common occurrence in online games development.
Jumping ahead of the industry
Introducing new technology may seem like a good idea in most cases. However, it is quite important to remember compatibility and performance. When teams start using some new tools and tech that other devs do not know, it may be challenging to smoothly integrate a fully released product into existing infrastructures.
Switching too late
It is not uncommon for any development team to witch focus dramatically closer to the end of the development cycle. It can be triggered by changes in the industry, demands from clients, or even losing a team member. However, adding big features or adjusting the design right before the release is never a good idea.
The main takeaway
The online games development industry is still in its development state and will be changing regularly. Nonetheless, we already know what can be devastating for any project. Let’s hope that fewer teams will fall into the pitfalls that we discussed in this article!
