We don't have far to go until the end of the first part of this game development article series—counting this article, we have only two more left to share with you. So before we get into today's main topic, let's review together what we've covered so far.

Not counting the article ahead, we've so far been at your service across 16 game development articles which, though brief, have covered four broad areas: four articles on the game development cycle, two on the game design document, six on game engines and useful software in the game industry, and one on the structure of game development teams. At first glance this number of articles might not seem like much, but for getting started and familiarizing enthusiasts of the game development world with the bare minimum they should pay attention to, it's not so trivial either.

If you've read all the previous articles, you're more or less aware of the stages of building a game, and you know that on the path to producing a game, if there's anything you shouldn't overlook, it's the game design document. Alongside that, you know full well that producing a good game doesn't require assembling a large team—all you need to do is hammer out your idea and, in keeping with it, choose suitable software and a suitable game engine. You even have some familiarity with the options in front of you. So it wouldn't be far off to say you've reached a point where you can begin building your game, and do so in a principled way.

Of course, a question might come up here: "Can I really build a game right now?" And in answer to that, we have to say: yes, you can! Don't be surprised—you really can start building the ideas in your head from this very point. But you need to keep several important tips in mind along the way, and not throw yourself into pointless, aimless efforts just for the thrill of building a great game.

Let's begin today's main topic by posing a few questions. Do you think driving a vehicle is anything more than managing the steering wheel and the gas, brake, and clutch pedals? You could easily teach someone how all of these work in a minute or two—but after that, could you say they've learned to drive? There's undoubtedly no reason that knowing the procedure for doing something means you're skilled at doing it. Think back to the first time you sat behind the wheel of a car. Even though we all knew the function and operating procedure of every component we were dealing with, our hands-on experience was very different from everything we'd heard. Release the clutch and gently press the gas at the same time... and usually, after the engine howled several times (as the RPMs shot up), the car would stall with a little jolt! We probably practiced that same simple move dozens of times before we could finally get a simple four-wheeled car moving from a standstill—and not even smoothly. And only then did it become time to practice simple maneuvers like driving straight forward and reversing straight back, which we again had to repeat over and over. In between, it would still happen that, because we were focused on the new task, we'd stall the car several more times just trying to get it moving.

There's undoubtedly no reason that knowing the procedure for doing something means you're also skilled at doing it.

This is exactly how it is. If you pay attention right now—when you handle most of the work of driving using your subconscious mind—you'll still see that the whole matter boils down to these same things: managing the steering wheel and the gas, brake, and clutch pedals. Of course, it's true that driving isn't limited to just these things (and the state of the roads clearly shows as much), but without a doubt these are what make up the core of it. And in a crisis, it's control over these very things that slips out of our hands, and what shouldn't happen, happens.

Game development is the same way. Even though you know a lot of things, until you sit behind the wheel and practice with a real car, you'll never be able to see the future in which you've become a game developer. You have to build up your patience and endurance and put your knowledge into practice step by step. That's why, in this article, we've come to lay out a number of these initial steps for you. To start, we recommend you watch the video below. Fortunately, the video even has a rough Persian subtitle!

The material covered in this video is, in fact, exactly the kind of thing you'll surely have run into some of if you've tried your hand at game development. There are, however, a few other points it doesn't touch on, so we'll address those.

One of the things that can have the greatest impact on your game development journey is the matter of goal-directed practice. From the very beginning—from the moment we became interested in game development—each of us dreamed of building a game in a specific genre. Now that we want to actually get to work on game development, why shouldn't our practice and hands-on experience be aligned with that same goal? Of course, it isn't quite that simple, and it has its own particular procedure. For example, the first few times you attempt game development, your main focus should be solely on the act of building a playable product. After accomplishing that and gaining some experience, it's then time to quickly start planning your practice and creations.

For instance, say we want to build a 2D platformer in the near future. It's obvious we don't currently have that ability and need to learn a great deal about it. One of the best things we can do to reach our goal is to identify the game's essential parts and elements in our minds and write them down on paper. Many parts of our initial ideas may well be transformed as we progress, but they'll still be far more useful to us than aimless practice. After doing this, we might observe, for example, that our game will have a particular movement system.

One of the things that can have the greatest impact on your game development journey is the matter of goal-directed practice.

This movement system, alongside simple left-and-right movement and the jumps common to platformers, should also include features like a double jump, wall-running, and a slide along the ground. At this point, to make our practice as productive as possible, we use something called mini-games. For example, to implement the wall-running ability as well as possible, we design a compact mini-game whose core mechanic is that very wall-running move. Always try to preserve the simplicity of your mini-game, though, and don't introduce any particular complexity into it. Keep reminding yourself that our goal in building this game is to learn a specific skill for a larger purpose, and there's no need to design many aspects in detail. In the same way, build your game according to the procedure we described earlier—within the short timeframe the video also made suggestions about—and hand the final product to others for evaluation. Ask them to comment not just on the game itself but also on its wall-running system, and to pass along any suggestions they have. Sometimes you can place several things inside a single mini-game at once, but whatever you decide, try to keep the mini-game's simplicity intact and its build process short.

If you work this way, after a while you'll find that you've not only managed to produce a number of mini-games but have also largely prepared yourself to build the main game. On top of this, we strongly recommend that you build these mini-games using the very same engine you'll likely use for the final game—because in that case, with a bit of order and organization in how you work, you can probably reuse ready-made pieces from your previous games in the new one and speed up your build process.

Another point that deserves attention is that, for a novice game developer, the secondary aspects of building a game usually overtake its core aspects right from the start. If this isn't managed properly, it ultimately leads to that person becoming nothing more than a machine for copying the ideas of prominent figures active in the game industry. For example, instead of grounding our work in understanding "how to build a good game," we drift toward "how to build a flashy, good-looking game to sell." And so, disregarding the core essentials, we focus purely on the game's technical aspects and selling as many copies as possible—and the result is exactly what, more than anything else, plagues the game industry in Iran and even the world today. Day after day, matters like high-end graphics and glitzy advertising receive more attention from developers and publishers, while less thought is given to the fun, enjoyable essence of games. Smaller developers, unaware of the flawed machinery of the big companies—and without even having those companies' valuable resources behind them—simply imitate them, and in a sense take an axe to their own fledgling roots in the game industry with their own hands.

Note that with any level of artistic ability, or any level of programming ability, you have the capacity to create a great game—or even a masterpiece. There's no need at all for your game to have high-end graphics, a vast world, and thousands of lines of programmed code. Coding, graphics, and so on each matter in their own place, but they're all merely tools for breathing life into the ideas in our minds, and they shouldn't be given more importance than that. Consider that both a game like Minecraft is regarded as a masterpiece, and a game like Uncharted, with its vast, sprawling world, is too—and this despite the fact that, on every level, these two games differ from one another as much as the earth differs from the sky.

With any level of artistic ability, or any level of programming ability, you have the capacity to create a great game—or even a masterpiece.

We all know that no matter how beautiful and elaborate a dish is, in the end what matters is how it tastes. A game is the same. No matter how much importance you give to a game's technical aspects, if you don't pay special attention to its core essence, in the end you won't be able to satisfy your audience—and you can't even expect it to sell well. On your game development journey, always try to spend a meaningful portion of your time searching for this magic formula, which lies hidden only behind your hands-on experience in game development and your study of this winding industry's successful examples. It's not something that can be taught in theory or passed down genetically. Pay attention to this from the very start, and don't let the glitz of some big game influence the direction you take.

If you can put into practice the points made in the video, along with the tips laid out in this text, I promise you that one day you'll be able to realize what you have in mind without trouble and breathe life into your dreams. This, of course, comes only through a great deal of perseverance, constant practice, and refusing to surrender in the face of problems—it's not a treasure you can obtain so easily. Finally, we'd like you to share your experience of building your first game with us and the other game development enthusiasts in the comments, and to tell us about the challenges you faced.

What do you think—what should you pay attention to when building your first game?