I think this is emblematic of the game development atmosphere as a whole. The PS5 ‘must-plays’ are mostly rereleases and multiplats.

I’m hoping Sony studios have a lot of good things cooking behind the scenes, they’re just taking their time.

  • Baggie@lemmy.zipEnglish
    39·
    2 days ago

    Yeah, exclusivity is dead, and games take half a decade to make these days.

    • yeehaw@lemmy.caEnglish
      71·
      21 hours ago

      What’s crazy is lots of good games don’t take that long. You don’t need an epic sound track, textures, physics, etc to make a good game. There are so many amazing low budget games that are not that technically challenging or that demanding of musicians/graphic artists.

      • bilgamesch@feddit.orgEnglish
        21·
        18 hours ago

        epic sound track

        That’s the one thing where I would raise an objection. An epic soundtrack is that one thing that adds to the experience more than fancy graphics or overly complicated game mechanics. Epic doesn’t necessarily mean expensive. Monkey Island had phantastic soundtracks, as well as other older games like The Settlers 2, early Anno games etc. They just set a mood. They supported their narratives. That was good stuff - and I guess you might now be able to extrapolate how old I am.

    • tatann@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      21 hours ago

      Bioware used to be able to make good AAA games quickly :

      • Mass Effect : 2007
      • Dragon Age : 2009
      • ME2 : 2010
      • DA2 : 2011
      • ME3 : 2012

      With epic soundtrack, voice acting, cinematography, …

      Even an independant (back then) studio like CD Projekt “only” needed 4 years between each Witcher game (2007, 2011, 2015), while making their own engine for the 2nd and 3rd

      I don’t know where the years get lost in game development nowadays, except pre-production (lack of direction/managment) and… “open world”

      • I Cast Fist@programming.devEnglish
        2·
        10 hours ago

        “Quickly” - the “Bioware magic” used to be years of lack of direction followed by one year of “HOLY SHIT WE NEED TO DELIVER!” crunch

        But the former executive producer of Dragon Age, Mark Darrah (…) posted a YouTube video about how the so-called “BioWare magic” really worked. According to Darrah, it referred to a hockey stick graph where most of the progress is nearly unnoticeable. It’s nearly flat, and “if you draw that line out, then your game is shipping in like 30 years.” At a certain point, the developers hit a “pivotal point” when the game would finally shape up and a lot of progress would be made in a short amount of time. According to the developer, that tipping point is what is known as“BioWare magic.”

    • bilgamesch@feddit.orgEnglish
      2·
      18 hours ago

      Half a decade for a subpar product that’s barely out of beta.

      Back in the day we’ve got subpar products barely out of beta that we had to patch from magazine cds more often. Oh - and they were more fun because developers had to make something out of nothing. I feel today, where everything is possible as the engine used delivers a toolset for anything, games easily are so overly stuffed with “mechanics” that they just feel like work. I don’t like that.