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Games are taking increasingly longer time to make, and there is no denying that. Nowadays, it is not rare to see games delayed or seemingly announced way too early with the absence of news for years. It is now normal to expect a new installment to your favorite franchise to take at least 5 years or more to be released. Believe it or not, it has been 11 years since Grand Theft Auto V originally launched, and we still have 8 months to go before 2025 when Grand Theft Auto VI is slated for release.

In our recent interview with producer Akiyasu Yamamoto, it was revealed that Vanillaware’s latest tactical RPG Unicorn Overlord has been in development since 2016, and was originally intended for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita. That is 8 years of development time, and the game ultimately launched on a newer generation of consoles than originally planned.

This long development time is not limited to AAA games either, because the indie scene is also facing similar troubles. Undertale developer Toby Fox took 6 years to develop the first chapter of Deltarune, and the game has yet to be fully completed today with only 2 chapters launched thus far. Of course, there is an argument to be made that Fox is largely a solo developer, handling the programming, designing, writing, and composing all by himself.

However, looking at other small studios, Team Cherry announced the sequel Hollow Knight: Silksong in 2019, and 5 years later, there is still no news of a target release window. Meanwhile, it takes 7 years for the hit turn-based RPG Darkest Dungeon to eventually receive a sequel in 2023.

It is worth noting that most studios are quite tight-lipped on how long their game has been in development. Most studios never exactly disclose when a project is greenlit, in the conceptual phase, or started development. As such, there is no exact tell how long a game is being actively developed or how long designers have been brainstorming and refining a title’s core concepts.

Unfortunately, video games are products, and this means developers are not earning back if no games are being released. Longer development time on projects would also lead to more costs spent on labor, resources, and so on.

Growing Ambition

Have you ever stopped and wondered why are games taking longer between releases? Do you remember a time when Final Fantasy was an annual release, with titles launching each year between 1999 and 2002, from Final Fantasy VIII to Final Fantasy XI? Yet, in recent years, it took 7 years after Final Fantasy XV for Final Fantasy XVI to be launched, and the game was in active development before its predecessor was even released.

Final Fantasy XV itself also has a fascinating backstory, having started out as Final Fantasy Versus XIII and was in development since 2006. However, the project suffered from a prolonged and troubled development that was eventually rebranded to the next mainline entry the next year. After rebooting the entire project, the game eventually came out in 2016, which is 9 years since its rebranding and 10 years since its original development.

One of the biggest reasons why games in franchises are taking much longer to develop between releases is mainly due to scope. As a brand grows, so will expectations, and as there is a rising level of fan expectations, companies become more ambitious with each project – wanting to outgrow the previous releases with more grandiose ideas. The aforementioned Final Fantasy XV was one such project, an extremely ambitious game that was meant to be part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy mythos alongside Final Fantasy XIII.

The rising ambition is most evidently seen in open world franchises, where developers would be touting much bigger map sizes with each entry. If we look at the recently released Dragon’s Dogma 2, the map size is estimated to be four times larger than the original. Bethesda Game Studios is best known for this, frequently boasting how big their new game would be compared to the last, with Starfield claiming to have more than 1,000 planets to explore.

Growing Complexity 

With the increase in scope, comes growing complexity. Game development by itself is an already complex task, demanding teams to balance up many variables from mechanical design, coding, art, optimization, localization, writing, and so on. Games are more complex than ever, with most titles in AAA space boasting huge 3D interactable space with many variables and systems in play to create immersive experiences.

This is unlike how games used to have low-poly models walking in a world where grass and leaves were static 2D planes. As we move on in console generations, our baseline expectations of graphics and minor details change. The higher the graphical fidelity a game aims for, the more labor is required. A high-poly model takes a lot of time to sculpt, retopology, texture, apply suitable shaders, and so on.

Apart from well-rendered models, there is also a baseline to have various physics coded in or more defined character AI. All these require a lot of time to refine, to ensure bugs and glitches are hammered out. If a barrel is going to be shattered into multiple pieces, there need to be systems in place to make sure it does not glitch into other objects and in turn bug out the other interactable elements.

Even a concept as simple as cloth and hair physics can take many months or iterations to refine, ensuring they do not act in ways that draw you out of the experience. This is not even touching on the gameplay side of things where mechanics would grow in complexity with each entry. Take the Monster Hunter series as an example, as the series grows, so do the encounters, with new monsters gaining more intricate mechanics that would differentiate them from each other.

In open world titles or RPGs, there is also a string of other systems to consider. Stats, the NPC AI, routine and pathing, quest system, day-night cycle, the weather system, and so on.

It took 8 years since the original before Red Dead Redemption 2 was finally released, and it is considered one of the most expensive games ever made. And it shows because Red Dead Redemption 2 brought in many innovations in AI and other intricate open world systems. The way how the animals in the game behave takes a lot of care to meticulously craft, and that obviously takes a lot of time. Regardless of how complex all these systems are, fans’ expectations would no doubt grow for Rockstar Games, setting expectations that these mechanics will be in place for Grand Theft Auto VI or other future titles from the studio.

How About Indie 

As we established, game development is difficult and this challenge tends to hit indie developers, due to inexperience and lack of support. Indie teams are much smaller, so it obviously takes a longer time to develop a game. If a team has multiple artists, they can split tasks evenly, but most indie studios do not have such luxury.

That said because indie studios work on much smaller scale projects, that allows them to be more flexible on trying new ideas compared to AAA studios, producing wonderful titles such as Hades, Stray, Sea of Stars, Subnautica, and more.

As we mentioned previously, the longer a project runs, the more the development cost will be. Even though indie studios can still run the risk of running low on funds, the smaller budget lessens the risks compared to AAA games where failure in sales can result in devastating losses in money. This is not to say AAA studios lack fresh ideas as we do have titles such as Octopath Traveler, but these releases are not often and they are generally smaller projects. 

Development Time and Risks 

Gaps between games in a series do not necessarily mean extremely long development, but more so that developers may be working on different projects in the meantime. Sure, it has been 13 years since The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but that is also because Bethesda Game Studios was putting focus on Fallout 4, Fallout 76, and Starfield, before moving full force onto developing The Elder Scrolls VI. It is a similar case for Dragon’s Dogma 2, a sequel released 12 years after its original. However, director Hideaki Itsuno was working on Devil May Cry 5 before the game.

Considering the risks AAA studio runs into if sales fail to meet expectations, this has led to the rise of AAA remakes and remasters in recent years because these releases possess fewer risks. Remasters, especially, are much lower in budget and are re-releases of past titles with some improvements and the reason why they work is because of existing fans. It has fewer risks for more profit.

This is also the reason why many series, especially annual releases, are less ambitious in exploring new ideas and keeping to a similar formula from previous titles. Why change what works? It makes sense because growing in ambition and scope means an increase in complexity and development time. This, in turn, more costs for labor and resources. Even though development time and costs have increased greatly over the years, AAA game prices remain largely the same, which is why there has been a recent push for a $70 base price.

Unfortunately, as game technology evolved, fan expectations also grew, and so did studios’ ambition to push for bigger games to meet those expectations. There is no denying that we have already grown accustomed to many baseline expectations, especially on graphics, and game development time will continue to become longer as games become increasingly more complex and expensive to develop.