How do you feel about the increasing size of games?

[the-pi-guy]

It feels like around the PS3 era, developers started really struggling.

Polyphony Digital went from releasing a game every 2 years through the PS1/2 eras, to taking 3-6 years afterwards.
Team Ico for their first few games was called the Olympic Team for their first few games taking 4 years.  And their third game took 11 years.
Square Enix similarly had some troubles with the move to HD.  With some FF titles taking years to come to fruition.  
Naughty Dog went from developing games every year or two, to 3-4 years despite now having two teams.


What do you think should happen going forward?

[Xevross]

I think the growth is unsustainable. The ideal scenario would be that development time levels off and stays where it is currently.

[Legend]

As the player I tend to dislike it.

Tlou2 is a linear 30 hour game with very very little bloat. It's amazing.

Yet most devs cannot do that. They have to bloat their games in order to feel big for players.

I think $40 and $50 games are the solution. Don't act like a AAAA game.

I'd love 10-15 hour games like Control to be the way most teams handle it. It's a sweatspot for story focused games imo. Last gen was a bit too short with lots of 7 hour games.

[kitler53]

i also don't like bloat.

games take too long to develop.  i really think there must be an innovation on the way games are being made that could be developed to make game development much faster.  the new unreal engine appears to be making some decent progress there but it still boggles my mind that it take 300 people 6 years to make a 15 hour game.   something isn't quite right here.

[the-pi-guy]

On the one hand I love the details in linear games, or the fleshed out quests or other things in open world games.  

But on the PS4 especially, I have started to feel like it has hurt gaming a whole.  Individual games are just as good and/or better than they've ever been.  

It feels like the trend is make fewer slightly better games.  

It has pros and cons.  Bloated games feel like they should have better value for the same price.

But I think it hurts more than it helps.  

I'd really rather have 4 really good games where the developer was able to do more interesting things.  Than have 3 really high budget titles that couldn't afford to take risks.  


I think the most troubling part is it seems like there's a growing gap between AAA and indie.  Some indie studios can do some crazy things, but it's really rare for them to pull off something that would easily classify as a great AA game a gen or two ago.  


End result just ends up feeling like we are getting fewer and fewer games, usually with greater polish and/or more bloat.