How is a game made? Let us step inside a game studio and meet the team. Game studios rely on teams of people to make games. The teams include designers, programmers and artists. Making a modern game is a job for people who work together. Let us look at who does what.

Each person on the team has a job. Let us meet them one by one. Game designers plan how a game is played. Level designers build the places and levels that players play through. Programmers do the technical work that makes a game's ideas work. Writers help make a game's story and characters. Artists make the pictures in a game.

Animators make the characters and objects in a game move. A game has sound effects and music, and people on the team work on them. Game testers check a game for bugs and other problems while it is being made. Designers have people play a game. Then they use what they learn to change it.

Before a team builds a whole game, it can build a prototype. A prototype is a simple early version of a game. A team builds one to see if an idea works. To build the game, a team uses a game engine. A game engine is a software platform with the tools a team uses. Unity is a game engine used to make both 2D and 3D games.

You do not need a big studio to start. Easy coding tools let kids and other beginners make their own games. Construct 3 is a tool that runs in a web browser. It lets them make 2D games without programming. Games are played on many kinds of machines, such as computers, game consoles and phones. Which one do you play on?

Now let us look back at the first games. In 1958, a scientist at a laboratory in New York helped make Tennis for Two. It was an early electronic game that visitors could play. Spacewar!, made at MIT in the early 1960s, is one of the earliest video games for a digital computer. Then came Pong.

Atari put out the arcade game Pong in 1972. An Atari engineer named Allan Alcorn built it after his boss asked for a simple game based on Ping-Pong. Pong was a simple game with two paddles and a ball. The first Pong machine, in a Sunnyvale, California, bar, stopped working. It was full of quarters.

Now let us see how games came into homes. The Magnavox Odyssey was the first home video game console. Atari sold a home version of Pong through Sears, a big store chain. Some game systems let players switch games by putting in a cartridge. The Atari 2600, put out in 1977, played games stored on cartridges.

Words to know

• prototype: early version
• engine: building tools
• animators: movement makers
• cartridge: game holder
• testers: game checkers

The short version

Video games are made by teams. Designers plan how a game is played, programmers do the technical work, artists make the pictures and animators make things move. Teams build a prototype to see if an idea works, and use a game engine as their toolbox.

Quick facts

• Game studios rely on teams of designers, programmers and artists to make video games.
• A prototype is a simple early version of a game that a team builds to see if an idea works.
• A game engine is a software platform with the tools a team uses to build a video game.
• Atari released the arcade game Pong in 1972.
• Construct 3 runs in a web browser and lets beginners make 2D games without programming.