• RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Yes, I have. A small team can launch a small/medium size game in less than two years using current tools. Game jams, albeit almost never ending up with complete games, last for usually one week and the end result is basically a vertical slice of a game nearly always built by a single person.

      Again, there is no reason a game spending 5+ years in development should be considered average or normal.

      Even in the past, AAA studios could complete successive games in a shorter amount of time. Metroid Prime 2, Star Wars Battlefront 2 (the good one from 2005), and Legend of Zelda Majoras Mask were all developed by reusing code and assets from the games that came before them, and game development tools were not as easy to work with then as they are now. Metroid Prime 1 was developed in 3 years, Ocarina of Time was developed in 3 years, and Battlefront 1 was developed in 2 years. All of these were developed with AAA funding and took less than 5 years on tools with less accessibility than modern tools.

      • tal@lemmy.today
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        6 months ago

        Some of the games I like the most – some roguelikes fit into this camp – had very small teams working for a long period of time on a game, spending a long time iteratively refining the gameplay.

        I’m not so sure that I prefer the “wide” model of many people for a short period of time versus a few people for a long period of time. Certainly there are things that the “narrow” model can and has done well that the “wide” model hasn’t.