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Cerebralbore101 said:
AngryLittleAlchemist said:

 

The game was being developed since 2012 buuuuuuuuuut it didn't entire full production till early 2015, so I'm assuming realistically that most of the development took place in 4 years, not 7 (the first few years were probably conceptual at most, which lines up with what FlashFire said). 

A long pre-production period is the hallmark of a good game though. Testing everything in a pen/paper format long before you even do a single 3D model or main loop of code saves a ton of time in the long run. Its just a waste of time to work on a game for two years, realize that the core idea of the game isn't fun, and have to start over. Part of Red Dead 2's problem with crunch hours was that they were changing things last minute that should have been decided in pre-production. For example adding cinema bars to all of the cutscenes mere months before launch, forcing those scenes to be redone entirely. Or forgetting that the name of your city is also the name of a city in New Vegas, and having to then drag all your voice actors back in to re-record their lines. 

Even for games that can't be prototyped with a pen/paper, there should at least be an absolute barebones alpha build with nothing but a few basic untextured low poly models. Edit: Just look at BotW. They started out with an NES mockup, and went from there. 

Oh I absolutely agree, I'm just saying that for the most part development really started in 2015. But yes, coming up with the concepts is just as important. Pre-planning is very important etc.