Hey there! Making games goes from 24 hours (jam) to 24 months (non-jam) to make game. How long yours? Disclaimer: just wondering.
PS: āFood for thoughtāā¦Special favor/request 2nd question, for people who click ā8-10years or moreā, what made the game take this long to be made - was it because it was made āpart-timeā with long āhiatusā periods interespersed (throught out the years) where there not much progress; it is because it is Immense Scopeā¦or you feel you failed/restarted/failed/restaterd/ā¦on and on. Is it because it is a part-time hobby giving very little hours to it (spread over 10 years).
If your game were to be finished - tomorrow - and was released/doneā¦and the game did not find success as you hoped (if you did this as a ābusinessā/with the intent of it being ācommercial (game) productā to sell and hopefully make a return out of it, not a hobby for 10 years and expecting no financial return whatsoever)ā¦would you start another game and be in the long āhaul inā for another 10 years? Or say that you will never do this again (or only maybe much later) because 10 years was a 1st-try and there is not going to be another game that takes (another) 10 years - again (because, life short). Spending a decade of human life to make a software product can be very rewarding (itās incredible that the game ends up made, 10 years later), not necessarily financially, but on the financial matter, a decade is ultra risky because things change so much over such a long time. It brings much more uncertainty despite the quality of the game over such long time. So the question that begs, is would you do it all over again (10 years) (whether you became rich and all/or found some success to live off of it comfortably or found no success). It would more than obvious/understandable why one would not start all over again if they found no success (and seeked that) after such long time. A devastation (but something/a risk one took upon themselves, that they must assume (no one but us - make the game, so we must take responsiblity to it if it takes a decade or more). But what if you do find success/fame/what you want, will you start another game that takes a human decade or decide you will shorten the dev lengthspan a lot this time.
PPS: I understand that people make games for different reasons, and some people are just making the game because a need to ācreateāā¦being creative and thus a special hobby that they will keep their whole life (so donāt care if they work 20 years on their gameā¦it never becomes old and they donāt care however long the game may take in tehir life). But, Iām thinking itās either one of 2 thingsā¦either people that make games over nearly a decade are taking this really as a hobby nothing more and will stay like thatā¦or they reallly believet hat in 10 years, their game will be the Best Ever game made and they will find success (like building the āopus/chef dāoeuvreā of their life) and maybe get crazy rich/famous and everythingā¦so thatās why/having/seeing stars in teh eyesā¦for years/a decade. And Iām not trying to stop anyone, itās just I feel Iām amazed that people can tough 10 years on a game and think itās all ok (if one lives 100 years, one can make 10 games in their life, at best scenario/longest life, most people donāt reach 100 years old. For some people,10 games seems enough. Itās the āwhy buy 10 cheap umbrellas that breakdown quickā when you can buy 1 umbrella, a quality one, that lasts (-outlasts the 10 ones); so maybe 10 best games in a lifetime are better than 1000 lesser/cr*p ones). But the measure of things/worth is different from one to the next, so that cheap umbrella could Also be the best thing ever, for some. Everthing is relative/and subjective.
Iām about 7 years in it because I do things in the āright orderā (note that itās probably not the best one, and itās most surely not the fastest oneā¦).
I am used to work on āstandardā software development, with several phases (specification ā design ā tests ā coding ā release) meaning that for every hour of coding there is about 5 hours of thinking.
I have spent a lot of months on the specification, to know what I want to do (and why).
Then I spent a few months on the design, and I realized that creating games is far away from any standard software, especially because of the need of overall optimization and mostly because of the modularity (we need to be able to adjust a lot of things in a game, in order to test the gameplay).
At that point, Iāve decided to create a framework over Unity, something which I master (because Unity is far too complex to be mastered easily) and with only the features Iām likely to need.
I create this framework bit by bit, each bit with the full cycle.
This framework is optimized (no garbage generation at all) so itās very slow to design it.
The goal of this framework is to be able to use it for several games, it contains a complete main menu and in-game menu, all the code to load the assets (even coming from DLCs or mods), auto-diagnostic tools, localization, sound management, assets integration tools, modding tools, etc.
I still have to work on the networking and data saving parts and then Iāll consider the framework to be finished.
For now itās about 32 000 lines of code (excluding the assets from the AssetStore and without any duplicated code, Iāve seen to it) and a lot more comments than code.
I think I still have about 8-12 months of work to finish that framework (depending on the ānightmare levelā of the networking codeā¦).
After that Iāll be able to work on the game design itself (I already have prototyped a few things in order to have some āproof of conceptā).
I think it also answer your questions about my intentions after this game (whether it works or not).
With a game-tested framework it will be a lot faster to produce the following games, so I donāt intend to stop at only one.
Dear Gladyon, thank you for that. Wow, 7 years, times goes. But, itās great that because you really knew/a specific way to make it/accomplish it, is why it took this long, but the reward is worth it (as you said, that the framework would then quicken things - once done, it is applicable to Whatever next game you make); thus, I am thinking the largest time sinker was the designing of it all/design/concept to make something that is reusable for later games; so that you don,t have to do this all over again; once done. Of course, it took 7 years, but the ROI (return on investment (of your time)) is high because your framework will be highly Re-usable for your next games; from your answer, I am just guessing that you will not spend naother 7 years on your next game/frameworks. That the whole point (of framework/of it all) was to speed up game development - later; so you āfuture proofedā things, because you really anticipated to āDo game devs for the next decadesā (in advance); otherwise, I donāt think you would gone through all this effort. It was a goal to make game dev faster - later, so you can then pump many more games, much faster (using reusable framework). Wishing lots of luck on your products/future games.
PS: I think it is so personal what āmattersā to one dev might not to another, like how much their time is worth/vs investments vs risks down the lineā¦as to why one would think āI soldier on for a decade on my thing - whether I succeed or not, itās my (life) mission nowāā¦as other devs said, the dev decides how much it is worth it or not to spend such long time/effort/money/resources, if they will be making games for decades, etcā¦the āis it worth (doing) it all (in the long run)?ā. There is a ton of messages on forums warning that game dev could make you become a starving artist/programmer when your game/product does not find any success; that you should just stick to a day job because game dev is very grim/oversaturated game market (so, only if you make a stellar product, do you see any ROI later).
Hopefully youāve been enjoying the process because these two sections of your post left me with the impression that youāve achieved a whole lot of nothing.
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@unitedone3D , I think youāre thinking in absolutes too much.
You make it sound like over years of a project, thatās all a person is doing. Aside from teams like, say, the Brigador team, what theyāre actually doing is living. Paying bills, hanging out with friends, enjoying free time, eating, sleeping, showering, falling in love, breaking up, getting promoted, losing a job, losing their house to a fire, losing a loved one to COVID, getting married, getting evicted, buying a house, figuring out how to make ends meet, questioning their life existence, supporting their political views, balancing their financials, spending hours on the Unity forumsā¦
This is why I HATE the YEARS metric. I wish all dev teams agreed to use DEV-HOURS as their metric, as itās easier to relate to. Iāve been working on my current game for almost 5 years, but that means nothing to you, as I actually have spent about 1200 dev hours on my game. If I used an average 40-hour work week, thatās about 30 weeks, or 7 months of full time work. A far cry from the 5 years that you interpret as wasted blood sweat and tears. All the while, Iām earning a pretty paycheck from the day job, even if I still consider my game for a future commercial release.
While there are those that are casual about their projects and take whatever time they need, there are those that throw in all the chips and hope to go big. But there are several gradients of in between, āI just want enough to earn a living, so that I donāt have to do my current jobā, or, āI want to release something that I can be proud of, even if it has 10 playersā.
Thereās a lot of value in building the same game over a long period of time, much of which gives the same value as if you did otherwise. Most of the time, the tasks needed to finish a large, hell, ANY size, feature game are small bite-sized challenges, and finishing parts of those features are (should be) rewarding in and of themselves. Especially for programming/engineering, itās very rewarding to build systems such that they can interface together, save you future time, and reuse in future projects. For art, building an object, a texture, a character should feel rewarding. If you have to slog through the work, then, yeah, I understand your thinking. Youāre not enjoying yourself.
But on a long project, you are building upon your own shoulders, which means you are making your own self better and better. Even if you completely tear down a project and start it again, there is a reason for it. You have knowledge of why your original choices werenāt going to work for you (what not to do), and you can build things faster, and ultimately, youāve learned from your past self.
I think you believe, and you wouldnāt be wrong, that most indie developers keep building and building, with no end in sight, not doing constant evaluation, not heeding sunk cost fallacy, not righting the ship, not redirecting course; all of these things are necessary activities for ultimately completing your game. Without the occasional āsoul searchā, you indeed will be lost. Itās okay to build a game over a number of years, as long as you are constantly re-evaluating along the way, and not having it consume you.
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Dear aer0ace, thank you for that. Itās true I might have been a bit too much āeither - orā and not enough inbetween shades of gray. Youāre right, I agree with you that people are busy living in those years and not Just doing a video game (forgot to add this reason) and that some dev also work on several small projects over all those years; not just one game; so there is lots and lots and lots of things happening in those years.
The example you gave is great because it shows (in dev hours rather than years as you said) that ācondensedā it was months - rather than truly āfull time 40-60 hours/w -for 5 yearsā straight. Still, though, the game still took 5 years to be made; you might have made in a 6 months but that would have been grueling and possibly many things you could not have thought of; because game building is a long (organic) process where we discover/learn things over time; cramming it in a few months, not sure the game would be exactly the same; despite equivalent time spread over 6mth vs 5y. As some said, game dev āin generalā is mostly a marathon test of endurance/resilience and not really āspeed run/sprint/get to finish line nowā. Itās the old rabbit vs turtle fable. Still, I think we should be able in the future to become more like the rabbit and less like the turtle; because ādonāT work harder, work smarterā; if that means faster, it is smarter. Because, as you said, the goal of most devs is to accelerate the next game dev making so their next game is made in 1/10th the time.
The problem (I thinnk, I have, personally) with āmaking a long projectā is that you can only make so many of them; so, yes a very long rewarding project, but you will not make 100s of them in your lifetime. Which that I feel is the bad part of making huge projects; you can be more proud of that Single 1 project that took you 30 years to doā¦but it took 30 years and itās 1 project. (and life short). Itās why I am for accelerating the whole process/automatizing (wtithout necessarily ācanning itā by copmuter generation, but āassisted automationā sort of), where we use the computer as a large helper instead of doing the whole things ourself and it taking an eternity (a bit like that new tool āArtomatix A.I.ā that does art by A.Iā¦it seems counter-intuitive but when you look deepdown, it is not because if someone can make this much art way quicker (by A.I. assisting) and still make a result just as good as any other person doing it from scratch; then that is ādonāt work harder, work smarterā (for same/faster result). I think some of the ways game dev is made are too archaic and āslow push one vertice at a timeā and ācode 50 000 lines to do softwareāā¦there needs paradigm change/methods changes to speed things (is too slowmo now), dramatically/exponentially. Technology has advanced, a little bit/ok quite a lot, but some techniques lag behind; and despite the CGI graphics we ahve now, lots of game dev stuff is slow as snail or like that turtle. Rabbit is future, not snail/turtle. Thankfully, the Asset Store/Marketplaces have been the largest contributor to game dev acceleration - using the manpower of everyone - for everyone/game dev democratising. Just a 2 c.
Iāve finished smaller projects in the middle, but my current big project I restarted in 2017. I see on my dev blog site I need to update the ETA date againā¦ My excuse is I had a baby in the mean time, and heās now 2 1/2 and learned ādaddyā is the fun one. So not much free time to work on it lately.
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Dear Joe, thank you for that. Congrats on being father. Itās more than understandable that this was a huge event that could slow down game dev because of new family (time) commitments/priorities. Wish you lots of luck on your games and being dad (not to sound bad, but name is apt(ly put), it is perilous waters out there with trying to sell it (and not ship sinking)).
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Dealing with Unityās bullshit.
Dear AcidArrow, thank you for that. I see, I am sorry to hear that. Hope you find what you are looking for (with Unity), one day.
I wish you didnāt add the ā(with Unity)ā part, since now Iām compelled to reply again.
But in order to avoid taking this too far off topic Iāll say the following and then bow out of this thread:
Thereās nothing to find with Unity. If I have any Unity related goals, it is to somehow make enough money to buy Unity and then shut them down which will result in the world becoming a better place.
Other than that, after weāre done with the next game, either Iāll manage to make a team where we can make our own āengineā, or Iāll quit the games industry altogether.
@unitedone3D , thanks for your detailed explanation. I think it helps frame your questions a lot better in terms of the time a game developer spends to make a game.
Your thoughts are essentially the reason why most experienced devs advise inexperienced devs to āstart smallā and āfinish a gameā. There are a lot of unforeseen activities to finishing a game, that can only be gained through experience, and finishing a small game helps a developer to understand a bigger picture. Itās a cliched example, but seriously, you train for a marthon by slowly building up to going longer distances. The principle is the same.
I think, essentially, your questions are about Project Management. This is a skill learned with experience. With more practice, developers learn what theyāre capable of, and can more accurately estimate how long systems and assets take to build. They also learn how to set a goal end time, and how to budget that time to reach that goal. This is why kanban boards like Trello and processes like agile help keep the project on track to ultimately be finished.
But, spoiler alert, weāre all human, and even the best developers will estimate poorly, and projects extend, and this is where the sunk cost evaluation comes into play. Is it worth going on? For some developers, there is a point where youāve spent so much time on it, that itās better to power through and believe you can finish it, because youāve made all the right steps to that point to set yourself up for success. And the flip side of that is that, after years of work, you reflect on it, realize you havenāt gained ground (because youāve already experienced finishing a small game, right?), and cut your losses, and move on. So, those in the 8+ year dev range are either confident or delusional, or of course, casual as weāve already established.
Experienced developers will tend to double or triple an estimate for how long it takes to build a certain feature for their game. This buffer tends to come into play when you discover work that you didnāt expect, or the result of what you built wasnāt exactly what you expected it to be. This allows time for rebuilding and improving certain parts of the project. You can also cut features to still complete a project, and this is usually very difficult for developers to do. You weigh out how long a feature would take to implement, and whether the value to the player is worth that amount of time to build.
This push and pull happens. It just happens. Itās part of game development, and itās the part that no experienced developer can fully convey to a beginner, because itās their own path to take. If your project looks like shit after 3 years, well, are you going to dump it or keep iterating on it to make it better?
For my project specifically, the way Iāve handled it, is the first year or so, I spent nailing down the gameplay prototype with simple assets. Then the next couple of years of development has been a lot of building tools such that authoring my levels and assets goes a lot quicker, more fluid, and fully testable, and authoring art assets is as quick and easy as possible.
Iāve gone back and forth between building systems and building art assets, because Iāve been uncertain between showing off or concealing my development for marketing purposes. On one hand, fancy assets look great for marketing, but your gameplay would be mediocre if you donāt spend time on it. On the other hand, you can focus on the gameplay, and have crappy graphics. A demo would probably be interesting but wouldnāt draw eyes to the game.
Ultimately, after spending so long on my project, a good gauge as to whether or not to continue is whether I enjoy working on it, and itās still an overwhelming YES. Remember my difference between 5 years and 7 months? Well, in that time Iāve also worked on and finished smaller projects. It wasnāt because I was unmotivated by my main project, but they were gifts for people. Iāll still set aside time to do this, knowing that my main project can take long to finish.
And as for change in general, you bring up a good point. We all change, the industry changes, and finishing a project is a moving target. There are some games that Iāve started building that I scrapped because a better game came on the market, and I no longer wanted to pursue finishing it, because my vision didnāt add anything new, fresh, or different. Some people are lucky and have their stars aligned, such that they finish their 8-year long project once the WWII-zombie-crafting-battle-royale craze is just beginning and strike gold, and others are not so lucky. So, for those 8+ year developers, theyāre either constantly doing market research, validating the relevancy of their project/product, or theyāre living under a rock and hoping for the best.
Holy cow I typed a lot.
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Re AcidArrow, after being a decade at it I can only imagine your frustrationā¦ hope you stay in the game industry or make the great next engine. Although, I sense your deep disastifaction (from so long), I think we still have to be somewhat reconnaissant of the fact Unity Technologies brought their engine to a lot of people; game dev 20some years ago was almost non-existent for most but only the elite/AAA studio/rich people who could get a license for a game engine then. Same for Unreal. With your engine (if you make one), there would be your engine, Unity, Unreal, Godot, RPG Maker and Iām forgetting few smaller ones; but I think the message is co-existence, there is an engine for everyone. Do you really mean it when you say you want to shut down the whole thing. I feel that you feel that you may have chosen not the one you thought it would be and thus, would go back in time, to change for another engine. What do you feel needs change with the engine/or the company/or both/what happened?
Re aer0ace, these are really great points, thank you. Itās great to have long explanatory answers, sometimes, too.
Wishing tons of luck on your game!
First version took 8 years to release. I was just never happy with earlier versions, got the UI re-done many times, and the environment art re-done about 6 times.
Working on v2 now, which addresses all the shortcomings I learnt from the v1 release.
The game was made part-time. I didnāt have any long hiatus periods, except perhaps earlier this year being addicted to Rocket League for about 4 months and I got nothing done on my game 
Iām in a good position now to finish, I work 30 hours a week contracting from home, which gives me a solid 3-4 hours each evening to work on my game. Nothing impedes finishing a game like having to work a 9-6 job with daily travel in trafficā¦
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I havenāt enjoyed it, creating a framework is from far the most boring.
But itās a good thing to start with the boring things, and then do the interesting stuff (like when you eat a cookie, you start by the sides and then finish with the center).
Fortunately, I have mostly achieved what I wanted to achieve, which includes learning how Unity works.
I also have vastly improved my knowledge in C# optimization, just being able to manipulate strings without garbage has been quite a challenge but well worth it.
The logging system I have developed can log about 30 times more logs than Unityās logging system, without generating garbage or slowing down the main thread.
Also, I have seen too many games where modding have been added after the game was seriously advanced.
The result is usually really messy, same for localization.
These things are better done first, and can be re-used for lots of games, and Unity doesnāt do that very well out of the box (well, maybe the localization is done correctly now, but not when I started a few years ago).
Itās just a matter of what process is used for the whole project.
My last project was a 13 months (full time) project, where I wrote documentation (specification, design, test documents, reviews, etc.) for about 11 months and a half, then Iāve coded for one month and then checked for 2 weeks that everything was OK.
It means that after 11 months of work, I had 0 lines of code written, and yet the project was nearly finished.
For information, for that project I had been hired for 24 months full-time.
And THIS is game development. Iāve redone my UI about 4 times already, still not completely happy. I expect at least another 2 revisions or so. Inexperienced developers will build it once, not be happy and give up.
Dear Meltdown, thank you for that. I think the polishing/perfectionning of a product is a substantial contributing part of why games can take much longer than thought (the āā90% of the game is made in that last 10% (of which, is polishing)āā);
but itās more than understandable that we would wish a product we feel satisfied with - as long as we have enough time to continue polishing it; until, one day, we say āok, done/finished (enough)āā¦has some said before āāno art piece is ever finishedā¦it is only abandonnedāā (I think it was Leonardo Davinci that said that) and sure enough, we could āpolish it foreverāā¦but then the piece itself could even lose some of its elements as its āmutates/changesā as we continue refining it; I think there comes a time/moment when enough is enough/we need to set a sort of āself-deadlineā (plus, the ever (true) - life, short). We just have to move on one day and āfinish it/finalize itā, 'let it out (for it to āspread its wingsā & fly on), a bit like letting your child go/leave, to fend for theirself āout in the openā (because itās hard to let your ābabyā go, you nurtured it like a mother/father to her/his child, &in your game -āraising it/making it ābe/becomeā what it isā (like child raising) and now they are leaving after all these years). Itās scary to think yet you only the best for them, that they prosper and āfind base/interest in people who wish to play the game you conceived/brought to lifeā.
Let us take an instant to think about itā¦games are monuments, achievements, featsā¦like novels that stand the test of timeā¦after all these years they still are read, seen, talked ofā¦as works of achievementā¦games, same thing. In my view, even More, because games are no other media, the most interactive media; books, films, theatrics spectacles are passive, games are active and require your interaction. No other media in the 21st century is as powerful/reaching and deep as games, board gamesā¦but, especially, video games. They are the centuries ābooksā of older centuries. People had made-up games then too, but never reached the interactivity and feeling that video games procure today.
Once your made is game, it is made and exists, it is an achievement; now, we know there are 50 million games out there (and the staggering 100,000 mobile games released on Google store floors you) but that happens with all medias, count how many books or films there areā¦some books are more remembered than others; itās up to us to find the best subject for that book. Just a 2c. Wishing lots of luck on your game.
Re Gladyon Very nice breakdown, thank you.
PS: For people who clicked 8 years or more, just one more, did you find success if you released your game/itās finished?
I cant be the only person here thinking this entire part of your post is really odd. I have never met another developer in my life who would write documentation and test documents and everything else before making the actual thing.
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Right out of college, I did this, because it was āthe right way to do thingsā, right? As I got programming jobs, the more senior engineers never even bothered with documents or paper. Itās all in the code. Nowadays, itās more accepted that code is self-documenting, and Iām so glad for this.
In my current job, weāre still stuck on the idea of keeping numerous design documents, which of course are completely out of sync with the code.
Documents are outdated the minute you write code.
EDIT:
I should also mention that documents are great for communicating what you are going to build to non-engineering types, and it does help to hash out more complex designs, but I would never design anything completely on paper first, then start implementing it.
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