What are your thoughts on the trend of increasing game development cycles and budgets?

Playing through the GTA series on PS2 and it got me thinking how rapidly devs used to to crank out games. The PS2 had 5 stand alone GTA titles which is insane by todays standards.

Also, I think modern game dev cycles are actually even longer than publicized because of the additional time needed for post launch patching and DLC addons - e.g. Cyberpunk 2077 'released' in 2020 but we should really consider 2022 as it's 'polished' release.

Personally I view longer development cycles as a generally good thing:
+ Less crunch time for devs.
+ Larger and more polished final game (PS2 GTA's averaged around 20h each, whilst GTA5 took me at least 50h).
+ I'm personally not in a rush for more game releases, my backlog is packed, and I am happy to wait for quality over quantity.

The biggest downside I see is:
– Looooong wait times in between iterations (Elder Scrolls 6? GTA 6? Fallout 5?). This doesn't bother me as I am genre agnostic and will play anything good, but for those that stick rigidly to specific franchises, I certainly sympathize with your plight.

As a consumer I have no issue with longer cycles, I just don't see why everyone complains why it takes so long to get an entry in a particular franchise.

It must be more tiring for the devs, though, as burnout risk increases.

I have too many games in my backlog to care how long it takes for anything to come out. So as a consumer, it doesn't bother me in the slightest. I can't really speak from a gamedev perspective, but I imagine the ever increasing time and money it takes to make a game is not sustainable. Eventually, something's gotta give, and I imagine in a few years' time we'll start getting smaller games again.

Playing through the GTA series on PS2 and it got me thinking how rapidly devs used to to crank out games. The PS2 had 5 stand alone GTA titles which is insane by todays standards.

Also, I think modern game dev cycles are actually even longer than publicized because of the additional time needed for post launch patching and DLC addons - e.g. Cyberpunk 2077 'released' in 2020 but we should really consider 2022 as it's 'polished' release.

Personally I view longer development cycles as a generally good thing:
+ Less crunch time for devs.
+ Larger and more polished final game (PS2 GTA's averaged around 20h each, whilst GTA5 took me at least 50h).
+ I'm personally not in a rush for more game releases, my backlog is packed, and I am happy to wait for quality over quantity.

The biggest downside I see is:
– Looooong wait times in between iterations (Elder Scrolls 6? GTA 6? Fallout 5?). This doesn't bother me as I am genre agnostic and will play anything good, but for those that stick rigidly to specific franchises, I certainly sympathize with your plight.

This requires more time to properly answer than I have right now but I need to address this one bit as a priority.

Personally I view longer development cycles as a generally good thing:
+ Less crunch time for devs.

This is not how it works. Crunch time still occurs frequently during the last period of development because they are still constrained by various milestone dates, especially if the game is shipping physically on release date like most games still do. Even games with 3+ year dev cycles still have crunch. It's very difficult to not have crunch because there are always bugs or things that can be improved even in the most well developed games. Crunching doesn't stop when the master is sent off, its straight onto day one patches and other things to come post release.

I just really don't care at the end of the day, I would just rather play games than be worried about when I'm a game I'm looking forward to comes out. Be patient and the game will come out. It's the same reason why I don't watch ongoing shows and would rather just watch older stuff until the series finishes. I'm not really a patient guy when it comes to anything else but media I most certainly am. It's why I haven't upgraded my PC in over a decade, a console port for an indie game I want to play will eventually come out. I've got enough stuff to keep me busy.

Also, if longer dev times means less iterative sequels or games then I don't mind either. Playing games like SOCOM Combined Assault, Burnour Dominator and Tenchu Fatal Shadows really did remind me just how much companies loved to churn out sequels for the sake of it back then. Plus people loved to complain about games like Uncharted 3, Mass Effect 3 and the annualized Assassin's Creed games so it's like do you just want more underwhelming sequels to be made for the sake of complaining about them?

What I'm disappointed by this gen mainly is the lack of new franchises and some of the games in those new IPs this gen I did enjoy, it's just a shame that everyone is obessesed with nostalgia nowadays no thanks to that terrible movie Star Wars the Farce Awakens but this is a different topic.

I've been playing through the NES Mega Man games recently. I never minded the longer development times in the first place, but Mega Man has given me much more of an appreciation for it. While it is impressive how much the Mega Man series improves with each entry (up until a certain point), all the NES games are just sort of the same. They did basically yearly releases for 6 years straight, which is bad especially considering they were making completely unique Game Boy versions of all these games at the same time.

If anything I think companies should be less afraid to delay games even if it's just internally. They need come up with a release date much later in the development cycle only a few months in advance to prevent the need for release date delays in the first place, because it means developers have to crunch less for deadlines. Looking at a lot of modern AAA releases which were just unfinished, many of them could have used 6 months to even an extra year of development time. With the ambition these projects have, increasing development cycles is necessary. Especially with the unfortunate state of the industry with developers being overworked and crunching.

I've been playing through the NES Mega Man games recently. I never minded the longer development times in the first place, but Mega Man has given me much more of an appreciation for it. While it is impressive how much the Mega Man series improves with each entry (up until a certain point), all the NES games are just sort of the same. They did basically yearly releases for 6 years straight, which is bad especially considering they were making completely unique Game Boy versions of all these games at the same time.

If anything I think companies should be less afraid to delay games even if it's just internally. They need come up with a release date much later in the development cycle only a few months in advance to prevent the need for release date delays in the first place, because it means developers have to crunch less for deadlines. Looking at a lot of modern AAA releases which were just unfinished, many of them could have used 6 months to even an extra year of development time. With the ambition these projects have, increasing development cycles is necessary. Especially with the unfortunate state of the industry with developers being overworked and crunching.

Good point regarding deciding a release date at a later point in development - that could alleviate pressure on devs.

I think the public could also be more forgiving with delays, it's kind of expected nowadays with major titles.

I don't mind games taking longer to develop. I rather have a good first impression of the game, and a polished, mostly bug free experience, instead of a rushed mess.

Now, if the game has a long dev time to bloat it with content to meet some arbitrary time to beat to justify an increased price tag... Then we have a problem.

The way many AAA companies are approaching this is not sustainable in the long run. They try to make bigger worlds, with more polygons and prettier graphics and shaders and more stuff to it, just to have a bigger game. They have gigantic budgets, but the games that come out "fail" if they don't sell an absurd amount of copies. I miss the smaller titles, the spin-offs, the more experimental stuff (Gravity Rush comes to mind).

But I feel that some people feel that a long dev cycle should mean a bigger world, rather than a tight polished one