In short:
1. Increased graphical fidelity means that you need more people to create the same scene. By way of a source of his, he gives the example of a scene from Final Fantasy IV and how many people with specialized roles it would take to create the same scene in modern graphics compared to back in the 90s.
2. Larger team sizes means communication takes longer. For everything. No longer just one studio but multiple studios in multiple locations and time zones working on the same game.
3. Scopes are bigger. Players are expecting more, whether that's more hours of content for your dollar or more reflective puddles. May become a vicious cycle as this means you now need to make your game appeal to more groups of people in order to justify your larger costs from this and other areas.
4. Technical challenges; changing game engines or platforms over time. If you need to upgrade your engine so that it supports outputting to a console that came out while you were developing the current game, it affects more than just the version that ships on that new platform. Or any other way a game might need to upgrade to support some ambitious new thing the game is trying to do.
5. Covid happened in the not-too-distant past, and everyone had to change how they work on a dime.
6. Mismanagement, though a bit too umbrella of a term. He feels the number 1 reason is managers deciding every game needs to be a live service, not playing to the developers' strengths. He also cites shifting timelines by 6 months at a time instead of actually evaluating how much time the game really needs; upper execs not being decisive about a direction for a studio while the studio is strung along for months before minds are changed; short-sighted layoffs between projects breaking up team chemistry; etc.
1 Jun 2026 23:10
As for 1, maybe they also gotta to understand that not every game
need to have "you can count the wrinkles on every fly on the butt of your super realistic horse" level of detail.
1 Jun 2026 23:52
You won't hear arguments from me on that, but it's still a problem that happens along a spectrum as you scale graphics up, too.
1 Jun 2026 23:56
So far, Jason is batting 1000 with his YouTube channel.
2 Jun 2026 00:12
They're just like Hollywood blockbuster execs. They'd rather one game that copies what they've identified as popular from other games and media to formulate a game that can make hundreds of millions in profit if not into the billions rather making a bunch of smaller games that can make smaller profits. Single to double digit million dollar profits. It'd take a large amount of smaller hits that they can't imagine managing to accomplish to equal the profit of one mega hit so go big or go home. Unless you're Nintendo, they churn out smaller games and they have a brand/game identity that people generally don't seem to be let down from. They're consistent
Go from the summer blockbuster equivalent holiday AAA graphics bonanza game where the rest of the year was filled out with cheaper bets to any month is a month for a blockbuster/AAA game. Well, graphics don't sell games like they used to so you get these multi hundred million dollar budget games struggling to sell any better than AAA games made in 2007 that were made with a fraction of the modern AAA team size and made in like a third of the time to development
2 Jun 2026 00:25
Popularity of games like Minecraft would suggest players don't really care about ultra graphics that much if you just make a fun game. The art style should be good, but it doesn't have to be graphically demanding.
2 Jun 2026 00:38
Yeah this seems a fair summary, although I think the question more accurately should be "Why do
AAA games now take 6+ years to make?"
There are plenty of smaller and indie games that don't take 6 years. There are also plenty of smaller and indie games that do take 6+ years but for somewhat different reasons.
2 Jun 2026 00:52
Valheim is another example where less is more. The textures are pixalated but the lighting, colors, basic designs are all evocative and convey enough to recognize everything in the game. I find it more immersion than a highly detailed design where the imperfections catch my eye.
2 Jun 2026 00:58
Coordinating large groups of people is hard to do. As teams get larger they can do more work technically, but this also requires endless meetings and requirements discussions to keep everyone on the same page
2 Jun 2026 01:15
I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I'm not kidding.
2 Jun 2026 01:33
If it’s longer, prettier, and less fun than the original _Max Payne_ I’m not interested.
2 Jun 2026 02:32
People arent expecting more. We are expecting passion projects from fellow gamers.
Companies are leeching the soul out of gaming in the name of profits.
2 Jun 2026 02:59
You can go on any gaming forum, including this one, and see people distill a game's value down to how many hours they get for their dollar, so there's definitely some amount of truth to it.
2 Jun 2026 03:01
How would you rank Max Payne 2 in that comparison? It was more fun (subjective), prettier (objective), but shorter (from memory).
2 Jun 2026 03:10
Yeah and Minecraft is one of the games people have put the most hours into. People want a game that is fun and continues to be fun. That doesn't require 600 people to do. It requires caring, intention, and understanding of what games actually provide for people. Not just a desire to sell more loot boxes or whatever.
2 Jun 2026 03:20
Lemmy
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