Why Do Independent Game Developers Take So Long To Make Games? (Great devblog post)

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More_Badass

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Thought this was an interesting and candid post from a developer (from the team working on open world cyberpunk cinematic platformer The Last Night)

Why Do Independent Game Developers Take So Long To Make Games?

You might ask why? Especially when Ubisoft can crank out a new Assassin’s Creed every year, while Naughty Dog made a new Uncharted & The Last of Us in a few years? What’s wrong with this picture? What does it take to create levels, a few enemies and puzzles, a simple mechanic and some non-interactive dialogue?

On that note — why has it taken us 2 years to come out from the shadows since we won the #cyberpunkgamejam in March 2014? Let us explain.
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Well Ubisoft half asses all their games. A lot of big studios like Naughty Dog have multiple teams working on different things.
 
Great read. Most people have the dreams of making a game but have no clue on the admin side. Forming an LLC, payroll, hire/fire, insurance, leases, permits, business licenses, logistics, IT support and all this before you even begin making a game that you have to then pitch to the sharks. It really says a lot about someone's character that can go from graduating high school to running an indie company for a few years and spit out a decent game. I love reading stories like this.
 
I haven't read or watched the article yet but if I had to guess, making games isn't easy with no money, a full time job and two people covering 12 different positions.

This is the case for me anyway.
 
Thanks so much for the respectful comments and kind words guys/gals!

@spazchicken, have a read - you might be surprised that we go into a bit more detail than that ;)
 
Yea, that sounds about right as somebody who interviews a lot of indie devs, that story is very common.
 
I never really found it too hard to understand. The games are made by much smaller groups of people who (with all due respect) probably have less experience, if not with programming in general, then at least with the exact type of game they're working on. On top of that a lot of great indie games try to innovate something or add something really fresh that isn't easy to program. I remember seeing all the work that went into Fez in the documentary Indie Game the Movie. The amount of experimentation it took just to find the right aesthetic and make the core mechanic (rotating the world) work was astronomical.

d0hv said:
Well Ubisoft half asses all their games.
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Oh yeah those lazy devs will do anything just to get out of work by 5 and hit the pub, totally.

C'mon.... don't say such crap.
 
d0hv said:
Well Ubisoft half asses all their games. A lot of big studios like Naughty Dog have multiple teams working on different things.
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The only thing half assed about ubisoft games are their design philosophies(because it's what makes money). Other than that, an immense amount of work goes into getting those games out the door.
 
Makes perfect sense. Even old SNES games, simple as they were, took anywhere from 5-15 well organized full time professionals 6 months to a year to make. A good counter example of this is Stardew Valley: Made by one guy, but because it was just him it took 5 years to make.
 
Because indie teams are smaller, and they haven't got the money to sub contract work out like other developers do.

Dodge Roll, who made Enter the Gungeon, have 4 full time and 2 part time members of staff, so you can't really compare them to a behemoth like Ubisoft Montreal who have something like nearly 3000 members of staff.
 
yeah... whenever an indie that catches my eye gets announced/kickstarted i automatically assume i won't be playing it until 2-3+ years. i just keep a tab on it and move on. when it comes out it comes out
 
Skittles said:
The only thing half assed about ubisoft games are their design philosophies(because it's what makes money). Other than that, an immense amount of work goes into getting those games out the door.
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I agree with this + not giving their games room to breathe in the past. They've still put in an crazy amount of work just building those large game worlds and making them look halfway beliveable. They've also started to do smaller games alongside the their large-scale stuff.
 
d0hv said:
Well Ubisoft half asses all their games. A lot of big studios like Naughty Dog have multiple teams working on different things.
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Srsly?

Go on twitter, find any single developer from any team at Ubisoft and tell them they half-assed it.

All these games were half-assed?
The Division?
Assassin's Creed Syndicate?
Unity and 3...yes maybe a little.
AC 1,2, rogue, brotherhood,
Rainbow Six Siege?
Watch Dogs?
Far Cry 2, 3, 4, Primal?
Black Flag?
Driver San Fran?
Splinter Cell 1,2,3,4,5,6?
Rayman Legends, Origins?
Prince Of persia all of em?

So for the past 10 plus years...how many games were rushed?
 
I pity the indie devs who slavishly work on a game for many years, only for it to sell maybe a couple hundred copies and be forgotten instantly. Sure, they'll pick up a lot of useful skills, but the time investment/reward ratio can be downright dreadful, and with the huge amount of new indie games nowadays that is more and more likely to be the case

brings to mind this reddit post from a few months back
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlik...it_possible_that_people_can_just_take/cx6xwzv
They also reported that 50% of Indies in 2014 made less than $500 in game sales, while 2% are over $200,000.
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as someone who's working on their own little project, my takeaway from this is to limit the scope of their game to a realistic goal. Unless you want to spend years of your life on this RPG idea of yours that will probably never come to fruition and will most likely never financially compensate the amount of labor that went into it, not even to mention the concessions this is going to cause in your social life, I believe it's very important to be reasonable with the size of your game and with what you can accomplish on your own
 
As someone 1.3 years into a project for PS4, I agree. It's been a pain but worth the ride so far.

I will say even if we fail, the friendships alone created with devs are worth the blood, sweat and tears. So many great peeps pouring themselves into their work that are amazing human beings at the core.
 
Jacksinthe said:
As someone 1.3 years into a project for PS4, I agree. It's been a pain but worth the ride so far.

I will say even if we fail, the friendships alone created with devs are worth the blood, sweat and tears. So many great peeps pouring themselves into their work that are amazing human beings at the core.
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What are you guys making?
 
Palculator said:
Throwing more people onto a project isn't just magically going to make it complete faster, as we should know from concurrency theory, or the simple fact that nine women won't have a baby in one month.
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No, that requires good management. And I say 4 people can make a game in a third of the time but 40 not in a 1/30th.

5 Lives made Satellite Reign in a very short time by magic of being 5 people who are highly specialised and experienced, knwoing exactly how this project would play out. And it shows imho. Fast development, great quality, awesome documentation of work progress.
 
Biggest stumbling block I can see for any indie developer (outside of actually making the thing) is marketing, so many games get released without any, that and making something that people actually want to buy
 
If a company has 2000 or more people, they will make more games than a company with 200 or 300 people. It's basic stuff.
If you are 10 or so, then it gets even worse because you potentially might not even have a publisher that's paying for your title, which means you might not be able to even work full time on said project to begin with (some smaller companies do work for other larger companies and work on a smaller title in the meantime until they find a publisher or eventually finish the game).
 
Mik2121 said:
How is this even a question?

If a company has 2000 or more people, they will make more games than a company with 200 or 300 people. It's basic stuff.
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That's actually not the point of the article. Team size and scope go hand in hand, sure, but the red tape early on as a studio takes heaps more time than an established studio with their ground floor already laid and years of experience.

Edit: posted before your edit.
 
Jacksinthe said:
That's actually not the point of the article. Team size and scope go hand in hand, sure, but the red tape early on as a studio takes heaps more time than an established studio with their ground floor already laid and years of experience.

Edit: posted before your edit.
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Yeah, read the whole OP and edited. Sorry.
However, the whole setting up tends to be a burden during the first title or two. Things coming afterwards, if still in the same company, tend to take time simply because it's just a few guys and girls going at it instead of hundreds.
 
Mik2121 said:
Yeah, read the whole OP and edited. Sorry.
However, the whole setting up tends to be a burden during the first title. Things coming afterwards, if still in the same company, tend to take time simply because it's just a few guys going at it instead of hundreds.
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Not necessarily. A few guys is much easier to manage than a hundred. And if time limited but scope creep sets in, no amount of manpower can reign the scope in and management has failed at that point.

Scope creep can be fine if you're OK with the time sink but even a second title, in a different genre, for example, will be a whole new ball game. A whole new demographic to aim for. A whole new toolset, systems, etc.

Established studios with the experienced can hit the ground running while the first several titles from a small studio that tries to explore new avenues will always be a struggle trying to dial everything in.
 
Jacksinthe said:
Not necessarily. A few guys is much easier to manage than a hundred. And if time limited but scope creep sets in, no amount of manpower can reign the scope in and management has failed at that point.

Scope creep can be fine if you're OK with the time sink but even a second title, in a different genre, for example, will be a whole new ball game. A whole new demographic to aim for. A whole new toolset, systems, etc.

Established studios with the experienced can hit the ground running while the first several titles from a small studio that tries to explore new avenues will always be a struggle trying to dial everything in.
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To be honest I don't exactly know how a small 10 people company works, as I've only worked on game companies of around 200 people (current place included). However from the things I've heard from friends working on those smaller companies, the main issue seemed to get past the prototype idea and into full production for the first title. I assume there are other elements that can be problematic, and the scope of the game is also an issue, but still in average, unless you're making a fairly simple game (visually speaking anyway), it will just take longer because someone has to make all the 3D assets, do all the technical research, lots of playtesting done by just a few, etc. Plus when it comes to making any new game, you have less people that might know how to do that stuff unless your whole team is quite experienced.

BTW good luck with your stuff. I saw the link you posted earlier, it's looking pretty great!
 
Can someone post a screenshot or pastebin of the article? I want to read it but I can't access the site for whatever reason.
 
More_Badass said:
How many people here actually read the post?
He's not talking about team size
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Whilst he might not be talking directly about size, a lot of those issues can be mitigated by having a larg(er) staff base and delegating those tasks that are better suited to admin staff, and leave the "talent" to get on with the actual work.

But yeah, there are a lot of hidden tasks that many people don't even consider.
 
More_Badass said:
How many people here actually read the post?
He's not talking about team size
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Yeah, the business and workflow sides of game development are massive time sinks for indie devs, startups in particular.

Which reminds me: I get a little annoyed when people criticize Cloud Imperium Games for Star Citizen's development time. When they guys first showed the prototype, the team was roughly ten people, all in one location. Now they're several hundred across multiple countries. Building that infrustructure takes time. Lots and lots of time. So maybe comparing Star Citizen to World of Warcraft, Elite Dangerous or any other game from a large, established developer is a little disingenuous.
 
"Why does its take so long when Ubisoft can make a new Assasin's Creed every year"

— the words of someone who has never seen how long Ubisoft's credits sequence goes on for

Also to be fair, the studios that release yearly games don't actually make those games in a year either anyway. Ubi / Acti have multiple teams for Call of Duty & AC and each of them still take several years per game.
 
Mik2121 said:
To be honest I don't exactly know how a small 10 people company works, as I've only worked on game companies of around 200 people (current place included). However from the things I've heard from friends working on those smaller companies, the main issue seemed to get past the prototype idea and into full production for the first title. I assume there are other elements that can be problematic, and the scope of the game is also an issue, but still in average, unless you're making a fairly simple game (visually speaking anyway), it will just take longer because someone has to make all the 3D assets, do all the technical research, lots of playtesting done by just a few, etc. Plus when it comes to making any new game, you have less people that might know how to do that stuff unless your whole team is quite experienced.

BTW good luck with your stuff. I saw the link you posted earlier, it's looking pretty great!
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I agree. I'm just speaking from personal experience as a 2-man team and from other small teams like mine. And thanks :D
 
It was a nice read. Nothing really mind blowing being said, but stuff that needs to be said from time to time.
 
Insightful article, it's also worth noting that some indie games are side projects that go through patchy development due to the other commitments of the developer; why dedicate everything to a project that may never take off the ground?
 
Dev time is mostly relative to the size of the team and its experience I think, and more you have staff and more it specialize, and when this staff is too big to properly manage itself someone will have the main task to do it, etc.

Can't imagine the time it would take for one person to do something similar to some currents aaa.
 
A bit disappointed with that. I expected more talk around specifics, development life cycles and what admin/legal work they actually do. Instead, we just got, we have to make a logo, hire people, do admin and legal stuff.
 
As someone who make games as part of a team usually, for portfolio purposes, what takes the most time is scheduling.

My current team and project got together for a gamejam back in February, and while we got a lot of stuff done over that weekend, the final push turned out to be much longer, and we're almost in May now. Because even though we're just three people, with two of them being professional programmers (you'd think petty gameplay would be easy to solve then, but nope), getting three people to clear their schedules at the same time after work is really difficult :/ Apart from a few weekend hours with just two of us, we mainly see each other as a group for like 4 hours every Tuesday.

I'd love to be able to spend 40+ hours a week creating games like a regular company, but since we all have jobs (well, I don't at the moment, but will soon), we just can't. We have no plans for making money with this project, so getting it done takes a lot longer for us indies for these reasons.
 
leeh said:
A bit disappointed with that. I expected more talk around specifics, development life cycles and what admin/legal work they actually do. Instead, we just got, we have to make a logo, hire people, do admin and legal stuff.
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Yeah, the article wasn't very insightful. It was yet another "woe are developers" article. I got it. Your job is not easy. No one's job is easy.

Farm out the red tape to business people for shares in your profits. Get managers on staff. Focus on making your game.
 
Nice article except the spreading of misinformation about games like assassins creed. They take more than one year to make, they just have multiple games in development at any given time, just like Call of Dity.
 
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