Please someone tell me why it take years to develop a game

Damien · Aug 12, 2016

I think that time frame is exaggerated. The only reason why I think that is because of Rockstar, I really don't know how long other games take. Others have told me that it takes years to make these massive open world games, and I think that it should take the same amount of time as something like a real movie.

Avengers didn't take years to make, they film for like 6 to 9 months or something like that. Does anyone know specifics as to why games take so long to develop?

Steamroller · Aug 12, 2016

Your notion about the timeframe of game development is, in part, wrong. There are games that are developed in record time, less than 24 hours. Now, for AAA budget games, the length of time may depends on the size of the dev team and other kind of decisions that
could delay the steady work over the game.

rz3300 · Aug 12, 2016

I really have no idea about the time it takes to develop a game, but I would imagine that it varies significant depending on whether it is a new game or a continuation. Either way, though, there are certainly a lot that goes on behind the scenes that we do not know about, and there has to be a reason why they charge sixty dollars for these things...they are expensive to make. It does me interested to learn a little more about it, though, so thank you for sharing.

AnonLu · Aug 14, 2016

Movies are a million times easier to make than games. There is just so much to account for while developing any game.

pwarbi · Aug 31, 2016

While it does seem to be true that for some companies it takes them years to develop a game, Rockstar being the main culprits, for companies such as EA Sports they seem to be able to churn them out on a pretty quick turn around. When you look at the games they produce like FIFA, they are out every 12 months so I think a lot is going to depend on the type of games being made more than anything.

Games like GTA will need a lot more coding and development work on them than a sports game for example, and a lot is also going to depend on the size of the company behind the games as well don't forget. While Rockstar will have a lot of people working on a game, they won't be able to match the amount of people that a company such as EA will be able to employ.

fcuco · Sep 2, 2016

Movies start filming after pre production is ready, the script is in place, the casting done, the locations were scouted, and everybody is ready, if you were to count the time for all those things to occur and not just the filming and the special effects post production and editing you will find that movies also take years to make.

For a game you have to do all that (except the locations parts, obviously) and add to that the creation of the engine and an insane amount of testing and bug fixes. For a movie you just find a place and shoot the thing, for something like GTA, everything that you see, each graffiti on the wall, puddle of water on the street, building, traffic sign and everything else was carefully created and placed by a designer. They basically build an entire city.

pwarbi · Sep 2, 2016

In some ways I do think that making a game can be compared to making a movie, they both need locations, a script, characters amongst other things, but like you say @fcuco, with a game all of those things have to be built from scratch so it is going to take a lot of time to build and code. If your making a movie it's easier to take a person, stand them outside of a building and tell them to read from a script. With a game, that person and that building needs to be made, before the script can even be read and all of that takes time.

Blue Betta · Sep 2, 2016

fcuco. that's pretty much what I've heard. There's the voice acting, which takes time if you think about all the different things all the characters say in different situations, the de-bugging every section, and, of course, the developers or the companies making last-minute changes. Some of these are to the story, or it's because there's a budget issue, or any number of things, and that means any changes have to be de-bugged and edited again, submitted for approval, revised, etc. Personally, I would rather wait for a game to be ready, with all the extras, than for it to come out early and realize that it's missing pieces.

pwarbi · Sep 3, 2016

Blue Betta said:
fcuco. that's pretty much what I've heard. There's the voice acting, which takes time if you think about all the different things all the characters say in different situations, the de-bugging every section, and, of course, the developers or the companies making last-minute changes. Some of these are to the story, or it's because there's a budget issue, or any number of things, and that means any changes have to be de-bugged and edited again, submitted for approval, revised, etc. Personally, I would rather wait for a game to be ready, with all the extras, than for it to come out early and realize that it's missing pieces.

Games do tend to be rushed through these days more than ever before, just so they can hit the deadline that they have originally published. If a game isn't ready, they now bring it out anyway and then a couple of day later release a massive patch update to fix the issues and I don't get that. If a game isn't ready, just say it's not going to be ready and push the date back. That might cause a few complaints, but I'd rather play a finished game than one that isn't ready and I think most gamers would.

Or better still, don't announce a release date until the game is 99% complete, that way the publisher will know they will be able to make that deadline as the game is close to finished.

fcuco · Sep 4, 2016

pwarbi said:
In some ways I do think that making a game can be compared to making a movie, they both need locations, a script, characters amongst other things, but like you say @fcuco, with a game all of those things have to be built from scratch so it is going to take a lot of time to build and code. If your making a movie it's easier to take a person, stand them outside of a building and tell them to read from a script. With a game, that person and that building needs to be made, before the script can even be read and all of that takes time.

Some movies like the Star Wars prequels have entire sets built with huge cities in the background that also have to be created from scratch, the difference is that you only need a view of those buildings, you will never have to see them from a very close distance and they only have a few minutes or even seconds of screen time, the buildings in something like GTA have to be modeled from the ground up, the textures have to be good enough to work even when you are very close and have to be visible from all angles since you can walk around then and even enter some of them. Imagine doing that for each and every building in that game, not to mention other infrastructure like bridges.

fcuco · Sep 4, 2016

Blue Betta said:
fcuco. that's pretty much what I've heard. There's the voice acting, which takes time if you think about all the different things all the characters say in different situations, the de-bugging every section, and, of course, the developers or the companies making last-minute changes. Some of these are to the story, or it's because there's a budget issue, or any number of things, and that means any changes have to be de-bugged and edited again, submitted for approval, revised, etc. Personally, I would rather wait for a game to be ready, with all the extras, than for it to come out early and realize that it's missing pieces.

They have to do all this before they enter the testing and quality assurance phase of the whole thing, which is basically playing the game non sop following every possible story line, testing each path, testing the AI and making sure there is no way for the player to get stuck if something fails. Imagine doing that on non linear games that have many outcomes like GTA.

Avex · Nov 20, 2016

Time frame also highly depends on what kind of game it is and how large of a team they have working on it. I can make a simple turn based game in just over a day including any distractions/breaks I take.

When it comes to a large game such as WoW, which took I think roughly 5 years to make, it'll take a lot longer.
The amount of graphic design, story development, polishing etc it takes is huge.
That's the main reason you don't see indie game developers making massive games that often. They don't have the team, funds or resources to do so - and if they did it'd take them a hell of a lot longer than your average AAA studio.

missionreport · May 2, 2017

I'm no expert, but I'm thinking it can also be compared to publishing a book and creating a movie. In book creation, you need to sell your idea to a publisher first, since certain assessments need to be made and there's the thing called marketability. So I guess the same goes with games, the project needs to be deemed profitable before they get the budget. Now, why it takes even longer to create is because it's just like when you're making a movie. There's a script, a strong storyline, so there has to be a writer and then there's a director, a camera director. Then there's the CGI part, the musical composition and the voice acting. So it's a huge budget and that's why it takes years in the making.

SunnysideUP · May 4, 2017

missionreport said:
In book creation, you need to sell your idea to a publisher first, since certain assessments need to be made and there's the thing called marketability. So I guess the same goes with games, the project needs to be deemed profitable before they get the budget.

That seems to be the case with a lot of games. Good ideas can come up and be put in production by a game development company, but become sidetracked with more menial things, commercial issues like how wide a spectrum of gamers the project-game is going to reach and whether adding a size cup to a female character will increase popularity.
Many silly games are put in production based only on marketing tactics and zero novelty in game design. For that same reason Konami no longer produces platform Castlevania games for consoles, but Pachinko slot machines instead, because they know that in Japan it's going to be certain profit to invest in arcade/slot machines rather than consoles.
Then there's alpha testing, but by the time they get to that half the game is set, with a solid game engine. Often they cut the storylines short at this point to add DLCs later on.

izacuson · May 9, 2017

It's always about quality over quantity. The longer the game has been in development, the better delivery it will send. Remember Final Fantasy 15? Do you know why the game has remarkable reviews? Because the game was under development for 10 years. Final Fantasy 15 was hands down, the most beautiful Final Fantasy project out of all the other projects from Square Enix. To me, it is a great idea to delay some of their projects, so they can add more content for the buyers so they can fully enjoy what they have bought.

EarlAlexander · May 21, 2017

It takes a very long time to prepare a game because of the features in store for the app, the game may have several features that will enable it work depending on the gadget it will be working on which is one of the reason it take a very long time to make an app or game, including the graphics which is also needed to make the game colourful and the camera, so setting all this will make it very hard to make an app or game.

Alanmwp · May 24, 2017

Personally I've always thought about that. You begin to question a company when they announce a release for a particular game, then manage to prolong the date for what seems like forever. After a while, it becomes quite understandable. Even after a release of a game, for some games you begin to notice glitches, bugs, lag times that can become quite annoying at times. I can only imagine if a company releases a game without thoroughly checking the game, how much it could damage a company's reputation. So in the end, I would rather them take the extra time to make a good product then a piece of junk so to speak! :relaxed:

tiasmai · May 25, 2017

Games take 2-5 years to make. There is so much that goes into that stuff. I don't understand how someone could spend 5 years doing tedious work like that. I guess it takes a certain kind of person with lots of patience to do that. I would NOT be able to program and test video games. I always see the ads for video game testers and I wonder how long those guys/gals have to sit there and do the testing. UCLA has a summer tech camp that allows kids to program games. We may try it this year. I think there may be a waiting list, though.

Pady · Jun 3, 2017

I am playing many games from many years. But I don't know why does it take too much time to develope a game. It is really interesting post.

Makef0rt · Jun 7, 2017

There might be many reasons why developers might take years to release a certain title.

Few of those could be:

1. Working on too many projects at the same time
2. Building up the hype with long wait and tease trailers
3. Polishing the game and making it really good

Nowadays, I would say, mostly the first 2 are the reason behind most titles taking time to get out.

For the third part, I can not mention any company in specific other than CDPR and Witcher 3. They surely took their time with it, but in the end they created an amazing game and all the time we have waited for it was actually good. They could have easily rushed it, but that could have ended up catastrophic. Witcher 3 did have its bugs and issues at start, but those were quickly fixed. Can't say that many other companies work that hard on their titles. Just look at the CyberPunk. It was announced long time ago, still in development.

Please someone tell me why it take years to develop a game

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