The business world is going more digital every day, making it increasingly important for small businesses to have a presence online. You can build that presence by having a website and social media channels or in a more innovative way by building a great app, a great game. Take a look at Epic Games for example. They built a few popular video games but they are more than just a game development company. They managed to build a whole other business on top of their game, their user base.

In this article, we’re going to highlight a few steps on how you can build a successful game that can help your business thrive in the future.

Ideation

A successful game is the direct result of months of pure ideation. A game can’t be successful unless its developers think of all the aspects that go into building something popular. You need to come up with an idea, niche, and build a whole story around it. All of this thinking takes place before you write a single line of code.

Moreover, you need to think about the difficulty of the game and its levels. A popular mobile game needs to be easy enough to learn but also hugely fun. For example, games in the slot arcade niche like the Gaminator slots are great at this aspect since they’re fun to play, easy to learn but still challenging to master. Poker players, for example, often take years of gameplay until they can compete professionally and have a full understanding of the game, even if the rules can be learned in a few hours of playing. This is the secret behind pretty much all successful games.

Once you put down on paper all of these aspects regarding the story of the game and the mechanics behind it, it’s time to make them become reality.

Development

The amount of time and difficulty of the development phase of game building depends solely on the depth of the said game. The development of an AAA game like GTA V took three years and a team of over 1000 people. However, Angry Birds only took 9 months and a team of 7 people to be developed.

Details regarding development should be figured out before writing the code. You can have an in-house team to take care of this but it might take longer, depending on the number of people working on the game. If you already have developers working for you, this can prove to be the best option. But, you can also get help from an outside firm, just as Rovio Entertainment did when they later created the iOS version of Angry Birds.

Marketing

Once your game is fully ready, it’s time to do some marketing. Make sure it is widely accessible on platforms like Google Play or iTunes for mobile. If you’re building a PC game, Steam will prove the best option for indie developers. You can also start building partnerships with gamers to drive more eyes to your game, something similar to what Fortnite did with Ninja.

Professional game competitions and dedicated online communities are also a great way to keep players engaged. If you did everything right, now you should have a highly-popular video game.