Game Art Outsourcing: What Is It
Game Art Outsourcing is the process of hiring third party designers to create visual assets for video games. The art works involved include concept art, 2D sprites, 3D models, animations, and more. These assets define the visual style and aesthetic of a game, shaping its overall appeal and impacting player engagement.
Game development companies typically collaborate with specialized outsourcing firms or freelance designers with expertise in game art to access a diverse pool of skills and expertise that may not be available in-house. This approach allows studios to focus on core game development tasks while ensuring that the visual components of the game meet professional standards.
Outsourcing game art can be particularly beneficial for development projects requiring specific art styles or technical capabilities. Doing so can speed up production times, reduce costs, and increase quality to meet the expectations of modern gamers.
Reasons To Outsource Game Art Design
The role of art in gaming is huge. It’s one of three primary elements that make up video games, and may just be the most important as it creates the look and feel of the game. With such an important role to play in game development, many may feel apprehensive in getting outsiders involved. However, more and more game development companies are outsourcing. Here’s why!
Staff Augmentation
There’s a rising demand for game design artists and also a talent shortage for game art designers, forcing gaming companies to look offshore for opportunities. Among the many offshore outsourcing destinations, Philippines is one of the top choices, especially for design, with its wide pool of skilled talent.
By partnering with a design outsourcing company in the Philippines, game developers can solve their manpower shortage, giving them more elbow room to focus on developing and improving their game for faster production and time-to-market.
Cost Efficiency
Rather than hiring a game art designer in-house, it’s easier to outsource and let the game art outsourcing companies worry about the many costs associated with staffing. While they take care of the true cost of outsourcing, you get to leverage the lower labor costs, especially if they’re in a developing country.
And because your designers are outsourced, you can get only the coverage you need, whether that’s on a part-time basis, full-time, or project-based. This flexibility helps you optimize your spending, helping reduce costs and improve ROI.
Enhanced Vision
While game developers have a deep understanding of the technical aspects of game design, they cannot replace designers who have an eye for visuals. By outsourcing external talent, game development teams can gain a wider expertise, providing stronger imagination and unexpected artistic vision to video games.
With more hands and minds on deck, it’s also much easier to keep track of fresh trends in gaming, helping a gaming company adapt new best practices and staying on trend.
Reduced Risk
Game art outsourcing reduces risk by providing access to a pool of experienced designers who can deliver high-quality output and adhere to deadlines, minimizing the chances of subpar work and avoiding project delays. Additionally, outsourcing spreads the workload across multiple teams, reducing dependency on a single in-house team and mitigating the impact of any unforeseen issues.
Greater Access To Specialized Talent
Art design, especially in the context of game development, is a niche in creative design. Given this, it can be challenging to find professional designers who specialize in this specific area. And even within game art design, there are genre-specific niches, platform-specific niches, and even art-style niches that further complicate the hiring process for designers.
Rather than spend precious time looking for qualified designers who meet the requirements of the game you’re developing, it’s easier to outsource game art design and let an outsourcing company source the talent you need.
Faster Time-To-Market
When the problem of staff shortage in game development is addressed via outsourcing, turnaround times are shortened. This approach eliminates the delays associated with recruiting and onboarding full-time staff, allowing studios to quickly ramp up production.
Because a game art design studio brings expertise in various art styles and technical skills, each task is going to be handled by experienced professionals, leading to efficient and high-quality output.
Additionally, outsourcing enables parallel development, where different aspects of the game can progress simultaneously. While the in-house team focuses on core game mechanics and design, the outsourced team handles art production. This division of labor streamlines the development process, reducing bottlenecks and leading to a faster time-to-market for the game.
Flexibility and Scalability
With outsourced game art design teams, the burden of maintaining the staff falls onto the outsourcing partner as you’re only bound by the terms of your contract. This means that you have the flexibility to scale your design operations up or down as needed.
Outsourcing allows for rapid adjustment to changing project requirements or timelines without the long-term commitments and overhead costs associated with hiring full-time employees. Whether you need to quickly ramp up production for a major release or scale down during slower periods, outsourcing provides the flexibility to adapt efficiently.
Moreover, outsourcing partners can provide access to a broad range of skill sets and expertise that might be difficult to maintain in-house. This flexibility ensures that you can bring in the right talent for specific phases of your project, from initial concept art to final animations and visual effects.
By leveraging outsourced teams, game developers can maintain a lean internal structure while still having the capacity to handle large-scale or highly specialized tasks, ultimately leading to more efficient project management and resource allocation.
Utilize The Latest Technologies
Game art outsourcing allows for the use of specialized technologies through outsourcing partners, helping to maintain competitiveness.
Because these design outsourcing companies employ high end software for 3D modeling processes, which might include production against quality textures or any other forms required during the development phase, game developers can create high quality assets, which involve models that are more realistic or detailed than would be possible using traditional techniques among other things.
The use of this advanced technology makes it possible to produce highly detailed realistic looking game assets, meeting the expectations of gamers and better positioning the game in a highly competitive market.
Outsource Game Art To The Philippines
Designing concept art, 2D sprites, and 3D models is no walk in the park. Finding a good designer to create amazing game art requires a unique blend of artistic talent, technical skills, and familiarity with specialized software, which can be incredibly challenging in a highly competitive market with talent shortage.
This is where outsourcing to the Philippines comes in. With a reputation for providing custom creative design solutions to brands all over the world, KDCI Outsourcing can provide you offshore game art designers in the Philippines who can help turn your ideas into a beautiful game.
Learn more about gaming outsourcing. Contact us today!
