Okay, buckle up, because Grandpa’s about to tell you some stories. Not the kind with dragons and elves, though there were a few of those around back in the day, but stories about the real magic – the messy, frantic, occasionally soul-crushing, but ultimately rewarding world of early game development. I’ve been kicking around this industry since before polygons were a thing, back when pixels were the pinnacle of visual fidelity, and I’ve seen more trends come and go than a chameleon in a mood ring factory.
These days, you see headlines about titles like Diablo 4 raking in a billion dollars faster than you can say “loot box,” and you might think the games industry is a giant money tree. Well, let me tell you, it’s more like a thorny briar patch that occasionally sprouts golden fruit. And the journey to get there is a wild ride, one that’s changed a lot since my time, but some things never really change.
One of the biggest misconceptions we’ve always battled is this idea that game development is some kind of guaranteed cash grab. Companies, especially those new to the game, see a successful AAA title and think, “Hey, we can do that! Just get a bunch of industry legends in a room, throw some money around, and boom, instant gold!” Let me tell you, that’s like thinking you can bake a gourmet cake by just throwing flour and sugar at the wall. It’s going to be a mess, and you’re probably not going to get anything edible at the end.
The industry has never been as simple as hiring a group of “big names,” because we all know that a handful of great artists and programmers does not mean that the game will be good. It is a team effort, a full project, and when you get to the later (scary) parts of game development, it requires that the whole team is operating as one to push the game past the finish line.
And that brings me to a pet peeve of mine – the engine. You’d think with all the amazing technology out there today, that developers would be able to focus on the game itself. We have powerhouses like Unreal Engine and Unity, platforms that are capable of doing incredible things. But no! Many of these AAA studios, desperate to stand out, seem convinced that they need to build their own engine from scratch! That’s right, they spend years reinventing the wheel, coding their rendering pipeline, their physics engine, their entire toolset, all for the sake of some “unique” feature that, let’s be honest, is probably going to get cut later down the line anyway due to time constraints or poorly tuned gameplay.
In my day, we didn’t have access to ready-made tools like that, it was all code from the ground up, but in those days, it was necessary, we didn’t have any choices. Today, using the same engine everyone else is using means that most of these top-tier games end up working on remarkably similar tech, so what can they do to set themselves apart from the crowd? A good chunk of the budget goes to creating spectacular cinematic scenes and hiring big-name voice talent, in an attempt to add some kind of personality to their game. It’s like the movie industry now, where most blockbuster budgets go towards special effects and A-list actors. The more things change, the more they stay the same, right? The sad part about AAA titles spending all this money and dev time on top tier cinematics is that most players will watch them once and then skip them after. At least in the movie industry, all that cash goes to something the audience will likely watch more than once.
I saw it firsthand. I spent years at a company that had a proven pedigree of innovative racing games. We were passionate about the subject matter, and I worked my tail off to convince management that we needed to get out from just the “flat track” racing and head offroad. I’ll admit that I was a big fan of vehicles that could climb over rocks, or fly through the air, and it felt like everyone wanted to just drive fast cars in circles. I could not convince the team that off-road, with amazing licensed vehicles and rocking music was where it was at. Finally, after a long battle and offering to put my job on the line if the title didn’t succeed, I was able to secure the idea for Test Drive Offroad, and thankfully, the company took a chance. That’s the thing, so many incredible titles like mine would never have seen the light of day if companies weren’t willing to take that leap of faith.
Let’s face it, game development is inherently terrifying for companies, especially those who are used to widgets or finance instead of entertainment. Unlike other products that are tested in controlled environments, games are a beast of their own. You can have a perfectly working game with no bugs, but if the gameplay is not fun, or the story isn’t engaging, then you’re sunk. One disgruntled YouTuber influencer can cause a paradigm shift in the trajectory of a title in a heartbeat. And then you get to the scariest parts of development: Alpha and Beta. This is where the big jumps are happening. If your game isn’t playing well at Alpha, then it’s likely not going to make it. Today, Management is often willing to cancel and walk away from a title that is not looking feature complete and plays great at Alpha, rather than spend the needed funds to bring it to release. Back in the early days, Alpha meant little more than first playable. We had to imagine how great the game would be rather than having a title that was polished and close to final at the Alpha stage.
I do understand and emphasize with the companies though. When the budget for a triple A title is north of half a billion dollars (a good one anyway) they need to take extreme measures to save their investment if things aren’t looking good for the title. This means that the entire team has to work toward a first playable version of the game that looks and plays like a finished title or face cancellation. The result of this is code that was made in haste to get the first playable looking and feeling amazing will often be tossed out as the team gets the green light to head toward beta. This means the parts of the game that were cobbled together to make it past Alpha or first playable will likely need to be rewritten. This can change the feel of the title and lead to confusion on the management side because to their eyes the title was looking finished and just needed levels added to be complete and ready to ship. It is a sad cycle that dev teams have to face today.
Marketing (and today social media) budgets were often the major factors going into the decision to cancel a title back in the day. Often, unless the team lost an integral member or the programmer was not able to fix a troublesome bug, companies would just spend the money to bring a game that was post Alpha to release. Perhaps the best part about early game development was the overall timelines. We would get a year or two to complete the game, then start a six or nine month marketing blitz where we did press junkets and dragged magazine’s editors into the offices to let them play the early titles. I’m so happy we didn’t have to deal with the multiyear hype machine that AAA titles face today.
The desire for a hit, AAA title, is so strong. As I mentioned earlier, look at Diablo 4 making more than a billion dollars! The potential reward is massive, but the risks are equally huge. And that’s why we see so many strange decisions in the industry. Take console exclusives for example. These don’t really exist anymore. The costs to make these huge games just aren’t feasible if you’re only going to sell to one platform. It just doesn’t make sense these days, a company has to get their money back from multiple platforms to make the development work. The studios have to recoup that massive investment.
And speaking of studios, we’ve seen so many close recently. Over 20 in 2024. That’s just what we know about, due to the secretive nature of the games industry. We’re likely seeing even more AAA titles getting canceled behind closed doors than we realize. That’s why so many titles are announced years before they actually come out. It’s a strategy to secure funding, and potentially avoid being canceled.
Even the big players struggle. Look at Netflix; they threw their hat into the AAA game ring and eventually decided to shut down their internal studio, I feel sorry for the team working there. It all comes down to the fact that the AAA title development is not sustainable anymore, the costs are too high, the market is too volatile and all the money goes into trying to make the game look good while taking short cuts on gameplay.
So, what’s the answer? Honestly, I don’t know for sure. Embracing indie developers who are putting out low budget titles could be one way to offset development of new IPs. Players have the “I’ve seen it all” mentality and have incredibly short attention spans. This makes games like Diablo 4 an outlier in a massive field of releases. With mobile games looking to outperform AAA titles in 2025, funding smaller development houses to create compelling mobile games rather than the super expensive AAA titles makes a lot of sense. What I do know is that companies are scared to take risks on new AAA franchises, instead of investing into new IP’s, they’d rather reboot old titles, just like the movie industry.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, folks. There are so many stories I could share, so many lessons I’ve learned from the trenches of game development. Next time, I want to delve deeper into the studio politics, and how knee jerk reactions to current events affect the sales of a title. Let me know what you think. Are you interested in hearing more? Stay tuned… and don’t forget to save your progress!
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