Why Are Games Taking So Long To Develop? - Luke Reacts
Summary
TLDRIn 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
🎮 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.
🏢 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.
⏳ 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.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Inflationary pressures
💡Quality standards
💡Production value
💡Corporate bloat
💡Agile methodology
💡Motion capture
💡Voice acting
💡Reused assets
💡Development pipeline
💡Bugs and glitches
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
[Music]
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