AngryLittleAlchemist said:
Cerebralbore101 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.
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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.
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Quite often the time before full development is spent on lots story and design prototyping and iteration, the length can vary and a lot depends on how Sony worldwide studios sees the game progressing they can be happy from a early stage so each checkpoint leads straight to the next or it can be sent back a number of times for refinement.
