(cellphone ringing) - Hi, it's Doug. When I was really little, I used to watch my
sisters play a video game, called Pong, on our TV. Pong was one of the first video games you could play at home. It was pretty simple, just a couple of sticks hitting a dot back and forth on a screen. (Pong beeping) Now, Pong may not seem that exciting, but when video games were new, it seemed amazing to us. Someone named Zenon has a
question about video games, let's give Zenon a call now. (cellphone ringing) - Hi, Doug. - Hi, Zenon. - I have a question for you. How are video games made? - Ooh, that's a great question. When it comes to playing video games, it all seems so easy. You buy your favorite game, crash down on the couch, and boom, you're ready to play. In fact, it's so easy to download a game that it can be tempting to think that video games
are easy to make too, but nothing could be
further from the truth. Making a video game is a lot of work, and it takes a really long time. Check out this game, it took over 100 people eight years to create Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Now, not all games take as
long as Animal Crossing, but making a game definitely isn't easy. Before I say anything more, I'm curious, why do you think video
games are so hard to make? Now would be a good time to
pause the video and discuss. Okay, you ready? Well, I don't know how you answered, but you might've said that video games are hard to make because of all the different parts, and you would be right. Think about it, there
are power ups to collect, bosses to beat, entire
new worlds to explore, and that's only on the first level. It makes you wonder, "How
do game designers do it? "I mean, where do they even start?" Well, believe it or not, they start the same way you start when you write a story
at home or at school, with an idea. Meet, Shigeru Miyamoto. When Shigeru was little, he loved exploring the forests surrounding his village in Japan. One day, he discovered something, a cave. It was dark and mysterious, and he wondered what was inside. (upbeat digital music)
Were there imaginary creatures,
like elves or fairies, were they guarding treasure, did they have dungeons? When he grew up, Shigeru had an idea, what if he made a video
game about that cave and a treasure that was hidden inside? And what if that game had a
hero who wanted to find it? Shigeru's idea became
one of the most popular video games ever created, a game called The Legend of Zelda. Now, thinking up ideas
for characters and places is only the beginning, there's a lot more to think
about before a game is made, like how many levels will there be, and will there be enemies, what will they look like? Game designers write all of
their ideas in a huge book, which they give to special designers called concept artists. Concept artists love to draw, so they take all the game designers' ideas and decide what they're
going to look like. Some are in charge of
drawing the characters, like this one, while others are in charge
of drawing the worlds where the characters
will live, like these. Now, you may have noticed that these drawn characters and worlds aren't quite the same as
the characters and worlds you're used to seeing in a video game, that's because they're not done yet, they need to be put into the game, and that's the job of computer
artists, called 3D modelers. These artists spend weeks
turning the pictures into finished worlds and 3D characters that we see in games. But just because the
characters are in a game doesn't mean the game is ready to play, characters need to be told what to do, and that's where computer experts, called programmers, come in. Check out what this programmer is up to. It may look like she's typing a bunch of random letters and numbers, but she's actually giving
the computer directions with something called code. Her code will tell the
characters in the game what to do when a player presses a button, or moves the joystick, or picks something up,
or tries to beat a boss. There are millions of possibilities, and that means programmers have to write millions of lines of code. And when you write that much, there are bound to be mistakes, and those mistakes can turn
into what programmers call bugs or glitches, like this one, or this one. Though bugs can be funny, they can also ruin a game, so game makers have to fix them before we get to play, this is where testers come in. If you like video games,
you're gonna love this, testers get to play video games all day and get paid for it. But they're not playing video games to see how many Super
Mario levels they can pass, or to keep Minecraft monsters
from attacking their forts, they're playing games to fix them. You see, a tester's job
is to find all the bugs and parts of the game
that aren't working right. They take notes on what they found and they share those
notes with the programmers so they can fix the parts that are broken. After things are fixed, there are just a few
pieces of the puzzle left, like designing cool-looking
boxes to put the games in, and making ads to tell the world that the game is coming out. Once that's done, the time has arrived, from an idea in a designer's head, to artists' drawings,
to code on a computer, the video game is finally
ready for you to play. That's all for this week's question, thanks, Zenon, for asking it. Now, for the next episode, I reached into my question jar and picked out three
questions sent into me that I'm thinking about answering next. When this video's done playing, you'll get to vote on one. You can choose from, "How does a post office work?" "Why does poison ivy make us itchy?" Or, "Are mermaids real?" So submit your vote when the video's over, I wanna hear from all of you watching. There are mysteries all around us, stay curious and see you next week.
