Are games in series coming out too slow?

[Zloth]

(Idea mentioned by Gameranx in this video)

The first game in the new FF7 Remake came out in 2020. The second game in 2024. The third hasn't been announced yet, but say it shows up in 2028. Eight years for a trilogy. If you played the first one at age 16, you'll be out of college (or working on graduate studies) by the time the series completes.

Xenosaga took 2 years per installment starting in 2002. So, if you liked the first game when it showed up, you're just waiting 4 years for the final third game to come out.

I understand why this is happening. Games are not only bigger, but they take FAR more people to put together. But, is the net effect making it too hard for gamers to really get attached to a series of games? Especially younger gamers?

 

[Zed Clampet]

Yes, they are coming out too slowly, and there isn't a good reason for it except that the studios are collapsing under their own weight.

Based on interviews with developers who left large studios, one of the primary reasons that these games take so long and cost so much is because the paradigm they work under used to work great when games were developed by a team of 20 to 30 people, but the whole system collapses when you have teams the size they are now. And for the most part, the games are not bigger and more complex than they used to be. The studios claim they are, but when you actually go back and look at older games, like the first Mafia game, you see that they did an outrageous amount of stuff that no 1000 person studio is willing to undertake today.

The first Mafia game had tons of complex systems that no one puts into games anymore, and they did it with about 30 people. Now it takes them 400 people and more time to make a more simple game. Sure, the map might be bigger, but that's it. Everything else is more simple. Look at games like Morrowind and the complexity of its systems. They haven't done anything like that since, but they sure have a lot more people.

It's similar to the movie industry. I've heard industry people say that most of the people on the set don't do anything for most of the day, and that is echoed by developers who say that sometimes they have hundreds of people waiting for weeks for some system to be finished.

I would give a number of small team examples at this point, but my brain isn't cooperating, but I've played a citibuilder that rivals the anno series in every way except for cutscenes, and it's made by one person while Ubisoft lists 1300 people as having worked on the last anno game.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCFKuf8kn_U