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[Gamer79]

It seems the issue is that games just do not come out as fast and frequent. Look at the generations before the PS4/x1 era and you typically see whole trilogies of games that release on one generation. Prime example is look at a game like Uncharted. 3 games on just one system alone! Now it's your lucky to get one game from your favorite franchise per generation. For fuck's sake it has been over 12 years since the last Grand Theft Auto. Half life 3 has been on the side of a mile crate forever. God of War Ragnarok was one of the earliest PS5 titles and was cross generation. I highly doubt we seen another God of War on the PS5. Sony has really shit to bed with their first parties this generation. I would call it by far and away the weakest from a software side. Nintendo and Microsoft are guilty too. Nintendo franchise games are few and far between. It's often 5+ years between Zelda/Mario releases. Microsoft seemed to buy up any third party who was willing to sell and the question is, where in the fuck are the games?
I Know there are a select few who love every game coming out and think it's the best thing since sliced bread but they are in the minority. Software/hardware sales are down because the Quality is shit. Unless you fall into the Madden 97th edition of the same game or Call Of Duty the same old shit, it's rough out there for big releases.

So it's clear this is not sustainable in the long run. Games take too long to develop, cost way too damn much, and one game can sink an entire company. I am smart enough to know that I do not know enough about the in's and out's of game development. What I do know is the current model is broken. Games that are nearly 10 years old can keep up and at times look better than newer releases. Games have not gotten better and often times do not look better than they did a decade ago so these insane cost are not justified. Does anyone know of a way to where this issue will get resolved or is this just going to get worse? We are already seeing 5+ years between certain Game releases.

 

[Guerilla Munch]

The push to implement 4K and ray tracing has ruined gaming imo. Go back to PS4-level production at 60+ fps

I've been going through my PS4 backlog on my Portal and all of the games still look fucking amazing

 

[HRK69]

AI and procedural generation could help reduce development time. We're seeing some studios experiment with AI-driven NPCs, voice acting, and animation. If used properly, it could cut development times significantly.

 

[kingwingin]

Just make games with the old shitty graphics. I would love a new fallout that looked like 3 or new Vegas. Could pop out a few of those while we wait for 5

 

[Bond007]

I don't think going back visually is the answer. We already crossed a threshold of expectations.
Shorter games, less open world, less fluff. There is a place for those games- but not everyone of them needs to be that, infact most shouldnt.

linear racers
Linear singplayer experiences
Shorter games

There are multiple reason and i may not know them all or pretend to. But that is one of the issues in my eyes.

 

[Idleyes]

I understand the frustration. When Skyrim was released, my daughter was in second grade. Now, she's a grown woman commuting to work, and the next Elder Scrolls still seems years away. Realistically, it may be the last Elder Scrolls I’ll ever see, Talos willing I make it. I think they should focus more on gameplay elements and ease up on the obsession with graphics, except for a few franchises that prioritize realism.

 

[Shifty1897]

I mean, I think Avowed is not a great example in some ways but if two reboots had not happened, an 80 person team spending four years to put together a more focused role playing game that isn't unnecessarily long and stuffed full of poorly executed side quests that most people won't see seems like a good start.

Also moving development out of what is quite literally the most expensive places in the world seems like a good move. Look at Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 and what they achieved by being in the Czech Republic.

 

[JimmyRustler]

Reduce bloat? I still have dreams of time when we had AAA games that could be completed during one weekend.

Game are just too long now. Every other game wants to be an RPG of some sort.

 

[Hudo]

People will most likely say "AI" and maybe procedural generation. The real cause is imho bad project management, feature creep (resulting from bad project management) and introducing bloat (crafting, open-worlds where it isn't really needed, building mechanics, etc.) only to have features to sell your game on, which is also a result of bad project management.

If you give people more sophisticated tools, like "AI", bad project management will just use them to produce more bloat and create more work on a higher level.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Smaller teams, better management of scope and budgets, no more DEI consultants who outnumber actual developers, actual fixed deadlines to meet, etc

 

[Johnny Concrete]

More focused and unique experiences. Instead of making everything a 150 hour open world action RPG where everything has to be possible and nothing is exciting.

 

[wvnative]

Smaller teams and scopes.

See Robocop, Spider-Man Miles Morales, The Man who erased his name, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, etc...

 

[Lokaum D+]

The push to implement 4K and ray tracing has ruined gaming imo. Go back to PS4-level production at 60+ fps

I've been going through my PS4 backlog on my Portal and all of the games still look fucking amazing

ray tracing is a good tech to push, but 4k was a mistake, most games ll look great at 1440p in any modern TV on the market.

 

[Jigsaah]

I don't know much about game development, but it seems like teams are too big nowadays. I think having smaller more focused teams would eliminate some of the process it takes to make concepts a reality.

"Too many cooks in the kitchen" I think applies. Other than that, lower the scope of some games. If it's not an MMO like why make it resemble one. I think while graphics di take more time to create, there seem to be a lot of methods available to make this less time consuming. MoCap has to be faster than animating by hand in a lot of cases, for example. I'm not sure how many modern games utilize this, or how many studios can afford to.

I wonder what China and Japan are doing (specifically Capcom and Game Science). Capcom is pumping out games left and right and Wukong was made with less that 50 million dollars? Something don't add up here. Are they using super cheap labor? I can't imagine that would be the case with the quality of content they are delivering.

 

[ShadyAcshuns]

Stop pushing visuals. Fix things like 4k/60 and totally scrap the current algorithms for multiplayer and rebuild matchmaking from the ground up. For starters.

 

[Da1337Vinci]

Big publishers use high production value to limit the market.

Now if they see this is not working for example they get way too low of a ROI. They could try to go with the Nintendo route. Or we can all hope for A.I

 

[Paasei]

Too many people working on a game only increases costs, but stops creativity. Everything needs to be well adjusted for every single individual that you essentially make games for nobody at all.

Know your audience, stop UE5, use good art style instead of only graphical fidelity, give NPCs ai so they actually respond. Stop over-explaining your story. Add the simple things that add to the immersion. Write stories where you’re just some dude/woman that isn’t the hero of the universe.

 

[MikeM]

- Smaller scopes. Open world is killing dev times.
- Pool assets created into locations everyone can use. Ensure you don’t lose data nor engine source codes.
- Less focus on AAA and more so on AA budgets/ideas. Everyone seems to be trend chasing and its only resulting in mass studio closures/layoffs.

 

[RafterXL]

Primary reason games take forever to make and cost so much is developer bloat. Used to be you'd have 50-100 on a development team and 98% of them would be people actually working on the game. Today you have 500 people on a team and 200 have absolutely nothing to do with making a video game. It's all management, consultants, HR, DEI bullshit, etc. Ubisoft has 19000 employees for instance.

And, yeah, chasing the graphics crown is a part of it, but China is pumping out some of the best looking games, in less time, with less people. Western developers love to blame tech for the problem, but it's a resource management problem, not a pretty graphics problem. Having said that, I recently played through TW3 with a few texture mods and it still looks better than 90% of the games released this gen, and it runs a hell of a lot better to boot, so maybe not going balls to the walls isn't such a bad thing?

 

[Hari Seldon]

What exactly is causing things to take so long? I don’t have a clear answer on this. Is it solely the pursuit of better graphics? If so why hasn’t the tooling kept up?

 

[pudel]

Solution is easy...you just need MOAR good devs and studios in the cycle....so you dont recognize it that it takes them all 6 years.

 

[Fess]

the next Elder Scrolls still seems years away. Realistically, it may be the last Elder Scrolls I’ll ever see

Yeah I feel the same way, it is incredibly depressing tbh. And I have no real answer to the questions asked by the original poster. Maybe AI can help?

 

[mayham2199]

Dont feel like we need a solution. I'm flooded with games right now.

 

[ScHlAuChi]

The push to implement 4K and ray tracing has ruined gaming imo. Go back to PS4-level production at 60+ fps

Raytraycing is one of the factors that helps to speed up development, as its not just used for lighting!
Going back to baked lighting will do the exact opposite and lengthen dev cycles even more!

 

[a multicultural team of v]

Less games and less development studios, so that the actual talent is better concentrated together and the waste is weeded out.

If video games were made by only the top 25% of current development talent they would probably be made in 25% of the time, and at a significantly higher quality.

 

[bender]

Stop chasing high end visuals. Stop thinking every game needs to be 30+ hours.

 

[The Lunch Legend]

30 fps as a standard.

 

[jmiller180]

Along with others' thoughts on team sizes, red-tape, etc. I think part of the problem could be that modern developers aren't as motivated as those older generations of developers. Used to work finance in Silicon Valley not long ago and noticed that many (not all) software developers came across as kind of lazy.

 

[DeepEnigma]

 

[LRKD]

Not sure there is a solution. Because the problem isn't from any one thing. meddling higher ups, meddling investors, the new hires out of college are brain rotted and underqualified, even government money laundering is funding nonsensical programs in game development now, it goes on and on

 

[Buggy Loop]

No work at home

Just a feeling budgets will be more efficient and less delays, just a feeling

 

[gamerEMdoc]

Stop the chase for even closer to photorealistic graphics, and the yearly release of yet another $2K graphics card, and just accept PS4 level graphics as the norm, with higher frame rates. And we'd get new games in a reasonable time.

 

[BossLackey]

Smaller teams, smaller scope projects, emphasis on art style over pure fidelity.

 

[Fbh]

Developers would need to focus less en graphics, realize not every game needs to be 40 hours and not every game needs to have a half assed implementation of every common mechanic (not every game needs to have loot and rpg mechanics and skill trees and big explorable areas with sidequests, etc).

But it would also requiere consumers to accept and embrace games like these. Many publishers have put themselves in this situation by setting certain expectations. You can't have spent the last 15 years making increasingly longer games with increasingly better graphics and suddenly expect the audience you've built for yourself to be ok with shorter and simpler looking games

The push to implement 4K and ray tracing has ruined gaming imo. Go back to PS4-level production at 60+ fps

I've been going through my PS4 backlog on my Portal and all of the games still look fucking amazing

Yup.
Last gen graphics at high resolutions and 60fps look way better than "next gen graphics" at 30fps or 720p/60

 

[Loomy]

Less games and less development studios, so that the actual talent is better concentrated together and the waste is weeded out.

If video games were made by only the top 25% of current development talent they would probably be made in 25% of the time, and at a significantly higher quality.

That's now how that works. If you have 80 people working on a game and you suddenly fire 60 of them, the game isn't going to come out any faster.

The problem isn't how long games take. They take as long as they take. Release cadence is the problem.

Naughty Dog or Santa Monica isn't going to release a full length AAA game every 2 years. If they're working on new IPs, it's going to take even longer. There needs to be releases in between. So you either time your projects in such way that they're not all releasing at the same time, or you rely on 'smaller' games to bridge the gaps between AAA releases.

The good news is that already exists. Lots of good games come out and die every month because people only care about big AAA games from studios they know making the same games over and over again. If you branch out and give other, smaller games, a chance you'll never find yourself thinking games take too long to come out.

 

[SHA]

The Netflix syndrome is still in effect, game makers, despite the fact it's dangerous to your health to watch /consume large content in a short period of time, they still choose to follow this formula, like for example alwan wake 2 is too long for it's genre, when you surpass 30 to 40 hrs you could tell this is wrong, the game has to be shorter cause this doesn't feel right, these people are definitely not normal, they're different from the society.

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

smaller budgets... therefore smaller teams, scopes, etc

devs are at their best when they have large constraints/problems to solve

 

[Deerock71]

How about a 25 person team with a 50 million dollar budget and total creative freedom to make what they want without workshopping and focus testing from the outside?

 

[genesisblock]

There are 2 observances to the current games industry.

1. A lot of the veteran talent probably left the industry starting their own indie studio. We can arrive to this conclusion with the amount of layoffs, resignations, controversies and confirmations like AC: Shadows which they aiming half the team had never shipped the game.

2. Designing PS3/360 era games version 3.0 (4k, Ray-tracing, DLSS edition). That period was so tumultuous that the burnout drove a lot of people to quit. The PS4 generation, despite being significantly easier to develop for where getting longer dev-times and less output. A clear example that model set by the HD era is coming back to bite theme. So it comes to no surprise why the PS5 generation is rife with such poor output and games that look “worse” than the last-gen, shows they’re at the breaking point.

Here’s what they should be focusing on: Create greater depth in games instead of scope. Trying to make Skyrim level games without the talent or budget to back it up will only lead to Starfield like mediocrity.

Can’t do AAA graphics as expected for this current-gen? Then prioritise other stuff instead, physics, AI (no, not LLMs), create new ways to interact with the world, skip the handholding systems and give player agency to discover. Rework level design that actually make sense instead of being to “gamey”. I’d rather now shorter but very tight experience than spend 100 of nonsense fetch quests and collectathons. In other works, throw away all of the Ubisofts design principles out the window. That is a perfects showcase what a bloated, bureaucratic studio is like and the prime example what’s wrong with the games industry.

 

[a multicultural team of v]

That's now how that works. If you have 80 people working on a game and you suddenly fire 60 of them, the game isn't going to come out any faster.

The top talent isn't evenly distributed though. If there are 80 people working at a dev, 5 of them might be top quartile material. If you fired the other 75 and hired 15 that were top quartile the game would absolutely come out faster and better quality. (ok this is probably an exaggeration, but it also probably isn't that far off.) That is why I say there are too many developers - the good talent is spread out. Indie games exacerbate this, because a guy who would have been an absolute star in a large dev is now working by themselves or with a small team making indie games (who all may have also been stars at a large dev). An AAA behemoth like Ubisoft might have 50 quality people on a team of 1000 because if you are high talent why would you work at Ubisoft?

I'm basically saying flat out there are far more people making video games than people that have the talent to make good video games. Saying top 25% isn't really the best way to put it because there is always a top 25% regardless of the overall pool, but I am using top 25% to simply say high quality, like the equivalent of even simply a competent developer in the 90s or 00s.

 

[RodriGames40]

Graphics are no excuse, look at what China is pulling off with UE5 and sincerely claim that's the problem... It's poor management, team bloat and DEI bs, nothing else.

 

[Boo Who?]

No work at home

Just a feeling budgets will be more efficient and less delays, just a feeling

This. There is no reason anyone should be working at home. It kills creativity and productivity. There is only a very small percentage of people who can work from home successfully, everyone else is just lying to themselves, their employer, or both.

 

[Shadowstar39]

The push to implement 4K and ray tracing has ruined gaming imo. Go back to PS4-level production at 60+ fps

I've been going through my PS4 backlog on my Portal and all of the games still look fucking amazing

Said this years ago. We are not ready for 4k. The tv companies pushed this to sell you displays. The graphic hardware is still 1080p /1440p high end. Only the mega wealthy can afford 2k graphics cards to power native 4k displays.

1080p games still look amazing. I only own 1080p sets and will not just throw my tv out for a 4k display. Plus I can play my sd retro and mini consoles and have enough ports and not stretched so bad it looks gross.

How is that portal? Does it skip around or feel irresponsive after some time like remote play on vita and psp did?

 

[Shadowstar39]

This. There is no reason anyone should be working at home. It kills creativity and productivity. There is only a very small percentage of people who can work from home successfully, everyone else is just lying to themselves, their employer, or both.

I work from home everyday. My employer is over 150 miles away. I am not driving that daily. I take 20+ calls a day and multiple emails, solving IT Issues, and helping our customers with all matter of issues. Getting a job anywhere else, unless it's a mega increase in pay would be a paycut as gas, car maintenance, and time are all factored in. I can get up and get to work in my underwear if I wanted to, and that is priceless!

 

[Shadowstar39]

It seems the issue is that games just do not come out as fast and frequent. Look at the generations before the PS4/x1 era and you typically see whole trilogies of games that release on one generation. Prime example is look at a game like Uncharted. 3 games on just one system alone! Now it's your lucky to get one game from your favorite franchise per generation. For fuck's sake it has been over 12 years since the last Grand Theft Auto. Half life 3 has been on the side of a mile crate forever. God of War Ragnarok was one of the earliest PS5 titles and was cross generation. I highly doubt we seen another God of War on the PS5. Sony has really shit to bed with their first parties this generation. I would call it by far and away the weakest from a software side. Nintendo and Microsoft are guilty too. Nintendo franchise games are few and far between. It's often 5+ years between Zelda/Mario releases. Microsoft seemed to buy up any third party who was willing to sell and the question is, where in the fuck are the games?
I Know there are a select few who love every game coming out and think it's the best thing since sliced bread but they are in the minority. Software/hardware sales are down because the Quality is shit. Unless you fall into the Madden 97th edition of the same game or Call Of Duty the same old shit, it's rough out there for big releases.

So it's clear this is not sustainable in the long run. Games take too long to develop, cost way too damn much, and one game can sink an entire company. I am smart enough to know that I do not know enough about the in's and out's of game development. What I do know is the current model is broken. Games that are nearly 10 years old can keep up and at times look better than newer releases. Games have not gotten better and often times do not look better than they did a decade ago so these insane cost are not justified. Does anyone know of a way to where this issue will get resolved or is this just going to get worse? We are already seeing 5+ years between certain Game releases.

Maybe if you are only focused on AAA exclusives, but games come out all the time.
Stalker 2, indiana jones, Kingdom come deliverance 2, and monster hunter wilds all just came out. Tomb raider remakes, suikoden remakes, silent hill2 remake.
All AAA games.

But what about indy and AA, these games need to fill in the gaps.
IF you are only talking about Sony Exclusives then sure., but they shit the bed with betting on Gaas and multiplayer instead of keeping the cash cow single player engine churning. They also doubled down on woke instead of just creating good games that the audience who made them what they are wanted.
Sony needs to fire pretentious Druckman and get someone who in there to run Naughty dog like they did in the uncharted time period. Guerilla needs to split a 2nd team. They made great spin off title called killzone mercenary but it never left the vita and was amazing smaller shooter. They need to reform japan studios or have multiple Japanese devs making experimental stuff or jrpgs.

Microsoft needs better management, and to get rid of day 1 gamepass (it hurts sales, sorry gamepass zealots, but it's true).
Switch and pc get games all the time, now AAA pc exclusives don't exist really. Half-life 3 will be on consoles, if Gabe gets off his piles of gold and has the nerve to do it.

 

[SkylineRKR]

Ditch all the uncanny valley and overly detailed bloated bullshit. Yakuza reuses a lot of content, but they come out at a steady pace and they're great fun. I don't say every studio needs to recycle like this, Yakuza games come out extremely fast, but they could cut back on many areas to increase the rate of output and lower the costs. Do we need a 20hr Uncharted 4? I was fine with 1-3 and LL. Those were nearly twice as small.

Also, for me boosted PS360 games look fine enough. Look at the enhanced versions of those games, like NG2, Sonic Unleashed, Killzone 2 etc at 4k. Those are fine. They could add some extra detail to them, and machine learning might play a bigger role in the future, but I don't need overly detailed window dressing.

Nintendo is probably laughing. Although their rate of output is kinda low too, I think in their case its deliberate. Their games are made for 10 year old hardware, and sell at full price for many years to come. And its not like BotW, Odyssey etc look bad. Enhance the IQ with a bit more powerful hardware and they probably look amazing even.

 

[Pandawan]

Reduce the scale of the games. Not every games should be a huge open world with 40+ hours of gameplay.

 

[Tams]

Bring back blow, hookers, and booth babes.

 

[family_guy]

I think it depends on the developer. Someone like Naughty Dog and Rockstar earned the right to say, "We'll ship when we're ready to. Budget be damned." And why wouldn't they if management lets them? It's not like they are burning through their own personal money. There's certainly people who will happily collect a check without shipping anything. Someone working at a AAA company, may not have the same pressures to ship a game as an indie team that might have taken out loans against their homes to finance a game. However we're also seeing a change of the guard, so to speak. Using Uncharted as an example. The devs that shipped 3 Uncharted games in one generation, are much older now, might even be close to retirement, or already left the company. Even if alot of them are still there, that doesn't mean they have that same fire they did when they were in their early 20s. I just don't think there's alot of exceptional new talent filling those roles anymore, and alot of stuff is being outsourced which can be a nightmare.

 

[bundylove]

Oh jeeez i dont know....let me think.....oh i think i got it.

How about cutting all the waste of people, all the bullshit hires, people whos job is to be foot soldiers and write off expenses for the companies etc and go back to teams whos job is to actually work on the game from writing to design etc.

Kinda like what you see now where 90 percent of goverment workers are not physicaly at work and keep working from home as they are irrelevant. Those 90 percent were called none essential during covid which means everything ran just fine without them.

See gaming is the same. Its its own goverment from ceo's to share holders to investors bla bla bla