One thing gamers in this day and age appreciate in their favorite gaming titles is the intentionality that goes into their design. The line between gaming and realism is ever so blurry due to the advancement of technologies that go into game design. There’s no doubt that these technologies exist, but far fewer people can name them, nor do they know how these individual pieces come to solve the jigsaw puzzle of premium gaming entertainment. Let’s peel the layers as we explore the tech side of game design:
Visual
A game might offer a lot, but the first consideration is whether it passes the eye test. Does it look good? Does it look modern? How realistic are the game characters? Can I sit for hours watching these characters interact? These are some of the questions that dance through the mind of any gamer when they launch a new title.
The tools used to give the best gaming titles a finished, polished look differ from game to game. If you enjoy 2D games, chances are Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator was used, while Blender / Maya / 3ds Max, and Cinema 4D are used for 3D modelling and animation.
Engineering Fair Reward Systems with RNG
One often-overlooked aspect of gaming is how players are rewarded. When a system doesn’t seem fair, players quickly raise an eyebrow. Game designers strive to create a reward system that gives every player an equal chance of success. This includes everything from picking up item drops in games like Mario Kart, to enjoying bonuses and freebies on various platforms. The design of these trustworthy, balanced mechanics is what delivers true value—what could be considered the game’s exclusive deals from cardplayer—meaning the hidden, valuable engineering that ensures a level playing field. This system also extends to getting powerups in major franchises like Overwatch or the Diablo series.
This fairness is fundamentally accomplished by engineering randomness, a cornerstone of engaging game design. The most popular tool for achieving this is a Random Number Generator (RNG). RNG is a system that uses unpredictable events, sometimes physical data (in the case of True RNGs) or complex algorithms and seed values (for Pseudo-RNGs), to vary gaming results. This keeps gameplay outcomes exciting and ensures that every player perceives their success as genuinely earned through skill or random chance, not manipulation.
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Dynamic Audio
Many will argue that, more important than how the game looks, is how it sounds, because of its role in player immersion and gameplay dynamism. The choice of music can solely raise the stakes when you are in a boss battle, heightening the experience, and the clinking of coins when you collect items can be the difference between playing with one software provider or another.
The most common tools for enhancing a game’s audio include Audacity and Adobe Audition, both popular for editing dialogue, weapon sounds, and ambient noise, and for applying filters and removing background noise. Fans of retro games have the Bfxr tool to thank, as it is used to create classic 8-bit or retro-style sound effects for explosions, pickups, and other interactions in video games. And tying these sounds together are FMOD / Wwise, interactive tools that allow game designers to link sounds to dynamic events. A common example is different theme sounds for different game characters or environments.
Game Physics
Physics engines like NVIDIA PhysX, Box2D/Bullet Physics, Ragdoll physics engines, and Inverse Kinematics (IK) systems work with popular game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine to create realistic environments that simulate the real world. The game engine is tasked with making sense of motion, rendering, and logic. The physics engine, on the other hand, ensures events like explosions, gravity, and motion remain consistent in real time as the player explores the gaming environment. It is this collective effort of these different pieces of technology that ensures smooth gameplay, and situations where a video game breaks, more often than not, can be traced back to one or both of them being missing or functioning suboptimally.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence is one of the more recent adaptations in the world of video gaming, and it has been quick to make an impact. The presence of AI makes gameplay less static and more dynamic, resulting in a more enjoyable experience. One way it does this is by allowing for smarter non-player characters (NPCs). Gone are the days when NPCs walked into each other or shot at the wall; now they can anticipate the player’s decisions and react before the player makes a decision.
Another area where game design benefits from AI is content generation. Instead of creating levels and maps from scratch, the AI can be tasked with designing from a template, allowing designers to focus on more engaging parts of game development. These, coupled with adaptive difficulty, where the AI adjusts the gameplay to fit the player’s skill level, propped up by realistic AI animations and a dynamic voice and dialogue system, have cemented AI as a mainstay when it comes to designing games.
Cloud Computing
The scale of open worlds in games these days and the number of players they host in multiplayer sessions would put a lot of stress on local hardware gaming systems. The solution has been to host many of these game resources on cloud computers. It allows players to use these resources on low to mid-range systems while avoiding overclocking. It also allows real-time collaboration, easier updates, and seamless integration of AI-driven features, creating richer, more immersive, and dynamically evolving game experiences.
