What You Would Need to Know Before Hiring Unity Game Developer

The number of game lovers all over the globe counts millions of people. The game development industry is rapidly growing, updating, and upgrading the existing technologies and offers.

Mobile game development continues to expand and keeps up with desktop versions, raving with a tremendous number of innovations such as VR, HD graphics, amazing sound and visual effects, ultra-high loading speed, etc. Unlike other mobile applications, game development differs a lot and requires enough additional expertise to create game graphics, backgrounds, and animation with 2D and 3D effects on the graphical user interface. Nowadays, these advanced features have already become essential to successful game development. Therefore, in order to launch a competitive video game in 2021, it is vital to choose a high-class game development specialist with a creative working approach and experience.

The right game engine

But before that, one of the first and the most important stages as preparing for a game development project is choosing a proper game engine. If you pick a game engine that doesn’t match your vision or doesn’t have features essential for your project idea, working with this one and trying to reach the impossible might take a long time or you will have to start from scratch trying other platforms. Be mindful of that.

So which one to choose?

The most known game development engine in the market today is the unity which holds almost a half of the market share that covers over 600 million users worldwide.

Why Unity?

It is used in game development for desktops and game consoles, mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. This variety explains why game studios are always in search of seasoned and capable Unity game developers to create numerous games for various devices and purposes on this platform.

More and more professional game developers prefer this engine for the convenience of developing the whole game in one place. Unity is known for its integrated functionality, a wide range of available solutions and features, and quick response. A game builder can easily assemble assets and pictures into complex environments and scenes, proceed with visual, audio effects and lighting, and even create animations in few clicks which significantly speeds the development process up and helps programmers to concentrate on the project itself instead of spending hours on changing various simpler engines.

Unity Game Developers

Unity game developers prove to be the most skillful experts with a wide range of features that this engine can offer.

The role of such a developer is relatively new. Unity Development is an umbrella term for many types of creators. Just like the engine itself, individuals doing this job will vary in how they work and what they bring to the table.

For example, some Unity Developers focus solely on the artistic side and creativity. Others - purely on code. The difficult task here is to find those somewhere in the middle, which know how to do a little bit of everything—even building tools to help their more singularly focused cohorts.

How to search for one? It is important to look at the Unity Dev role from a higher level to identify the general skills that benefit virtually everyone on this career path.

Consider this comprehensive guide to game development features and trends that will help you to find and hire a game developer with a strong experience and Unity knowledge.

Questions to ask about your Unity game developer

1. Knowledge of the particular game Genre and Trends

The best developer is the most experienced one who keeps his eye on the latest updates in the industry. Also, there are established genres such as first-person shooters, side scrollers, puzzle games, etc. For one person it is hardly possible to be an expert in all genres. Therefore, usually, game programmers choose one or two genres and grow with them. Do not hesitate to ask your game development company for the right specialist.

2. Programming

Even though Unity is known for being also non-programmer friendly, ultimately there is no way around the fact that to create more complex projects, developers do need to how to code in C#.

Creating systems that are easy to reuse and repurpose, not just within one project but across many, makes a programmer more efficient and agile. You never want to spend time reinventing the wheel if you can avoid it.

Again, depends on your needs. But keep in mind that using just the Unity engine requires less expertise than code development. With a more skillful professional, a small project has the potential to grow amazingly.

3. Check Familiarity and Experiences with Unity Editor

Unity Editor is an amalgamation of feature-rich toolsets, and your Unity game developer must have a familiarity of the toolsets available in it.

Art & Design Tools

Graphics Rendering Engines Your Unity game designers and programmers must accustom to various graphics rendering engines/tools like real-time rendering engines, native graphics APIs, and top-performing engines. Based on what you need, make sure your Unity game developer knows well the necessary tools as Timeline Tool for storytelling, Cinemachine suite for cinematic content development, post-processing Fx for color grading and effects, 2D/3D animation tools like Maya, level design, and world-building tools with high fidelity, and lighting tools.

Expertise on Multiple Platforms Unity supports more than four dozens platforms belong to desktops, web, mobiles, console, TV, and VR platforms, etc. Therefore, your Unity Game Developers should have proficiencies on the multiple platforms with their programming, designing, hardware, OS, and integration expertise.

Live-Ops Analytics Abilities

Unity has a complete set of live-operation features such as heat-maps, performance monitoring, and game & player analytics, so your developers should be familiar with these analytics tools to get access to critical data to enhance the game economy and playing experiences.

Matching all the details of the desired game with the professional opportunities of the game development team while using the Unity engine is the key to a collaborative and faster working process.

4. Agility and creativity in game concepts

The main difference between business and gaming needs is that the game should be fun and captivating. Otherwise, it will not have success, especially for a long time. Thus, top mobile game developers put their efforts not only in technical aspects but in entertaining and educating aspects as well. The most common way to understand the needs of gamers is to provide a group of them with so-called prototypes of the future game and gather feedback to improve/change/delete a particular part.

Does your game developer do that? Can they give recommendations on how to engage the audience better? These are good questions to ask before starting the work.

5. A focus on the future

The final skill in this list is the one that too few developers are cultivating. It’s an extremely exciting time to be a Unity developer, as with practically every new release Unity dictates what's possible for modern game engines. Several of these new features are still in preview, but already in high demand. Some of the main new features that Unity developers should be deep-diving into in 2020-2021 are:

• Scriptable Render Pipelines (and the HDRP and LWRP templates)
• The Entity Component System (ECS)

Unity is quite open and has its development plans with an accessible roadmap to the public, and often reveals new features long before they are fully released in the editor. It is a good habit for Unity developers to stay abreast of what is to come in the engine by regularly checking the official blog, YouTube channel, and the roadmap itself.

Concluding thoughts

By hiring an experienced, renowned software development company with a strong portfolio of launched products, you can be sure of getting the best quality and the most qualified specialists. And by working with a remote highly qualified development team, you can get the greatest value for your money.

Utah Tech Labs is an experienced and profound company that can provide exceptional assistance in game development at any stage of your project. Starting game creation from scratch or joining at a particular stage of development, the dedicated Utah Tech Labs expert team can help you. Our designers and game app developers are here to help you research, find the best solutions, launch your project shortly with high quality, and give you advice whenever you need it.

Feel free to get in touch with us any time by email or phone, and we’ll turn your good ideas into brilliant games.