Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.
3rd International Volunteer Brigade (Hexbear gaming discord)
Rules
uncritical support to no crunch time 
Idk supergiant (I think I’ve heard they are fairly tight inside) seems fine doing one small game in three years? Instead of yearly ubisoft slop (they make them like in 2? Or did they switch to 3?)
Larian or rockstar do like one in 5 years (although rockstar sucks on working part)
rockstar do like one in 5 years
yeah rockstar makes games that take so much effort that they probably shouldn't exist at all, so they take a long time to make even under awful crunch conditions
(I'm also fairly tight inside)
Surely this means games are higher quality and more enjoyable now right?
higher quality
Of course! It'll use generative AI to bring us 8K graphics.
Take it with a grain of salt but from what I know of the industry it's mostly a management problem. Sure games are ambitious but we have so many tools at our disposal and game developers are, in fact, extremely fucking skilled. However the suits thought that the SCRUM methodology was cool and now instead of having a general direction for the project, devs have to vomit code and assets until the amount of slop is enough to look like a game
I am a victim of agile and we spend probably half the work hours in a week on agile shite alone. But it generates pretty graphs for the useless execs because its not about producing anything but about control.
Yeah, something is definitely wrong. It's easy to point to complexity or whatever as the problem, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was microplastics rotting the devs' brains or something.
It's not that hard to pinpoint the problem. The problem is capitalism.
I think about this a lot. So much time is wasted due to bullshit like copyright laws. Imagine if all games were open source and you could copy+paste assets, then focus on changing things to match your gameplay/artistic style/whatever. Instead, games have to be built from the ground up because no one shares their progress. Despite every game having something like trees, each game has to waste time programming trees, sculpting trees, making tree textures, and so on and so forth.
What if instead you could just download the tree file everyone has worked on, added more to it if you wanted, then re-upload the tree file for someone else to use? Now you have multiple iterations of the tree with varying levels of fidelity and no known bugs for the Generic Gaming Program.
The closest we have to this are various game engines like Source and Unreal. But even those have limitations because the companies working on them don't share with each other (it'd turn into a monopoly and made illegal). And of course this could apply to any field, from automotives to food products.
I'm sure I'm just describing Dengism or some shit but I'm too much of a lib that hasn't read enough theory to realize smarter people than I am wrote books about this decades ago and it's foundational to multiple schools of communist thought.
Didnt they drop a teaser for OD as well? Not just death stranding 2. There are so many games coming out all the time i'm always falling behind anyway, I dont think more slop faster is necessary
yeah but did they spend $200+ million per game?
Seems like dev times are either way too long or games are rushed out too early these days with almost no middle ground
Or both.
I broadly agree but I don't think that Kojimbo is the best example lol, isn't part of why he got fired from Konami that he was taking too long on MGSV?
I also think that part of the reason for longer dev times/cycles between games is that everything wants to be a GaaS, so development is continuing for a longer period after release.
When it comes to Elder Scrolls 6, idk, Todd just don't got the magic anymore.
Elder Scrolls 6 is pretty easy to explain, they simply were not working on it, focused entirely on Starfield. That teaser from years ago was a distraction to make you think they were still working on it, and to get shareholders to shut up about them not putting out the next installment.
Even indie games take years and years, although it makes more sense for them. Silksong still has no release date right?
UFO 50 was announced in 2017.
I mean, if I were to start my dream game tomorrow, it would take a while since I'd also have a job. Plenty of indie games are like that
I’m just glad to get another Civ game this decade. I just hope it’s as good as Civ 6 
Oh, another Civ 6 enjoyer! I'm actually not the biggest Civ fan (I just prefer some other 4X games), but I do enjoy the series and have been playing it since Civ 4. The thing is, these games usually need two expansions before they really feel complete to me. That was the case with Civ 4, Civ 5, and Civ 6, and I assume it will be the same with Civ 7.
On a different note, I actually really like that each modern Civ game tries something slightly different (looking at Civ 7). It always leads to some backlash, but it also cements each entry as a new spin on the series.
I'm aware Civ 6 got some pushback, especially from older fans, due to the art style (I think it's totally fine, if a bit Pixar-esque). But Civ 6 is also the biggest Civ game so far in terms of numbers and success.
So I'm almost certain they are going to cook for CIV 7 (Im of the opinion they cooked with every single CIV game ...they are just different and appeal to different people at times)
Death stranding was announced in 2016 (probably been in dev since 2015) and released in 2019, that's 3-4 years. With the basic gameplay already done, and a lot of systems already locked down, how the fuck does Death Stranding 2 take 5-6 years to make? What are they making?
I do think they (Kojiprod) didn't even consider a sequel until after COVID. If I remember well, in some interviews Kojima mentioned that the first game would have been completely different if the lockdown had happened during development time, and it is implied that DS2 is a direct response to it.
Now here's the thing, even with that information in mind (let's say Kojima starts writing in 2021, and preprod follows), they should still not take as long, because the core systems are already there, so I'm not sure what's taking so long. My guess would be scanning/filming for cutscenes, because at this point it's going to be more of a movie than a game
That's a good point, I imagine the new environments take some time to build too.
Are getting? I feel like we've already been at that point for a while now
Edit: Plus, games are getting too long and bloated. 100+ hours is a lot for a single playthrough
good games take time to develop and there are already way too many games
Bad games take time now as well. The problem is most of the work isn't being spent on things that make the game fun. It's graphical shit and debugging said graphical shit.
Maybe an unpopular opinion but:
I like games with good mechanics and satisfying loops. I take a Teardown over Horizon Zero Dawn any time. Both games are great, but one focused it's resources on one thing they really owned, the other is a playable movie.
A GTA clone with simulated reactions of the environment, based on player actions would be as fun as the designed stuff. Even if it's wonky it feels more real.
Imagine Rockstar would do Dwarf-Fortress. They could never reach this depth with their team of 1000 in 10 years because they would do the mechanics "manually". Look at GTA5 and how sterile the world feels while it looks amazing. Shooting down a Plane? No reaction at all. Give me Minecraft graphics and simulate the emergency/social/media/physical response for such an disaster based on existing game rules. That would be fun. (And is the secret of Indie games like Rainworld, DF, Teardown, CDDA, Minecraft, Project Zomboid, .... and the new Zelda Games or Space-Engineers).
I would even like to see how a game like "Facade" would turn out today with the support of LLM for the dialogue.
Or: Remember Serious Sam? 100ds of enemies at once? Why are there no games with Serious Sam 2 graphics and 1000nds of Enemies? Why does everything have to be that "polished".
