Why Games Now Take 6+ Years To Make

Main Argument: Why Modern Games Take 6+ Years

The video argues that modern video games take 6+ years to make due to a stack of interacting production pressures—technical, organizational, market-driven, and sometimes managerial.

1) Higher Graphical Fidelity Massively Increases Workload

• Games require far more detailed assets and more specialized roles than in the past.
• Even background elements that movies would leave implied now must be modeled and built in games.
• Example: An emotional SNES-era Final Fantasy scene that supposedly took only a few people would, today, require a large production pipeline, including:
  • concept art
  • modeling
  • rigging/animation
  • shaders
  • VFX
  • physics
  • lighting
  • sound
  • narrative work
  • cinematics
  • programming
  • voice direction
  • composition
  • QA
  • plus full level/prop work that would previously have been as simple as a “box” scene

2) Bigger Teams Are Harder to Coordinate

• As games grow in scope and fidelity, teams expand.
• Larger teams require more managers/producers and more time spent on communication and alignment.
• The creator highlights how many small and big decisions must be coordinated, and points out issues like:
  • people not updating tools (e.g., Jira)
  • design docs not being read
• Comparison: Skyrim (smaller team, more co-located work) vs. Starfield (much larger team spread across multiple studios, plus co-development/outsourcing), implying more complexity and time cost.

3) AAA Scope Expectations Keep Expanding

• Players expect vast worlds and many “checklist” features, such as:
  • crafting
  • skill trees
  • high-realism details
• The need to sell enough copies to recoup very large budgets pushes studios toward broader audiences and feature-rich designs.
• That makes it difficult to “scale down” to shorter games.

4) Technical Disruption (Engine/Console Changes and Performance Optimization)

• Switching engines—e.g., Unreal Engine 4 to 5—forces expensive retooling and pipeline/asset rewriting.
• Console transitions add additional schedule pressure.
• Obsidian story (Outer Worlds 2): Engine switching plus COVID effectively cost them about a year, due to reduced efficiency and the learning curve.
• As fidelity rises, performance optimization (frame rate/resolution) becomes more complex, adding engineering time.

5) COVID’s Disruption Extended Through the Dev Cycle

• COVID is presented as a major, underappreciated factor in longer timelines.
• The video emphasizes not only health/logistics, but also how remote collaboration made it harder to:
  • work effectively
  • check builds
  • maintain creative/production momentum
• Studios varied in success adapting to remote/hybrid work—some became remote-first, others struggled.

6) Mismanagement Is the “Spicy” but Central Contributor

The creator argues mismanagement can have the biggest impact on timelines, including:

• Shifting strategies midstream, especially toward “games as a service,” which can force major reinvention
  • Examples referenced: Dragon Age: Veilguard’s pivot and return to single-player, and Suicide Squad’s shift to a multiplayer shooter
• Failure to accurately forecast development time, causing churn and unstable planning
  • “Six years” may sometimes reflect an originally shorter plan followed by repeated delays
• Executives delaying or refusing decisions
  • A Warner Bros. Games culture issue is cited
• Frequent leadership changes and rework, sometimes throwing out months of work
  • Key example: Ken Levine’s Judas, linked to a long development history starting around the shutdown of Irrational Games in 2014, attributed in part to repeated changes
• Short-sighted financial decisions, such as layoffs
  • These disrupt team chemistry and remove experienced staff, sometimes followed by later rehires
• Giving up on sequels too quickly
  • The video suggests Ubisoft canceled what could have been a stronger continuation after Star Wars Outlaws, rather than learning and iterating like successful franchises
• Not using pre-production properly
  • Citing Josh Sawyer, the video stresses that major experiments/decision changes should happen in pre-production (often culminating in a vertical slice).
  • Retrofitting big changes during production is described as highly risky and time-wasting, because it can force rework and break established plans.

7) Positive Framing: Creativity and Excellence Genuinely Take Time

• The final point offers a counterbalance: great art and careful game design can’t always be rushed.
• Examples of long development times are noted (including Silk Song, Hollowed Halls/referenced Hollow Rid…, and Blueprints).
• The argument is that if long timelines produce higher-quality games, longer dev cycles may be acceptable.
• The creator speculates that big-budget studios will have difficulty shortening schedules without reducing scope/fidelity, and suggests that smaller, more focused games may be the better path forward.

Presenters / Contributors

• Jason (host) — Bloomberg journalist and the speaker on camera (creator of “Jason Talks on a Camera”)
• Josh Sawyer (Obsidian) — referenced regarding pre-production and vertical slices
• Brandon Adler (Obsidian) — director of Outer Worlds 2; quoted regarding engine switching + COVID costing ~a year
• Ken Levine — referenced in relation to Judas
• Bloomberg News — mentioned as the creator’s employer; Bloomberg articles are referenced