Create a new AAA takes a long timeyears and years, and major publishers are increasingly reducing the density of their publishing pipelines because of this. In some cases, however, the time between a project and success is really long, even ten years or more, as happened with GTA and Dragon Age.
Speaking on a podcast about why AAA games take so long, the former Dragon Age executive producer – Mark Darrah – and now consultant for Dragon Age The Veilguard has had his say.
Darrah’s words on game development times
“One of the reasons AAA games take so long in some cases is simply because they can afford it” reveals Darrah. “They look at the market, they look at what they need to do and decide that it’s more important to produce a very impactful game than to release something more quickly.”
“We could say that it is what Rockstar does with GTA: He’d rather have a game come out once every decade or more and be a cultural phenomenon than try to shorten the timeline and potentially reduce its impact.” Darrah says that in many cases of “successful” franchises, “a long run waiting between games” can “actually improve the impact of the upcoming game.”
Darrah explains that these are some of the “external reasons” that push to space out the publication of games. From his point of view, moreover, AA and indie games (which require less time) can arrive on the market and surprise everyone with a particular idea that forces AAA to change some details of the game to be able to introduce it and keep up with the latest trends, slowing down development even further.
“There are many reasons why AAA games take a long time,” concludes Darrah, “some of which make sense, some of which make sense if you are part of the management of a company, and some of which honestly don’t make much sense, but are a consequence of the ambitions of the team, but also of the expectations of the players that the teams fear of disappointing.”
We would also like to point out that Darrah had already made some comments on the game, had said what she thought of The Veilguard and did not use half measures.
