Why Are Games Taking So Long To Develop? - Luke Reacts

Summary

In this video, Ryan Manley explores the reasons behind the increased development time and costs of modern video games compared to the early 2000s. He discusses factors like inflation, higher quality standards, and the evolution of technology. Manley also touches on the inefficiencies of large game studios, suggesting that streamlined teams and agile methodologies could improve the process. He uses examples like Fallout New Vegas and The Witcher 3 to illustrate the contrast in production values and the impact on game budgets.

Takeaways

• 💵 Inflation and increased cost of living have led to higher game development budgets to compensate staff, even though their real purchasing power may not have increased.
• 🚀 Modern games like The Witcher 3 and Mass Effect Andromeda cost tens of millions to produce, reflecting the higher standards and expectations in the industry.
• 🏗️ The complexity and quality of game assets have increased significantly, requiring larger teams and more specialized skills, thus extending development times.
• 📏 Games from the early 2000s, such as Fallout New Vegas, had simpler landscapes and assets, allowing quicker development compared to today's standards.
• 🔍 Players in the past were more tolerant of lower quality textures and assets, whereas modern gamers expect high-fidelity graphics and details.
• 💸 The gaming audience is still willing to pay full price for games, even if they have a smaller scope, as long as the quality is high.
• 📈 The rise in technology has led to higher quality standards across all aspects of game development, including animation and voice acting.
• 👨‍💼 Corporate bloat in larger studios can lead to inefficiencies and delays, with teams being too large and processes becoming overly bureaucratic.
• 🔄 The traditional pipeline with multiple handoffs between specialized teams can cause delays and require repeated revisions, impacting the final product.
• 🔧 Agile methodologies and cross-functional teams can lead to more efficient development processes, reducing the time and resources needed for game production.

Q & A

Why do games take longer to make now compared to the early 2000s?

Games take longer to make now due to increased quality standards, larger development teams, higher costs of production, and inflationary pressures.

What is an example of a game that was produced quickly in the past?

Fallout New Vegas is an example of a game that was produced quickly, with a development timeline of 18 months.

How has the level of detail in game environments changed from 2010 to now?

The level of detail in game environments has significantly increased, with modern games requiring more complex architecture, textures, and assets compared to the simpler designs of 2010.

What is one reason why games could be made quickly in the past?

Games could be made quickly in the past because they used simpler architecture, smaller maps, and lower quality assets that were easier and faster to produce.

What is the impact of inflation on game development costs?

Inflation has increased the cost of production, meaning that games like The Witcher 3, which cost $80 million to make, would likely cost $200 to $300 million to produce with today's standards.

How has the size of development teams changed over time?

Development teams have grown significantly larger to accommodate the increased quality and complexity of modern games.

What is the role of corporate bloat in the game development process?

Corporate bloat can lead to inefficiencies and delays in the development process due to large teams and multiple layers of approval.

How does the approach of CD Projekt Red differ from traditional corporate structures?

CD Projekt Red uses a more agile approach by having cross-functional teams with representatives from each discipline, which allows for faster and more efficient development.

What is the consequence of sending games to market before they are fully polished?

Sending games to market before they are fully polished can result in bugs, glitches, and broken features that may not be fixed if the development timeline is tight.

Why might some games still have bugs and issues despite having a large development team?

Even with a large team, the complexity of modern games and the inefficiencies of the development pipeline can lead to bugs and issues that are not caught before release.

How does the expectation for quality in games today differ from that of the past?

The expectation for quality in games today is much higher, with demands for high-quality assets, animations, voice acting, and motion capture that were not as prevalent or sophisticated in the past.

Outlines

00:00

🎮 Why Are Modern Games Taking Longer to Make?

The speaker discusses why video games today take much longer and cost significantly more to produce compared to the early 2000s and 2010s. They mention factors like inflation, which has increased labor costs, and the heightened expectations for quality in modern games. Comparing older games like *Fallout: New Vegas*, the speaker highlights simpler game designs, smaller maps, and the reuse of assets, which allowed for quicker production. Today’s games require much higher detail, resulting in larger teams, higher costs, and longer development times.

05:01

🏢 Corporate Bloat and Team Inefficiency in Game Development

The speaker critiques the inefficiency in large game studios, attributing delays in game development to corporate bloat. They draw comparisons to companies like Activision Blizzard and Twitter, where staff reductions resulted in sustained or improved output. The example of teams working in silos—each specializing in one task—demonstrates how the complex pipeline leads to back-and-forth revisions, wasting time and resources. CD Projekt Red is praised for its more efficient structure, where interdisciplinary teams work together, minimizing delays caused by excessive hand-offs between departments.

10:03

⏳ The Challenge of Time Constraints and the Emergence of Bugs

In this section, the speaker explores how time constraints in game development lead to rushed production, resulting in bugs and unfinished features. They describe how iterative back-and-forth processes burn time and money, leading to games being pushed out before issues are fully resolved. This is cited as a primary reason why modern games frequently have bugs or missing features that get addressed later through patches. An example from *Starfield* is mentioned, where a paid mod had a persistent gun reloading issue that went unresolved for months, illustrating how time pressures impact game quality.

🔧 Streamlined Development vs Bureaucratic Structures

The speaker contrasts efficient game development approaches with the more bureaucratic systems found in large corporations. While large structures may be necessary in industries like real estate for legal and financial accuracy, they argue that in game development, these layers slow down production without improving quality. The speaker praises more streamlined approaches, like those used in *Phantom Liberty*, where cross-disciplinary teams can work faster and avoid the repetitive delays seen in large-scale corporate environments.

Keywords

💡Inflationary pressures

Inflationary pressures refer to the economic force that causes an increase in the cost of goods and services over time, which in turn affects wages and production costs. In the context of the video, it's mentioned as a factor contributing to the higher budgets required for game development today compared to the early 2000s. The script cites how inflation has made it more expensive to compensate developers, thus increasing the overall budget for game production.

💡Quality standards

Quality standards in the video pertain to the level of excellence expected in modern video games, including graphics, gameplay, and narrative. The script discusses how these standards have risen significantly since the early 2000s, requiring more resources and time for development. For instance, the comparison between the simplicity of Fallout New Vegas' landscape and the detailed expectations of today's gamers illustrates the increased quality standards.

💡Production value

Production value refers to the quality and expense of a game's production, which includes aspects like animation, voice acting, and overall design. The video highlights that modern games have higher production values due to advancements in technology and consumer expectations. The script contrasts older games with contemporary ones, noting the increased effort and resources required for current titles.

💡Corporate bloat

Corporate bloat is a term used in the video to describe the inefficiency and excess that can occur in large organizations, leading to unnecessary delays and increased costs. The script suggests that some game development studios have become bloated, with too many employees and layers of management, which slows down the development process and contributes to the longer time frames for game production.

💡Agile methodology

Agile methodology is a project management approach that emphasizes flexibility, collaboration, and iterative progress. In the video, it's mentioned as a potential solution to the inefficiencies caused by corporate bloat. The script praises CD Projekt Red's approach, which involves cross-functional teams that can quickly address issues and move projects forward without the need for extensive bureaucratic approval processes.

💡Motion capture

Motion capture, or mocap, is a technology used in game development to record and replicate human movements, creating more realistic animations. The video notes that motion capture is now an expected feature in modern games, contributing to the higher production values and, consequently, the increased time and cost of development.

💡Voice acting

Voice acting is the art of performing voice-overs for characters in games, adding depth and emotion to the gaming experience. The script mentions that high-quality voice acting is now a standard expectation in video games, which raises the bar for game developers and contributes to the longer development times and higher budgets.

💡Reused assets

Reused assets refer to game elements, such as textures, models, or sounds, that are used across different projects or within the same project to save time and resources. The video contrasts the use of reused assets in older games like Fallout New Vegas with the more unique and detailed assets required in modern games, which increases development time and cost.

💡Development pipeline

The development pipeline in game production is the series of stages a game goes through from concept to completion, including design, building, texturing, lighting, and animation. The video discusses how a complex pipeline can lead to inefficiencies and delays, as each stage requires approval and can necessitate sending the project back to previous stages for revisions.

💡Bugs and glitches

Bugs and glitches are errors or unintended behaviors in a game that can disrupt the player's experience. The video suggests that the complex development process and time pressures can lead to these issues not being fully addressed before a game's release, as seen with the example of a gun that doesn't reload properly in a specific game mode.

Highlights

Games today take longer to make due to factors like inflationary pressures and increased manpower and budget requirements.

The Witcher 3 and Mass Effect Andromeda cost around $80 million to make, indicative of modern game development costs.

Fallout New Vegas serves as an example of how games could be developed quickly in the past with simpler landscapes and assets.

Modern gamers expect higher quality in game textures and details compared to the early 2010s.

In 2010, games like Fallout New Vegas were made with reused assets and smaller teams, allowing for quicker production times.

The expectation for higher quality in games has led to an increase in development time and resources.

Corporate bloat and inefficiency in larger studios contribute to longer development times and higher costs.

Call of Duty's development process is cited as an example of potential corporate bloat in the gaming industry.

CD Projekt Red's approach to development, with cross-disciplinary teams, is highlighted as more efficient.

The importance of agile methodology and avoiding bureaucratic hurdles in game development is discussed.

The impact of higher quality standards on animation, voice acting, and other production aspects is noted.

The necessity for companies to periodically reorganize and trim the fat to maintain efficiency is mentioned.

The potential for bugs and glitches due to rushed development and lack of time for thorough QA is highlighted.

Examples of games with noticeable bugs, such as Starfield's gun not reloading correctly, are used to illustrate QA issues.

The benefits of a streamlined development approach, as seen with astrobot and Phantom Liberty, are discussed.

The necessity of bureaucracy in certain fields like legal and corporate real estate is contrasted with its drawbacks in game development.

The challenge of balancing efficiency with quality assurance in game development is emphasized.

Transcripts

uh Ryan Manley thank you for the $5

Super Chat what's your theory for WHY

games across the board are taking so

much longer to make than back in the

early 2000s early 2010s when they were

flying out I think there's a few pillars

of it I think this is a good question

what's a what's a solid game well like

maybe maybe we look at uh Fallout New

Vegas or something oh yeah these old

school IGN reviews man look at that when

they had this weird robotic thing oh

this is a throwback but if the question

is why are games taking so much longer

and so much more manpower and money to

make today than they were back then

there's the obvious factors such as you

know inflationary pressures that make

you know it more expensive to compensate

people where it's it's now a matter of

like you know some people are basically

making twice what they were before in

terms of actual dollars even though the

purchasing power of those dollars is not

the same as it was 20 years ago so

people are pretty much same spot they

were if not a little worse but like

that's why the the budget number might

just be bigger proportional to where we

were back then it might be closer but

still like for example The Witcher 3

cost $80 million to make is the number I

saw 80 million that apparently is in

line with the same rough cost of making

the uh like Mass Effect Andromeda for

example it was like somewhere between 50

60 and $80 million for Andromeda

nowadays those games would be 2 to3 00

million and there's inflationary

pressure sure but also I think there's a

lot of added costs involved with modern

video game production where the teams

are a lot bigger because the quality

level has gone up with pretty much every

aspect so in something like Fallout New

Vegas the reason I pulled this up is

because Fallout New Vegas is an example

of WHY games could have been made so

quickly back in like 2010 look at this

landscape we have extremely simple

architecture in terms of actual

buildings the the land masses are

extremely simple the big boulders you

see over here are just scaled up

versions of the smaller rocks you find

around the map they're just stretched

and are bigger but in the age of

2010 you could get away with that it

wasn't that big of a deal and Gamers

were just kind of used to it that the

texture on this rock doesn't look very

good if you had a texture on a rock that

look like this nowadays people would

crucify you I mean it would be totally

unacceptable but back in 2010 it was

okay to have this much empty space where

you can see there's a few rocks plopped

around here but one artist could

probably create this layout this area of

the map everything you see uh and place

everything within like a day pretty easy

pretty comfortably and when you

factoring that this was made with like

reused assets predominantly from Fallout

3 it was a very iterative process which

is why they could pump this game out in

18 months but there's not a whole lot of

wildly impressive detail or complexity

here you know you know it's it's a lot

of the same items repeated over and over

and over again the maps and levels are

comparatively quite small and the

quality of individual assets are lower

and and all of that so I think that's

one reason why Studios were able to pump

stuff out so freaking fast compared to

how they do it nowadays and it's because

I think standards were lower because

technology was weaker but also I think

in the same vein people were more

willing to put up with like shorter

stories for like 60 bucks basically they

were willing to put up with like smaller

scope for 60 bucks and I I actually do

think that they still are willing to pay

60 70 bucks for a smaller and scope game

I think Space Marine 2 is a phenomenal

example where it's a a 10ish hour

campaign that's 60 bucks but they add in

a multiplayer mode and some other stuff

it's basically a 360 game but with a

2024 Cod of paint on it in a good way

and I think it proves that people are

willing to spend full price basically

but for smaller scope games so long as

the quality is high the difference back

in like 2010 2009 2008 is that you could

have shorter scope games and the quality

was high for the time but the difference

is the quality standards for 2024 are

way higher than they were in 2008

because the techn technology has

improved and things like that um there's

also no doubt like a lot of corporate

bloat that goes into this a lot of of

the teams that put these games together

are huge and perhaps unnecessarily so I

think Call of Duty is a great example I

read a really interesting breakdown from

an investor in Activision Blizzard

before they were bought out by Microsoft

and he basically was arguing that the

company was was uh undervalued because

in his opinion the staff could be cut by

20 30 40% and the same quality and same

quantity of content could be produced

for their current catalog he's like they

have way too many employees for what

they're putting out way too many

employees we could cut a lot of jobs a

lot of teams and do the same amount of

work it's like when Elon Musk walked

into Twitter headquarters and fired

something like 70% of the staff and X is

literally in terms of users bigger than

it ever has been you know and he cut 70%

of the workforce so I think there is

perhaps some bloat in terms of like the

Bure uh bureaucratic way that things are

set up where you know we've talked about

the the difficulties with how like uh

bgs for example has run where people

like why is it so bloated why does it

take so long for them to do kind of more

basic things it's because you can have a

team over here A Team over here A Team

over here A Team over here and each of

these is specialized in different things

so you could have you know maybe this is

the the original writers that come up

with like the design for the quest and

then they send that concept to the

environmental Builders the set Builders

the guys that actually make the levels

and then they go in here after they

designed the level they pass it off to

the texturing crew that makes all the

materials makes everything look really

really good and pretty and so they

finish their work they send it off to

the um lighting team and the lighting

team then hands it off to the animators

who are going to take in the NPCs and

get them placed and get them doing what

they need to do but oh no they just

figured out the scene isn't set up right

we actually need it arranged this other

way because the NPC's what like they

can't stand at the bar the way it's set

up right now so then they have to send

it all the way back here and they have

to fix it and then it goes back through

and maybe now it passes they do their

work and it passes forward to the final

like cinematics team but the cinematics

team realizes oh God you have a a

bookshelf here where the camera needs to

go you need to remove the bookshelf so

they send it all the way back here and

then they send it after they remove the

bookshelf all the way back through the

pipeline and it lands back here and

after they give it the go- ahead it

passes all the way through so you have a

ton of bloat and wasted time where

you're going back all the way through

the process multiple times I would argue

unnecessarily so and this is how like a

lot of companies nowadays work where

it's super super bloated based on the

Departments what CD project red did is

that each of these is like colorcoded

right you have different like colors for

each each team if we just say that right

and they just put teams where they have

one person or two people or whatever you

want to say from each team working on

this in an individual team so you just

build a team with those people and so

all of this is removed you don't have to

deal with all these extra hurdles and

Bubbles and certifications and getting

one person to sign off on it one person

to give the go ahead and then it has to

go all the way back through and then

this other person has to give their

signature for it and blah blah blah blah

blah instead you can just have one team

that has each discipline

represented and they just make the whole

level and when they need something they

just talk to Tim and then when Tim needs

something they talk to Rachel and when

Rachel needs something she passes it off

to to Luke and Luke fixes it and they

can just get it done really really

quickly so I think that there's there's

multiple things that go into it but I

think there's a mixture of higher

quality standards on individual things

like assets animation quality the demand

is much higher now expectations for like

motion capture are present when that

wasn't really a thing here I mean all of

the NPCs walked with kind of these

Dynamic animations that everybody else

used and it was by modern standards

extremely poor whereas now the

expectation is that it's much higher

effort and higher production value same

with voice acting same with everything

else that goes into it so standards are

way higher budgets are higher because

it's more expensive just to pay for

people to live nowadays and then also I

think there's a lot of corporate

inefficiency present at a lot of these

bigger Studios that is a result of the

company slowly expanding without having

moments of real reflection where they go

and trim the fat and reorganize and make

sure that everything is working as

efficiently as it can so it's a good

question I think there's just a lot of

a lot of compounding reasons you know

yeah agile methodology yeah yeah Andrew

cohor the last team in the line saying f

it it's fine might be why the bugs get

through yeah well and even just if you

think of it this way like with this

setup after all of these headaches each

time this happens time is being burned

right and time is literally money

because you're paying for people's

salaries but each time you have to send

something back that is expensive in time

and money and

eventually the big wigs in the corporate

office what happens they get really

frustrated things are taking so long so

what do they

do they say well you have to get this

done you have to get maybe you just have

different uh different little projects

you got different little scenes and

maybe there's bigger encounters and

bigger levels and there's a bunch of

like little bitty ones but you have to

get all of these through this process

within a year it has to get all the way

through and some of them go through and

they get here and then they get sent

back and then they go through again and

they make it a little further and then

they get sent back over here and then

they go through then they get sent back

here because something went wrong and

then they get approved and they get put

in the game eventually they run out of

time and they have to start just sending

stuff so this one it goes through and

maybe they send it back here for review

and for fixing something but then they

get back to here and they realize they

need to send it back again but they

don't have time so they send it Forward

anyways and they're like we're going to

send it through get it to where it needs

to be to at least function hopefully and

if we have time at the end of

development for patches or something we

can fix it then which a lot of game

studios handle things that way that's

fine but what you'll see is that there's

going to be a lot of times where that

doesn't

happen and

that's how you end up with bugs and

glitches and broken stuff where it's

just like how did this make it through

QA like how on Earth did they think

that's okay then there's other cases

where it just literally makes no sense

in the Starfield video I just put up a

like a few minutes ago on the big

channel that that

gun still doesn't reload from the paid

mod it still doesn't reload in first

person if you swap to third person the

gun reloads if you stay in in first

person it won't reload and that's a $7

quest to get that gun it doesn't make

any sense it's baffling but that's

months after that Quest was dropped

right for that like how does that happen

I don't even know with bgs that's why

it's so

confusing because you would think they'd

get to maybe here and then they realize

hey the gun doesn't reload and they'd

send it back to like a programmer to fix

it and then it passes back through and

they fix it for

bgs they seemingly just like sent it in

here it went through the

pipeline they sold it for $7 and because

they already released it they literally

just don't care enough to fix it so

they're just not going to touch it again

it's been months and it still is broken

it's still broken the astrobot folks

said they use the same approach as

Phantom Liberty which is another

Showcase of the benefits to that

approach yeah I think it's pretty clear

that it just it works more efficiently

than the big corporate structure the big

corporate structure is beneficial for

some workloads and for some types of of

stuff where multiple layers of approvals

are useful so think like legal stuff or

or like what when I worked in um in

corporate real estate when we would have

a listing we would go through and we

would have like the marketing guy look

at it and they would go and check it out

and then they go through here and then

they go through there and there were

many many layers of approvals but it's

because we didn't want to get into a

situation where we were posting

something and then like accidentally

revealing wrong information that causes

people to lose hundreds of thousands or

even millions of dollars right so in

some Fields I think it makes sense to

have that bureaucracy right to slow

things down so that we really get it

right hopefully the problem with a lot

of these companies though is they're

slowing it down and they're still not

getting it

right he took my thinge

red flag red

flag 16 times the detail

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