Game engines are more automated than they ever were in the past, whether automation is creating new assets from the work you've already done, eliminating the need to do custom LODs, eliminating the need for complex light management because of raytracing features, simpler node based programming, or even various AI-based automation capabilities.
Also, game consoles don't require proprietary architecture to program for. Graphics APIs and programming languages are easier to work with than they were in the past. Games don't really have a need for significantly more artwork than games of previous generations. It's just that in older generations, you'd need to spend more time making lower poly versions of the models, which is less of an issue today. Procedural generation can also make tons of variation to make it feel like there's a lot more unique artwork than there actually is.
So what in the world is taking so long? Have developers stayed working from home ever since COVID or something? That's the only thing I can think of. Work from home is less stressful but it's also much less efficient in terms of collaboration, and can have distractions that slow down the work as well. Or has something just completely broken down in how game dev studios are managed in recent years?
If AAA linear games could be developed in TWO years in the PS3/360 generation (open world 3-4 years), when they had MUCH less capable tools and had to do so much more complex architecture programming, how in the world have things seemed to slow down 2-3x today when the tools and hardware is so much more capable and easier to work with?
I honestly don't understand what happened and I don't think it's sustainable at all.
I think the short answer is that all the advances you've mentioned have simply been outpaced by both gamer's balooning expectations for what a "AAA" title needs to be, and the level of work required to attain that.
Yeah, 360/PS4 games were made by smaller teams with simpler tools, but they were also MUCH simpler games by modern standards. It may not "feel" that way, especially with nostalgia goggles, but the fact is a job that may have taken a single person 10 years ago, now requires a team, despite the advancement of the tools.
I think the short answer is that all the advances you've mentioned have simply been outpaced by both gamer's balooning expectations for what a "AAA" title needs to be, and the level of work required to attain that.
Yeah, 360/PS4 games were made by smaller teams with simpler tools, but they were also MUCH simpler games by modern standards. It may not "feel" that way, especially with nostalgia goggles, but the fact is a job that may have taken a single person 10 years ago, now requires a team, despite the advancement of the tools.
That is only true in some cases, the idea of making games bigger and bigger. There are still AAA games being released this generation that very much feel in line with the same kind of scope as those PS3 era games, but they're taking much longer. I also think it is inherently a problem for developers to think they need to make things bigger and bigger. The constant push for larger and longer games has made games feel lower quality and more stale imo compared to smaller scope games. It's not a good thing. Often times, bigger games means the quality gets stretched thin. While there are exceptions, I think players are starting to get tired of massive open world games that just feel like 90% busywork with very little creative inspiration or strong narrative. And clearly the live service thing isn't working out either.
Also, tools are FAR simpler today than they were in the PS3/360 era.
There's just more higher quality assets that have to drawn/created by hand, and that takes times. Art is one of the biggest factors in a large AAA game. It takes time to prototype and concept and make and refine and polish and render everything you need for a AAA game. Games back then had much lower resolution textures and assets so it was much easier to get stuff out.
@Schindigg They had lower resolution textures on the final game. They typically still produced models at the same level of quality they do today or even higher, using that higher poly base to bake in the normal maps as they reduce the poly count.
Also, it takes MUCH less effort today to create a high resolution model than it did back then, because there are more tools to assist the process, as well as better procedural generation tools to make it so you don't need to make as many models or textures total as well.
@AndyGilleand It doesn't take MUCH less effort, it's still made the same way, by hand, someone drawing it out. Tools may be better, but you're outputting much higher fidelity stuff. Unless the studio is using AI to proc gen models/textures, in which case no thank you. But I'm just going off what I've heard devs and artists say, which was producing assets and animations of a high quality for an entire game takes a tremendous amount of time.
I could tell you 3 reasons:
-The hierarchy of approval
-Culture of overthinking
-Bigger teams that leads to more coordination time
20 years ago, if you wanted to change the sound effect of a shotgun, you could do it immediately.
But today, it would take a meeting to get approved for it
@mlleCamill3 For the vast majority of games, they aren't really larger or more complex than they were 20 years ago. There are exceptions but that's not most AAA games.
One underappreciated aspect why games have become so much more expensive is undoubtedly bad project management.
We can see it on display at Sony. Anyone who watched the "Making of God of War" documentary knows that Sony used to have gaming executives who were also masters of quality control who were very demanding and had their hand on the pulse of their major projects.
Under Jim Ryan this approach completely changed in pursuit of their own live service cashcow. Studios were given free reign and gigantic budgets without proper controlling.
Similarly Spider-Man was developed for $70m under the old management team whereas its sequel tripled in budget despite using pretty much the same game world.
Knowing how to develop a game on budget and on time is a skill very few people have.
@matmartin Do you think work from home has contributed to ballooning budgets and poor management at all? As much as it can be better for employees in some ways, I feel like it can slow down the work. When you're in an office with other devs all around you, it's much more natural to bounce ideas off each other and get solutions to problems a lot faster. When you're at home, it takes more of an effort to do that and feels less natural, so it may result in some people holding off and trying to do things on their own, taking more time. And then it simply may take more time in general for certain things. Taking more time to do things is most likely the primary reason budgets have ballooned. Spider-man 1 was also developed in less time than 2, as were most Insomniac games before SM2.
Why do AAA games take so much longer to make today than in the past?
Management overhead. In particular, management by committee. More layers, more friction, longer processes.
Same in corporate development, a useful analogue. Average time it takes from a business user request (e.g. I want this graph on my dashboard) to it being implemented is 9+ months (according to academic and industry studies, 2025). Not because it's particularly difficult, the coding might even take minutes to do, but the molasses of meetings and groups that have to approve and give their blessing is numerous. This stuff eats time.
its because they are chasing the wrong things. we don't need absolute reality in games we need strong art design and better story telling. we are past the point that more advanced graphics yields better results. it's just causing costs and timelines to be over inflated to the detriment of the industry. look at games like the last of us. it looks great to this day but i think that's largely due to good art, not better tech.
I don't have time to play all the games I want to play anyway so I'd appreciate it if devs kept their games at a neat 20 h-ish mark, with great polish and smth to say and forgot about that 80$ price tag.
its because they are chasing the wrong things. we don't need absolute reality in games we need strong art design and better story telling. we are past the point that more advanced graphics yields better results. it's just causing costs and timelines to be over inflated to the detriment of the industry. look at games like the last of us. it looks great to this day but i think that's largely due to good art, not better tech.
that art design represents huge investment in assets, though. beautiful, detailed levels full of assets and animation that needs to be created, scaled, tested, adjusted...
advanced graphics such as raytracing may actually speed up the process for artists compared to baked lighting.
@mlleCamill3 For the vast majority of games, they aren't really larger or more complex than they were 20 years ago. There are exceptions but that's not most AAA games.
the assets & animation quality is pretty complex today. walk through a level of 007: First Light such as the Slovakia Hotel and it looks more like what concept art for some games 20 years looked like
@mlleCamill3 For the vast majority of games, they aren't really larger or more complex than they were 20 years ago. There are exceptions but that's not most AAA games.
the assets & animation quality is pretty complex today. walk through a level of 007: First Light such as the Slovakia Hotel and it looks more like what concept art for some games 20 years looked like
In the final game, yes. However, when games were being developed back then, the actual models and textures they were creating were just as high quality as the models you see today. They were just scaled down for the final game. In fact they're still scaled down somewhat today, with normal maps instead of all raw polygon detail, but it's just that nowadays they don't have to scale them down quite as much. There were characters and environments in the PS3 era that were designed with millions of polygons, and then scaled down to lower poly versions with lower resolution textures and more of a focus on baking normals and AO to a degree.
@AndyGilleand yes, however were they the same in terms total number of assets in any one level, as the question here is time required by artists to complete each level and built the title.
an interesting comparison would be e.g. Gears of War 2006 versus Gears of War 2026
@DavidSarif Total assets is larger, but total UNIQUE assets? I don't know. There's a lot of repetition and procedural generation in modern games. If there are more unique assets, it's really not a necessary level of effort.
I would point you to a couple YT videos. One is from Bloomberg industry analyst Jason Schreier called "Why Games Now Take 6+ Years To Make". He lists a number of factors from graphical fidelity to managerial overhead of massive teams. I would invite you to look at the full credits of a modern AAA compared to those of decades past... Famously, the Assassin's Creed Shadows credits roll captured on YouTube is an actual two-hour video. (Related video of his: "Why Video Games Cost So Much To Make")
The other video is from veteran game director Timothy Cain: "Adding a Feature: Then and Now". This is how he explains it: "Here's the high level explanation for why development costs have gone up. [In the old days] one person did everything. You had an idea? You did everything to put it in the game. Now it's a pipeline. It does explain everything because pipelines make things more expensive and longer." In a nutshell, anything that goes into a game has to go through layers of approval, and then the design and art and technical implementation is a whole pipeline that goes through many people before appearing in the game, even before outside contractors (professional voice actors etc.) get involved. And then imagine having to make a change to that thing.
There are other tangentially explanatory videos of his, like "The Decline of Generalists". The fidelity demands of modern games have gotten so extreme that everyone in the industry is hyper-specialized; you're basically assembling huge teams of specialists to make a top-tier game.
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Topic: Why do AAA games take so much longer to make today than in the past?
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