Cross-platform gaming is currently booming, and the benefits are well known to the gaming public. However, it is rarely discussed in the development community. More and more games are developed this way, for example, Fortnite or Call of Duty. With cross-platform games, players don’t have to choose which device they want to play the game on and can easily play with their friends. Cross-platform games have benefits for game developers too. In this article, we will talk about game porting in general and take a look at the game porting trends and challenges for 2022.
What Is Game Porting?
Game porting is the process of converting a video game that’s suitable for one platform becomes suitable for another one too. The video game should run on different platforms, match their , and use their technical capabilities accordingly after the process of porting. In general, there are two different types of ports:
- Porting games to different platforms. This type of porting focuses on porting games to different platforms. For example, a game can be ported from iOS to Android, Mac to Windows, or a browser game can be ported to PC.
- Porting development technologies. This type of porting focuses on porting games to another engine using the SDK. For example, you can port a game from HTML5 to Unity or from one game engine to another.
The quality of ported video games can vary. Some ported games run worse than the original due to poor optimization, while others are considered better than the originals due to various factors. Porting of a video game can be done by a small team in just a few months. In some cases, it can also take a year or more.
PC gamers cannot play games that were only released for consoles. To make a PC game playable on other platforms, you must change technical specifications to make it compatible. The process of game porting includes many steps that are the same in most cases. Porting video games has many benefits and is important, which we will cover in the following.
The Importance of Game Porting
Before we are going to dive into the process of game porting and its greatest challenges, let’s take a look at the importance and reasons for game porting. The process can take a lot of time and effort, but the benefits are worth it.
- Cost efficiency: Writing scripts is a time-consuming process for developers and developing companies. So, it’s much more efficient and cost-efficient to use game porting and port a game to a new platform than to develop a new game from scratch. Video game porting is a great way to expand a great game to reach a larger audience.
- Reach a wider audience: Video game porting helps game developers achieve a wider awareness and more potential users. You will be able to get even more downloads and ratings since your game will be available on various devices. You can reach more players worldwide, and the revenues will increase.
- Increase the average session duration: By porting a game, players can enjoy their favorite games on multiple platforms and from any location or device. You can encourage users to keep playing, increase the session duration, and improve other user engagement metrics. Those metrics can help you to determine whether your gameplay goals are being met.
- Keep the focus on upcoming games: If you choose a instead of doing the porting by yourself, you can create a cross-platform game really quickly and focus on developing new games instead. You can find many high-quality outsourcing companies out there, and sometimes it’s much more convenient to outsource your project to a game porting company.
- Increase your revenue: Games for multiple platforms are downloaded more often and become more widespread. Game porting can increase your revenue because you can reach more players worldwide.
Top Challenges of Video Game Porting
Video game porting comes with some challenges. Some of them can be avoided by following the main principles of game porting. Game porting and optimizing a game for any console or system requires a lot of knowledge, experience, and skill. If you have only little or no experience in game porting at all, you should choose a game porting company with experts.
Code Base Optimization
Usually, a game’s code base is optimized for a specific platform. For example, the target platform for small indie development teams is often the PC. If such indie developers want to port their video games to a console, it takes extra effort. The code needs to be optimized and rewritten to work with the processors and processes of the target hardware. Memory usage, rendering pipeline, graphics processors, and much more should be considered.
Maintaining the Balance Between Graphics And Performance
Performance optimization is one of the most important aspects of porting games. The process of game porting gets more difficult the greater the hardware difference between platforms.
For example, if the target platform’s hardware is less powerful, you can reduce the graphics of your game. If it’s more powerful than the original platform, you will need to improve the graphics. This is a more challenging task.
Using Your Own Game Engine
Often game developers create their custom game engines, so they can optimize the gameplay individually, ensure a high platform performance, and also simplify the maintenance process. In this case, you have to keep in mind that porting a game to a platform for which they were not originally created is quite difficult. If the custom engine was not developed with portability in mind, some parts have to be rewritten. In some cases, the whole engine has to be redeveloped.
Dealing With Differences In Controls
Also, the differences in controls between the platforms should be considered. Especially when porting from PCs to mobile devices, this issue is important. PC games are controlled with a mouse and keyboard. They have a higher level of accuracy than gamepads. Controls on the touchscreen are designed in such a way that they do not interfere with gameplay. Mapping keyboard keys to the controller inputs are not always a good idea and may take longer to find a solution.
Advertising Your Cross-platform Game
Publishing a game on a specific platform, the primary audience will be the users of the platform. You should locate with popular bloggers, network with the gaming community, and create individual promotional materials for each specific platform. For small studios, publishing games for multiple platforms can be a problem because they don’t have enough staff to promote them.
Achieving Specific Platform Features
Many features of the console SDK are difficult to port to the PC. For example, they may not provide access to hardware timers or a good audio API. These features are usually not available on the PC. To access these features, you must use other methods.
Compliance with the terms and conditions of each game store
A difficult part of video game porting is publishing in each game store. Your games have to meet all the requirements of each game store. Game stores often require an official certificate for the country where you want to distribute it. Also, insurance is often required in case of licensing problems.
CPU Utility
The efficient use of resources, such as CPU or other memory, is extremely important when it comes to game porting. Often, developers write lengthy scripts or codes that are difficult to understand and can affect performance negatively. Latency must be clearly ruled out and tested. Unnecessary delays can be an unpleasant experience for the player. You have to choose the right tools, languages, and technologies to ensure that performance is not affected significantly.
Finding The Right Team
Experienced developers are very important for game porting. They can help you to understand the pitfalls and peculiarities you are not familiar with and how to improve the porting process. Your team should be well-versed in porting to each of the platforms you plan to publish your game on.
Conclusion
It is crucial to keep all the features of the original version, including textures, sound effects, and polygon formats, when it comes to game porting. To ensure that players can’t tell the difference between the ported game and the original, these things need to be ported correctly. Ensuring seamless functionality is not easy and requires significant effort. Porting a game is worth it and could make a game more popular worldwide. You have to make sure to have the right team and work with experts in game porting.