How many years in development is "okay" for a game?

[hermes]

2-4 is reasonable.

The only problem with the time is when marketing starts coming out years before the game could be realistically released, or the game gets pushed to the sidelines until someone notices it. I don't have a problem with developers taking as much time as they need, but I don't want to be carried away to give a damn for too long...

In other words, Portal 2 was in development for 4 years before it came out, but it was acceptable since they started talking about it a couple years ago. Final Fantasy Versus started advertising 6 years ago, with heavy emphasis on the immediacy of the product, yet it hasn't shown signs of moving forward.

 

[Negatempest]

L4D2 is a scam to charge for full price.

Ugh, I can't believe anyone says this even to this day. L4D2 was a full sequel. Yeah, it came out a year later. But everything was improved. The graphics were better, there were substantially more weapons, double the number of special infected, more variety in the crescendo moments, more variety in player strategy, more levels than in the original, and it's been updated with new campaigns and all of the levels from L4D. Honestly, anyone who still feels the need to complain about L4D2 being a proper sequel needs to lose the sense of entitlement. It was a better sequel than the majority of sequels tend to be, regardless of how long it took to develop.

Entitlement...really? I'm not saying that L4D2 is a terrible game, though I did not like it for game mechanic reasons. Nothing that L4D2 did, from my own view, would be classified past an expansion pack. L4D2 is as much of a sequel as Madden has "sequels" to it's franchise yearly.

O.T.: What I would like to argue about this topic is if developers mention nothing about a game in development until it's about 6+ months away from being shipped. So we are more shocked and amazed when a game is announced.

 

[Erttheking]

I think five years is too long

 

[Arrogancy]

The answer to this question is "as many as it takes, provided the end result shows quality proportional to the time investment." While I agree with the person who started this topic that a good average is about 5 years, there is nothing wrong with a game development exceeding that mark, but it will need a much better game to justify the time spent. For instance, "Duke Nukem: Forever" could have been good, if it had only been released 1-2 years after the previous game. As it stands the end product broke down, not only because it was bad, which most games can weather, provided they make up for it with better DLC, but because it in no way was worth the 13+ years of development it went through.

 

[C F]

Two-and-a-half years is a good time to gestate in the development process. Three years is also a really good number. I'd prefer it not to stretch to four.

If they started with a planned release mark, like "early 2013", then I'm perfectly fine with the devs tacking on six more months to a year if they feel they need it.

No advertising until the game is in the final stages of development, as that just puts unnecessary pressure on the design team.

 

[Vykrel]

i prefer a full-release game to be on a development cycle of between 2-4 years. even 2 is kind of rushing it, when it comes to certain developers (Infinity Ward) and once a game starts hitting the 5 year mark, its a certainty that they had to rework some major parts of the game.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Depends on the game. If there's a consumer base willing to wait, then let them do what they need to do. But, ultimately, if they continue putting out at a really slow rate, then the games will have to be great enough, generating enough sales that it would combat the longer development time. Blizzard understands this, and manages to make outstanding games what, a decade apart? Valve, while they can apparently only make up to the second installment of something before having some kind of panic attack, does relatively well at this. Bethesda, for all their bugs, tend to make games that sell like cheap, delicious beer at a ball game.

You only encounter a problem when the game gains it's vaporware state. Duke Nukem Forever is a great example of what not to do. Continually restarting, resetting, and trying again got them nowhere. After so long, and the game turning out to be less grand than a defecate-covered stale cracker, it can be easily said that the game should have been left to die at some point along it's way. Mother 3, contrariwise, kept running into all kinds of issues, even including rebuilding the game for a different system, but was shaped even better once the decision was made. Yes, it took a long time, so long and with so many problems that the developer said he was done with it, but the game came out unarguably as one of the greatest games around. If only it had been released globally, to let the sales mirror the quality of the game.

 

[vrbtny]

3. Bungie proved this with the Halo Franchise.

 

[Nfritzappa]

Depends on how many people are working on it.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

If they can get a good game out in a year, why stop them?

Because that's not possible. In one year the best you can expect is the same game with different maps (ie. MW2->MW3) or something that quite simply should have been sold for $20 and called an Expansion Pack. Selling it as a full priced new title (Activision's particular speciality) is an evil business practice and reflects very poorly on the VG industry as a whole. From a player's PoV at least.