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« on: April 04, 2023, 11:58:39 am »
There's a lot to discuss with this. It's largely because games are more expensive and resource intensive to produce than ever before, as AAA games continue to push for scope, realism and cutting edge graphics as a major selling point.
The original tradeoff of these unreasonable development times/costs was that game developers would suffer as a direct result. I don't know if you've read any of Jason Schreier's investigative work on the western game industry, but he's published a lot on how the volatile and unethical treatment of workers, developers and studios have undertaken to push these big games out the door to meet deadlines. That has thankfully come into the mainstream more with the horrible labor practices Rockstar, EA, Activision/Blizzard, and other companies.
I don't follow modern game development schedules, but if these longer development times are because of studios actually being given the time they need to make games, then I have no problem with that whatsoever. Of course companies will start pushing out remakes as a stop gap in order to keep making money in the meantime, but I have no problem with that either.
It's also worth noting that there is a huge push from company executives to develop games with mechanics that can be used to make money for years and years, rather than take a risk with new expensive-to-produce IPs which may or may not be successful, and if they are, they have limited profits because they are single player experiences that only make money on release day. That's precisely why GTA V is still being given new content and TES Online is being more supported over GTA 6/TES 6's development. It's why multiplayer games are far more prolific and are often shoehorned into traditionally single player experiences.
But this is not something that's new or a unique problem of western studios. Xenogears, Chrono Trigger, and Suikoden II are some that come to mind that had horrendous development periods because of tight deadlines. And there are many other beloved games that suffer from a similar fate.
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One of the biggest category changes that I think still needs to be done (though it will be a lot of work) is moving the digital PS1/PS2 Classics into their parent PlayStation Network categories.
I think I'll need to restart my entire playthrough, so frustrating.