Beware Star Citizen.
aeronmelon@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Obviously, this is the only sane solution for a one-man team, but all game developers need to put their foot down and say “it’s ready when it’s ready.”
No marketing deadlines, no “crunch time,” make the game until the game is made, release it, maintain it, do it again if you think you have a good idea.
AMillionMonkeys@lemmy.world 1 day ago
aeronmelon@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Vaporware is an entirely different animal.
A few people seem to think I meant a game like Stardew or Chocolateir should take several years because that’s how long they take with one person. Obviously if you have a studio of people, even a small studio like early Mojang, you can get more work done much more quickly.
Obviously, I think, I mean the publisher should defer to the developers regarding how long work would take to complete, not the other way around. And no one should listen to the demands of shareholders or anyone else that is completely departed from the production process.
iamthetot@piefed.ca 1 day ago
That would be nice in a perfect world but bills need to be paid. I’m not defending crunch time, but not every project can afford to be “ready when it’s ready”. I don’t think many companies would survive like that.
LifeLikeLady@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Concerned ape can afford to put this game out in 2035 lol.
setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The above comments were talking about how this policy should apply to every game development project. Which is a nice thought, but not realistic for every situation.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Oh yes, I’m sure all those billion dollar companies would have all shut down by now if they had to wait a few weeks to put out a game. Putting out buggy unplayable shit was an absolute necessity.
iamthetot@piefed.ca 1 day ago
Well yeah, but not every dev and company is ConcernedApe. I reckon the same can be said of Balatro dev, and Team Cherry, and a few others. It’s awesome for them who can afford to do this, but that’s definitely not the norm. Most companies can’t afford to sit on a project for 8 years without releasing a product.
darthelmet@lemmy.world 1 day ago
While I generally agree, I think there is some value in imposing some kind of deadline or limit to a project. Nothing is ever going to be perfect. There will always be more work that could be done on something. If you let yourself just keep going until you think it’s done it might never come out.
But it’s a balance and when publishers push those kinds of deadlines they’re not really considering that.
other_cat@piefed.zip 8 hours ago
I’m particularly thinking about the development history of Duke Nukem Forever…
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 1 day ago
True, but this developer has done this before. Theres currently no reason not to have faith in them.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I recently launched a business as a solo dev / founder. It was agonizing trying to get all the last details done and be happy enough to finally say, this is what I’m going to release.
I could have gone on forever if I’d let myself. Oh they need this, oh they need that!
Now that it’s out, that pressure is gone, and I can just do smaller updates now which are focused more heavily on the feedback I’m getting from customers.
I probably could have released 3-4 months earlier had I been better about it.
setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Publishers are considering return on investment. In a model where they are providing the game budget to the studio, every delay means more money out of their pocket. Case by case it might be worth it, but just allowing developers to infinitely say it’s “almost ready, just one more delay” isn’t reasonable.
I know from the hard core gamer audience that discusses this stuff online there is often this vibe that nothing should be cut from games. People look at various interesting cut content and lament it for not getting enough time, but there is always going to be cut content.
If there isn’t a lead on the development team putting their foot down to control the scope and focus the team, and a similar push for focus by a publisher you get a meandering unfocused project that goes over budget.
grue@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Or said another way, not having cut content means they released a rough draft instead of editing and refining it.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
When it reaches the “good/mostly done but not perfect/could still be better” stage, it’s time to pre-release it for alpha/beta testing while you work out the kinks and add features.
I remember playing Minecraft in alpha version before it even switched to beta. It was fine.
Even full releases can have updates and expansions to add new features, it’s totally fine. But the core development of the game shouldn’t be rushed just to get it published.