That’s the fear the author raises, yes. I always say people are fluid, and we expand to fit our containers, whether that’s our schedules, filling our homes with junk, or anything else. Hopefully what the industry is coming to realize is that their container is smaller than they think it is, but yes, scope creep is a real threat. I’m rooting for the industry to scope down.
Maybe that’s the problem.
Who says the time getting cut is in QA? Maybe the games just scope down.
Do you think they get better if they take longer to make? These development times are a fairly recent phenomenon.
I’m a coder, and I’m not in fear of losing my job. Definitely not long term. They can chase this trend all they like, but they’ll soon realize what they need people for. Or, something I find less likely, they don’t need those people, and you can’t un-ring a bell. Sometimes new technologies shrink the need for a certain kind of job, like farming, or they erase the need for it altogether, like telephone switchboard operators. I don’t see AI shrinking this profession all that much, and if it does, there’s nothing anyone can do that will undo it. Even Comcast can’t make people stick with cable using all the nastiest tricks in the book; sometimes things just become obsolete.
by forcing the development timeline by basically any means necessary
“By any means necessary” are your words, not mine, nor the article’s. I too took issue with the article saying that early access can just be a fallback; that’s not actually solving the problem and just kicking the can down the road. But we got tons of great games made in under 3 years, even with high production value.
This is how the AAA industry dies.
As we know it. But it might be how it finds a path to sustainability rather than the feast or famine of betting your career on a project that took 7 years to make. Rather than perpetually updated live service games, AAA used to make sequels on a rapid cadence. Rather than games that take dozens of hours to finish, often filled with a bunch of busy work, we used to get games that took a fraction of that, often with far better pacing.
There are, were, and always will be games made in shorter development cycles. It’s just that people are finally coming to the conclusion that longer cycles shouldn’t be the norm.
Which part?
lacks the amazing writing and soul of the first one
Really? The first one seemed content to just let you do mundane tasks as part of your quests, but I’ve found that this second one makes sure that there’s always something interesting along the way.
I think you’ve seen that there’s more than meets the eye, at the very least, so we can leave it at that. A friend of mine was quite sure he had almost finished it before when he was nowhere close, lol.
Without spoiling anything for anyone…how uh…how far are you?
Guilty Gear Strive just got a big balance patch and a matchmaking update, and it’s great to be back. The experience of playing the game is better than ever.
I’ve still been going through Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. It remains the best game I’ve played this year. I’m working my way through the Brushes With Death DLC, which has some interesting mission design if not the most compelling narrative. I think I’ve done all the side quests I planned to do before finishing the game, so I’ve got the last third or so of the main quest to return to after I finish the DLC. Then the second expansion comes out early next month.
I also started playing Mafia: Definitive Edition, and boy have I missed crime drama stories in video games. This one is pretty by-the-numbers when it comes to gameplay, but after 4 hours, they’ve got plenty of interesting set pieces and narrative beats. I’m very much into this. I plan to play through the next two games before picking up The Old Country.
Other than those, I’ve got a project I’m working on to set up a VPN that I control, rather than trusting an external service whose terms of service could change at any time, so that I can play old LAN games with my friends in this era of live service multiplayer games. Once I get it all sorted out and working, maybe I’ll write up a post here so others can do the same.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. The single factor that made it stick is that it is the longest game I’ve played this year. I can’t say I’m fond of the question.
At least what the perception of proc gen is. I can only name one metroidvania roguelike (A Robot Named Fight; Dead Cells doesn’t count, regardless of its marketing), so this genre is probably way harder to make with proc gen. To me, someone who doesn’t enjoy Hades, it feels a lot like people only played Hades, acknowledged its proc gen is bad, and then said all proc gen is bad and asked for hand crafted levels as a response. There are so many games that are good at proc gen.
Word on the street is that one is imminent too.
Other countries got their price increase months ago. Ours was probably delayed so that they could tell how bad the damages of our idiot president would be.
That’s the dream. Even $5 is probably low-balling what they could get away with.