Development

Video games are made by game developers, who used to do this as individuals or small teams in the 80's. Now, development commonly requires a large team consisting of designers, graphic designers and other artists, programmers, sound designers, musicians, and other technicians; all of which are managed by producers. The visionary for any game may come from any of the roles outlined. Development by committee rarely works.

Video games are developing fast in all areas, but the problem is of cost, and how developers intend to keep the costs low enough to attract publisher investment. Most video game console development teams number anywhere from 20 to 50 people, with some teams exceeding 100. The average team size as well as the average development time of a game have grown along with the size of the industry and the technology involved in creating games. This has led to regular occurrences of missed deadlines and unfinished products; Duke Nukem Forever is the quintessential example of these problems.

Modifications

Games running on a PC are often designed with end-user modifications in mind, and this consequently allows modern computer games to be modified by gamers without much difficulty. These mods can add an extra dimension of replayability and interest. The Internet provides an inexpensive medium to promote and distribute mods, and they have become an increasingly important factor in the commercial success of some games. Developers such as id, Valve, Crytek, Epic and Blizzard Entertainment ship their games with the very development tools used to make the game in the first place, along with documentation to assist mod developers, which allows for the kind of success seen by popular mods such as Counter-Strike.

Cheats

Cheating in computer games may involve cheat codes implemented by the game developers for playtesting, modification of game code by third parties (by either cheat cartridge hardware or a software trainer), or players exploiting a software glitch.

Cheats usually make the game easier by providing an unlimited amount of some resource (lives, health or ammunition for example) but might provide an unusual or amusing feature, like reversed colors in a game.

Cheat codes usually are found on websites all over the internet. Cheats can be found for almost any game on almost any platform.

Glitches

Software errors not detected by software testers during development can find their way into released versions of computer and video games. This may happen because the glitch only occurs under unusual circumstances in the game, was deemed too minor to correct, or because the game development was hurried to meet a publication deadline.

Glitches can range from minor graphical errors to serious bugs that can delete saved data or cause the game to malfunction.

Glitches in games for home computers, and now in consoles like the Xbox 360, PS3, and the Wii, may be later corrected if the developers release a patch.