Blood, Sweat, and Pixels

After decades of video game development, is it possible that there is no more efficient way to produce a video game?

The book is divided into 10 chapters, and 10 very different project development stories.

This will give the impression that each idea is different from all the others. Why? Here are a few theories:

• Games are interactive - A video game is never linear. You have to respond to the player's input, remember their actions. The story must be functional in regards to the players' choices.
• Technology evolves - Graphics engines are becoming more powerful, new consoles are being released, new control systems are being studied. And with it, consumers' expectations also change.
• The tools are not always the same - The software available to developers is constantly changing, adapting to technology and offering increasingly different, but not necessarily simpler, solutions.
• It is impossible to plan with absolute precision - Unpredictability is an inseparable aspect of the process. You will never know precisely when and how a bug will occur that will block development for weeks.
• You can't tell if a game is fun until you play it. What seems like a good idea on paper, risks becoming an utterly boring game.

Although each production is different, it seems that most of them have something in common. All of them face their own dose of problems, delays, changes, suppressed content, rewrites. People who work in this field are fully dedicated to it, and sacrifice their private lives.

At the end of the day, it's worth it.