There's way more at the link, but: http://kotaku.com/why-video-games-are-delayed-so-often-1795473828
Kotaku said:
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Kotaku: Why games get delayed (statements from developers)
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
Muffin1611
Banned
Press Sneak Fuck covering up how he delays games.
Hero_of_the_Day
Member
I mostly get delays. My question is why things like what happened to RDR2 happen. As soon as they announced the original release, 99% of us were like "yeah, the fuck right." And shocker, we were right, it got delayed. We are complete outsiders, why were we able to see what they didn't at the time? Or did they know it was unlikely, too, in which case why say it?
I mean I get all this, but the issue is putting a date out there just to get preorder numbers up and then delaying closer to release frustrating a lot of people. I am sure a lot of the reasons is the business side of things and publishers having to please investors/shareholders etc.... but it still sucks.
Everyone's gotta start learning somewhere.
John Kowalski
Banned
Every article is someone's first article
MegaSackman
Member
Now they just need to write an article about that.
As a developer, I can comfortably say that no, "we" are not.
yeah, it's weird for a gaming website to write an article about game development. i mean, it's not like some great mystery but still
TheFurizzlyBear
Member
What are you talking about? Of course we all know its out of pure animosity and to cut out content to sell as dlc later.
NinjaCoachZ
Member
Forsaken82
Member
That article regarding the HL2 delay is very misleading... That leak happened less than a year before the game actually launched. It's not like the game was 2 years into development, source code got leaked, and they started back from scratch and it took them 4 years to recover. The engine and game had been in development for over 4 years at that time and the source code leaked was Alpha if I recall correctly, meaning the game was still several months from launching. One could argue that perhaps they wanted to launch for the 2003 holiday season, but lets be honest... the leak happened in october, They were at least 2 months away, the Leak gave them a reason to push back till the following fall, and it worked out for the best IMO.
More_Badass
Member
Trying Game Maker and reading devlogs on TIGForum made me even more appreciative of games and game design. Even the smallest game coming together and releasing in a polished state is an achievement
barneystuta83
Member
Thanks for posting, interesting stories and insight.
I am sure many know - this is not exclusive to game development. Hey, it isn't just exclusive to 'development'. If you are really interested, look into the Triple Constraint in Project Management.
In simple terms its this: Scope, Time, and Cost - balancing all 3 defines your quality.
The challenge is: You can not have all 3 in a best case scenario with the best quality product.
Want the best game, full scope, released on time? It will cost you.
Want to keep costs down while delivering on time? Scope will suffer.
Want to have the best game and manage costs? It will take forever. And, create a self fulfilling circle - longer time, more cost, no return on investment.
The reality, in most projects of this scale, time is the key deliverable. Things can be moved and nudged back, but ultimately it has to deliver within a certain time. Just look at games that got into development hell (Too Human, Duke Nukem).
Very few games that take time to deliver are successful. Partly because, if you take too long, you will be old news and/or someone will do it better than you.
Costs are defined by the publisher, for the most part. They've backed a development house and say 'you must deliver X in Y time'. Publishers get a lot of flack, often rightly so, for pushing out games early to get a ROI.
But look at it from their point of view. A pre-agreement and delivery time, scope, and cost will be defined to deliver a quality game. Then shit happens. And things change.
So it is usually scope that gets pulled back and reigned in. Scope can mean many things.
- 4 planets instead of 6 (Destiny)
- No single player and limited multiplayer game modes (OG Titanfall)
- A buggy mess (Mass Effect Andromeda, THPS 5)
Publishers then have a decision - do we release this and build on our MVP (minimal viable product) e.g Destiny/Titanfall.
Or do we get a mess of a reception and decide to abandon ship and move onto the next thing e.g Mass Effet and THPS 5.
Note: I've used simple examples to demonstrate my point.
Game development is not easy. Development is not easy. Project management is not easy. Give it a try!
TLDR: A test for Gaffers.
You have a meeting with a potential business partner. The meeting is 2 hours. You need the full 2 hours to seal the deal and grow your business.
Except - travel logistics are a problem. And you are concerned about the long distance travel as you get travel sick. The meeting is tomorrow and you have to make a call on 3 options.
1. Fly - quickest route, you get full 2 hours. Likely to get best deal. You are comfortable flying. Most expensive travel option would eat into your return on investment.
2. Train - Fast and you get the full two hours. You hate travelling by train though (only backwards seats available!). Manageable cost.
3. Drive - You will be late and lose half the meeting, impacting your sales pitch. You get zero travel sickness driving though. And driving is by far and away the cheapest.
Which is the right option?
I am sure many know - this is not exclusive to game development. Hey, it isn't just exclusive to 'development'. If you are really interested, look into the Triple Constraint in Project Management.
In simple terms its this: Scope, Time, and Cost - balancing all 3 defines your quality.
The challenge is: You can not have all 3 in a best case scenario with the best quality product.
Want the best game, full scope, released on time? It will cost you.
Want to keep costs down while delivering on time? Scope will suffer.
Want to have the best game and manage costs? It will take forever. And, create a self fulfilling circle - longer time, more cost, no return on investment.
The reality, in most projects of this scale, time is the key deliverable. Things can be moved and nudged back, but ultimately it has to deliver within a certain time. Just look at games that got into development hell (Too Human, Duke Nukem).
Very few games that take time to deliver are successful. Partly because, if you take too long, you will be old news and/or someone will do it better than you.
Costs are defined by the publisher, for the most part. They've backed a development house and say 'you must deliver X in Y time'. Publishers get a lot of flack, often rightly so, for pushing out games early to get a ROI.
But look at it from their point of view. A pre-agreement and delivery time, scope, and cost will be defined to deliver a quality game. Then shit happens. And things change.
So it is usually scope that gets pulled back and reigned in. Scope can mean many things.
- 4 planets instead of 6 (Destiny)
- No single player and limited multiplayer game modes (OG Titanfall)
- A buggy mess (Mass Effect Andromeda, THPS 5)
Publishers then have a decision - do we release this and build on our MVP (minimal viable product) e.g Destiny/Titanfall.
Or do we get a mess of a reception and decide to abandon ship and move onto the next thing e.g Mass Effet and THPS 5.
Note: I've used simple examples to demonstrate my point.
Game development is not easy. Development is not easy. Project management is not easy. Give it a try!
TLDR: A test for Gaffers.
You have a meeting with a potential business partner. The meeting is 2 hours. You need the full 2 hours to seal the deal and grow your business.
Except - travel logistics are a problem. And you are concerned about the long distance travel as you get travel sick. The meeting is tomorrow and you have to make a call on 3 options.
1. Fly - quickest route, you get full 2 hours. Likely to get best deal. You are comfortable flying. Most expensive travel option would eat into your return on investment.
2. Train - Fast and you get the full two hours. You hate travelling by train though (only backwards seats available!). Manageable cost.
3. Drive - You will be late and lose half the meeting, impacting your sales pitch. You get zero travel sickness driving though. And driving is by far and away the cheapest.
Which is the right option?
There isn't one. Its making a call. What is right for you and/or your business.
Won't lie, this is the first thing I thought of when I read the title lol
"Its just going to be a picture of himself, isn't it"
Good article, love the dev perspective on this
As a developer, I blame... developers for delays. Not only them, off course, but certainly we tend to be over optimistic with estimations.
From the classic Mythical Man Month:
"
All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially
attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers.
Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away all
but those who habitually focus on the end goal. Perhaps it is
merely that computers are young, programmers are younger, and
the young are always optimists. But however the selection process
works, the result is indisputable: "This time it will surely run," or
"I just found the last bug."
"
can give it a read to the full book here: https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~yfcai/CS451/RequiredReadings/MythicalManMonth.pdf
From the classic Mythical Man Month:
"
All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially
attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers.
Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away all
but those who habitually focus on the end goal. Perhaps it is
merely that computers are young, programmers are younger, and
the young are always optimists. But however the selection process
works, the result is indisputable: "This time it will surely run," or
"I just found the last bug."
"
can give it a read to the full book here: https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~yfcai/CS451/RequiredReadings/MythicalManMonth.pdf
Can you honestly say that "retroactively" you are not aware of why particular games you worked on were delayed (if any)?Feep said:
As far as seeing (or avoiding) it during development - that's largely an acquired skill - that some people refuse to learn - but it's not because it can't be learned, really.
That's an over-simplification though. First - every organization has people responsible for reality-checking estimations and schedules, so you're failing on multiple levels there, not just estimates. And second, "developers" umbrella often includes people (or other organizations) completely external to the core organization, which are harder to account for since you have 0 control there. Not that it can't be done - but it IS harder.borges said:
That's a good question, cuz I'm right there with you. Some ppl can see what games will get delayed, so how do we get it when we're outside of the developers bubble. haha
That's fucking hilarious if true.
More_Badass
Member
A lot can happen in seven months. At the time, a late 2017 release could have seemed reasonable, but between then and now, polishing, bug fixing, mechanics, unforeseen problems and issues, etc., etc., means more time would be needed.
It doesn't have anything to do with us seeing something the devs don't. That's a correlation at best
You're just projecting based on past experiences with the developer/IP. Which is something that is much easier done from outside the bubble - no cognitive dissonance to deal with. Of course, it's also coincidental, you have no factual basis for assuming developer will repeat old mistakes (or make new ones).Hexer06 said:
That said - many cases of delays are real-world examples of definition of insanity, human-organizations/systems seem to be very change-resistant at times.
Ah that's true. You guys are right. I also didn't realize that trailer announcing a 2017 release was all the way back in October. Time is flying!
LQX
Member
Red Dead Redemption 2 getting delayed was not that surprising at all to many here. Why is that? Why is it that we as consumers knew way before hand that Rockstar would most likley delay their game? Because we know release announcements are sometimes VERY disingenuous coming from certain companies. I can understand unforeseen circumstances delaying a product but sometimes it boils down to some of these companies just outright being very disingenuous to consumers.
Yeah, project managers. They typically know nothing about complexity and time required for a feature, and therefore need to rely on devs.
The Last Wizard
Member
Yup, all in the effort to build hype. I like how a lot of Japanese devs do it, announce games that are 60-70% complete then the wait is a few months. We seem to be getting early and earlier announcements now:/
I'm all for games being delayed if it makes for a better game at release. Andromeda should have been delayed to fix all the bugs and jank. Zelda BOTW was delayed for a good long while and it resulted in an amazing game, possibly one of the all time greats. Some games get delayed and still come out bad. But I'd take a delay over a guaranteed bad game/poor product any day.
MikeE21286
Member
A game is like any project in business.
You can never accurately identify exactly what it takes took complete a project.
Known unknowns. Unknown unknowns. It's impossible to predict the future. That's why crunch exists, to account for commitments that can't be met (... or predictions that were wrong). Crunch is not unique to videogames, is just more discussed or more tolerated fire some reason
You can never accurately identify exactly what it takes took complete a project.
Known unknowns. Unknown unknowns. It's impossible to predict the future. That's why crunch exists, to account for commitments that can't be met (... or predictions that were wrong). Crunch is not unique to videogames, is just more discussed or more tolerated fire some reason
LordOfLore
Banned
From the comments:
The Strokes
Banned
People nowadays take delays as a sign of good things because it means: "Oh more time to flesh out the game, yeah, hurray!".
Sometimes I feel this whole announcement and delaying, specially of AAA games is a PR move to generate positive buzz, and cases like Andromeda just help build a case for that.
This might also explain why they need to set impossible dates, easy money on them preorders and no "fuck you for delaying" because remember, it's always a good thing...
Sometimes I feel this whole announcement and delaying, specially of AAA games is a PR move to generate positive buzz, and cases like Andromeda just help build a case for that.
This might also explain why they need to set impossible dates, easy money on them preorders and no "fuck you for delaying" because remember, it's always a good thing...
Admiral Woofington
Member
The assumption everybody understands why games are delayed are silly. Article is useful because not everybody is part of a company wide project with many movable parts that can have issues at every end.
I'm part of construction and so much shit goes wrong every day. Often to the point we have to constantly change small goals here and there and change plans entirely to try and meet our initial deadline
I'm part of construction and so much shit goes wrong every day. Often to the point we have to constantly change small goals here and there and change plans entirely to try and meet our initial deadline
Fallout 4 was perfect, announced 4 months before dropping
Yeah its interesting how movies dont often get delayed. They have that stuff locked down for the most part.
I wonder if we will ever reach a point where games arent delayed. Where the majority of unkowns are known, and they stop reinventing and re-solving the same problems over again.
I wonder if we will ever reach a point where games arent delayed. Where the majority of unkowns are known, and they stop reinventing and re-solving the same problems over again.
Jason Schreier trying to sell his book, huh? Sneaky.
To be honest, there are so many reasons for why games get delayed, or become bad, or both, and the article only talks about a very tiny sample of reasons. You could create a whole book full of anecdotes about why games get delayed, or cancelled, and you still couldn't even scratch the surface of the number of possible reasons.
This is the current industry trend, actually. Announcing the title 4-6 months before release, when it is in QA and has a high probability of actually being released at the time they promise.
To be honest, there are so many reasons for why games get delayed, or become bad, or both, and the article only talks about a very tiny sample of reasons. You could create a whole book full of anecdotes about why games get delayed, or cancelled, and you still couldn't even scratch the surface of the number of possible reasons.
This is the current industry trend, actually. Announcing the title 4-6 months before release, when it is in QA and has a high probability of actually being released at the time they promise.
afternoon delight
Member
Most films can brute force any problem with enough money and a deadline- not with good working conditions mind you, but the OT will be paid and motherfuckers will deliver. A film has x, y, and z to cover and just needs the time to do so satisfactorily- a bit different than solving a problem that might not have an answer. (Why are we losing twenty FPS in city sections oh god how is this memory leak even a thing? etc etc)
Investors, hype, put pressure on development team...
How I expect next Elder Scrolls to be announced
ClivePwned
Member
I'll be getting this book when it's released. I get that Kotaku and Jason are pimping it- the more people who read this the better. But preorder?
"Blood, Sweat, and Pixels will be out on September 5. You can pre-order it here."
There are about 500 jokes about pre-ordering games to be made here.
"I'll wait to see reviews, when's the embargo up, I'll wait for PS+, I'll get it from Gamestop so I get the pre-order DLC about Valve's coke parties, Day 1 patch adds extra fonts, more accurate footnotes, Season Pass holders get 50% more anecdotes, etc." Quality stuff.
There are another 500 articles about not pre-ordering games, a fair few of which are on kotaku
I'm not shitting on the book or Jason's work, I just found it slightly ironic, that's all.
Delays are rarely anything other than a good things (so long as it doesn't also involve extending the deathmarch)
"Blood, Sweat, and Pixels will be out on September 5. You can pre-order it here."
There are about 500 jokes about pre-ordering games to be made here.
"I'll wait to see reviews, when's the embargo up, I'll wait for PS+, I'll get it from Gamestop so I get the pre-order DLC about Valve's coke parties, Day 1 patch adds extra fonts, more accurate footnotes, Season Pass holders get 50% more anecdotes, etc." Quality stuff.
There are another 500 articles about not pre-ordering games, a fair few of which are on kotaku
I'm not shitting on the book or Jason's work, I just found it slightly ironic, that's all.
Delays are rarely anything other than a good things (so long as it doesn't also involve extending the deathmarch)
crisdecuba
Member
Weird knee jerk reactionary response makes no sense.