Tech Tools of a Game Development Company: Isto Inc.
Have you ever thought about how much work goes into developing a successful game application? What about all the technological tools used in the process?
Isto Inc., a start-up game development company, filled us in on all the tools they use through their process of developing and releasing a game.
Before getting into the details…
Isto is a one-year old, two-man game development company based in Calgary. It was a conversion company built from the basis of a previous company, CopperBrain. They ideate and develop cross-platform mobile game applications. Currently, Stephen Huang, founder of Isto Inc., and his team, have one released puzzle game, Disjoint — however, this game was released by the previous legacy company.
Can you help two unlikely friends find treasure?
Follow Lucky and the hobo on their journey into the unknown as they solve mind bending, never before seen puzzles.
Through my interview with Stephen, I learned that there are a surprisingly low number of absolutely crucial technological tools, such as Unity, the Adobe Suite, and the Atlassian Software package, used by his company in their game development process. However, in order to cover all possible needs, there are a broad spectrum of tools used.
Of this vast toolset, only a small subset are irreplaceable — meaning, the company would probably fail to exist without their existence and usage. Furthermore, the majority of the tools used to any extent are used by the full-time employees. Few tools or services are outsourced, but when they are, it is done to improve the team’s efficiency.
More About the Crucial Tools
“So, obviously, you can’t make games without Unity. I mean, you can, but it would just be like damn near impossible with our team size.”
Unity is a cross-platform game engine that is compatible with macOS, Windows, and Linux, making it a valuable tool in the game development industry. It allows users to develop both, two- and three-dimensional games, as well as simulations for over 10 different platforms. In working with the game engine, developers can script using C# while also having the ability to use various plug-ins, as well as drag-and-drop functionality for various actions and properties.
Price: There are multiple tiers to a Unity subscription. Unity Personal is offered for free to beginners whose revenue or received funding does not exceed $100K per year. Unity Plus is offered for $25/month with one year prepaid for hobbyists who would like to accelerate their learning and development skills. Unity Pro is offered for Teams and Freelancers for $125/month, and this includes priority access to Unity experts, Success Advisors, and Customer Support. Each tier provides an additional level of support and more advanced features to aid in the development process. For more information, visit the Unity Store.
Usability: The Unity Game Engine provides a visual interface from which developers can create basic interactions with ease. Unity works well with C# scripts, allowing for a large number of possibilities when it comes to what can be developed using the software. Furthermore, there are multiple plug-ins which can be accessed to further increase the creative possibilities. One example of a Unity plug-in used by Isto is from the Middleware Software — they have a F-Mod plug in for sound and audio. Additionally, Unity allows for easy management and importing of external assets which is an important aspect for Isto since they produce all of their art using the Adobe Suite.
“The Adobe Suite for me in particular is kind of a crutch, mostly because it takes a lot to learn proficiency in the software.”
The Adobe Suite is a set of softwares which allows for extensive work to be done in the areas of graphic design, video editing, and web development. Some of the key applications included in the suite are Photoshop, Acrobat, Premier Pro, After Effects, and Illustrator — these are all industry standard applications in the graphic design world.
Price: The Adobe Suite offers their software suite in varying tiers based on who the software is meant for. For an individual, all apps cost $52.99 monthly. For a business, this cost is increased to $79.99/month. For students and teachers, it is decreased to $19.99 monthly for the first year, then increases slowly the longer the license is renewed. These packages include a multitude of Adobe applications, including: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Lightroom CC, Adobe Premier Pro, Adobe XD, Adobe After Effects, and many more. For more information, visit the Adobe Store.
Usability: The Adobe Suite is not the simplest set of programs to use, however, once comfortable and proficient with the softwares, using this suite can greatly increase a team’s efficiency. For Isto, and for Stephen specifically, this is the case. An advantage of using this suite is that it provides a large variety of programs. Some programs, which are of importance to Isto, include: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects, and Adobe Premiere Pro. As mentioned by Stephen, Isto uses the Adobe Suite specifically for all their art development. This includes the design of their logo, the generation of all art assets used in their games, as well as the production and editing of marketing materials and videography.
Specific Applications of Importance:
- Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editor with a variety of uses such as editing and retouching images, editing digital video, rendering text, and basic 3D modeling.
- Adobe Illustrator is a design tool which uses vector graphics for increased precision and accuracy in the illustration process.
- Adobe Premiere Pro is a real-time video editing app which allows users to work on a timeline in order to add, edit, or delete portions of a previously recorded video clip.
- Adobe After Effects is used primarily for editing purposes with film and video materials following their production.
Atlassian Softwares — Jira, Bitbucket, Sourcetree
“It should be noted that Jira, Sourcetree and Bitbucket are all owned by the same company and so with one subscription you can actually get access to all of them.”
The Atlassian Softwares provide a set of programs which aim to improve a team’s workflow by assisting in managing tasks, projects, code, and other assets.
Price: The Atlassian Softwares package varies in price depending on which tools are chosen to be used, as well as the number of users they are being purchased for. Being a team of less than 10 individuals, Isto isforced to buy the package for 10 users. Jira costs $10/year for 10 users, and BitBucket (and Sourcetree) also costs $10/year for 10 users. For more information visit the Atlassian Store.
Usability: To Isto, such a tool could be easily replaced, however, that would mean a loss in their workflow speed and efficiency. Jira provides features such as task management, checking timelines, working in sprints, and assigning routine tasks to ensure the development timeline is consistently being met. Bitbucket is a repository. Being a game development company, this is a necessary feature as a reliable place to store their code is needed. Sourcetree is an additional feature which manages the repository. Again, being a development company, this is a necessary feature. Additionally, with having multiple developers on the team, having a repository manager allows Isto’s developers to easily change, push, pull, and merge commits and conflicts amongst their code versions to ease manual conflict management on the technical side.
Although the above mentioned tools are crucial to a business in the game development industry, founder and developer, Stephen, mentioned that it is still possible for the team to be successful without each of these tools. The only drawback to working without these specific tools would be a decrease in efficiency.
“Unity is definitely the most essential. Everything else you could probably get away with, it’d just be less efficient.”
For example, since both developers on the team were already familiar with the Unity Game Engine, this was an obvious choice over its competitor, the Unreal Game Engine. Although there are pros and cons to using either of these game engines, using the one the team was already familiar with allowed them to skip over about a year of time which would have been spent in a learning phase and jump directly into developing a game.
Some additional tech tools used by Isto include Squarespace for building their website, the Google Suite and Microsoft OneDrive for the sharing of documents and easy online collaboration, and Quickbooks for their accounting needs. Stephen mentioned that Google Hangouts is of extra importance as it provides features such as video call meetings and screen sharing, which are useful when attempting to debug or overcome issues in the programming environment or when trying to show each other progress made before merging their individual versions of the code. Additionally, when outsourcing, they also work with external individuals in using tools such as Middleware Software’s F-Mod plug-in — for audio and sound effects, or with the public using tools such as Apple TestFlight and Google Beta Testing, and Google Analytics.
Final Thoughts
Through my interview with Stephen, I was impressed to learn that the team was knowledgeable of a wide variety of readily available technological tools available to the team, regardless of their background being mostly in computer science and development. Similarly, they have also used many of these tools and are familiar with how they work and how to efficiently use them to their advantage. Furthermore, Isto has a small subset of absolutely crucial tools for success, and are also familiar with available alternatives for many of the tools they use or have explored.
If you could create any technological tool to help grow your business, what would it be? What would the tool’s main purpose be? How would this help your business grow?
“…Yeah probably our pipeline — I work a lot in the art, anything that could help build the art assets that we have… something that would help me generate art assets faster would be nice.”
If you could create any technological tool to help support your business in its current state, what would it be? What would the tool’s main purpose be? Why would such a tool be helpful?
“I don’t think there’s anything. I think everything we have is in already. If we needed it we would get it.”
“So Isto is working on a brand new title but it’s all hush hush. Haven’t really released anything about it right now.”
Stay Tuned!
