Wikijunior:How Things Are Made/Toys/Video Game

Products
Video games are played at home on a personal computer and as a handheld portable game. They are packaged in large consoles, game CD's that can only be played on the same manufacturer's hardware (i.e. Nintendo Wii, Microsoft X Box, and Sony Playstation), and CD-ROMs. It is made up of a program that instructs the computer to display specific visual and audio effects, video games utilize cutting-edge technology in order to provide fast-paced entertainment.

What do we need to make this thing?
We just need That’s it.
 * A bunch of authors
 * Lots of computer storage
 * Coding skills

The video game is usually a product of creative processes and does not need any raw materials to produce it. Design is the key aspect of making all video games. It is typically done by a team of skilled computer programmers, writers, artists, and other game designers. During this phase of development, they generate the game's specifications, which include game type, objective, and graphics.

While creating a video game is rarely a step by step process, there are a variety of tasks that must be accomplished during the development phase.

In the beginning, the type and objective of the game are determined. In general, games fall within a few types of categories, or genres, including fighting, shooting, strategy, simulations, adventure, platforming, and racing.

What is the step by step process?
Step by step (Preferable in bullet point list)
 * Step 1: Typically, writers are responsible for creating a game's story complete with a setting, characters, and plot. This gives the game a purpose and makes it more enjoyable for the player. It also provides an objective for the player and a guideline for the rules of the game. This information is then used to create the game's manual. Often, the inspiration for a story is derived from popular movies or books.
 * Step 2: The story is transferred to storyboards, where preliminary drawings are also added. Storyboards are a series of one-panel sketches pinned to the board. Each sketch is accompanied by story dialogue and/or character description.
 * Step 3: After the type of game and story are outlined, the game's format can be determined. The format refers to what the player sees when playing the game. A variety of formats exist including platform, top-down, scrolling, isometric, three-dimension (3D), and text.
 * Step 4: The artist adds drawings to storyboards, including character descriptions and arrows showing how the characters will move. Final pictures are created in two ways. An artist can render the final picture by creating converted graphics. Converted graphics are images that have been drawn by the artist using a computer. More life-like images are created by filming the action with an actor (motion capture) and then electronically digitizing the image.
 * Step 5: Dialogue and sound effects are recorded in a sound studio using various audio techniques. Once recorded on digital audiotape, the sounds are computerized by a synthesizer-a computer that specifically alters and translates sound into data.
 * Step 6: When all of the preliminary design elements are determined, programming, or coding, can begin. The first step in this process is drawing a flowchart, which shows the logical progression of the computer program. A variety of programming languages are used such as C++, Java, or visual BASIC. The code is typically produced by a team of programmers, each working on a different phase of the game, and can take up to seven months to produce. To speed the coding process, previously developed algorithms are often modified and adapted to the new game. This is more efficient because it eliminates the need to continually rewrite similar programs and reduces the chances of serious errors. Each action can require many individual instructions written by the programmer, and roughly 250,000 individual commands are written to create a video game program. Sound and graphics must also be programmed separately.
 * Step 7: The testing phase of game development helps reveal fundamental design and programming problems. Testing can be completed in a number of ways. The programmers can run the game and try to discover gross problems themselves. Additionally, professional playtesters are used. These are people who are specifically trained to play the games and look for subtle errors. They are typically game designers themselves and have experience with many types of games. Beyond finding errors, playtesters also give criticisms and suggestions to make the game better. In some cases, computer game developers use people from the general population to closed beta testing games. This gives them information about consumer acceptance. Reprogramming is then done until the game is appropriately tweaked.