Game development is no longer just a one-man show – or even a one-studio spectacle. The seismic size of games these days means that the crafting of fantastical, virtual realms is easily a multi-team endeavour.
Fortunately, developers can turn to partners, such as external developers, to realise their most ambitious projects. One rapidly growing model is external development, which sees a studio turn to one or more companies to assist with game creation. In particular, a specific flavour of external development is end-to-end development, which sees an external company oversee an entire segment of a project.
“End-to-end is, in a nutshell, when an external developer takes on a large portion, or the whole pipeline, of the game development process,” says Mike Sherak, Virtuos’ assistant director of co-development success. “This can include concept, model, rigging, animation, VFX, lighting, character animation delivered in-engine, and more.”
