Hey everyone!
After quite a break, it is finally time for another Tale Tuesday! Today, we’re going to respond to further questions you’ve had about game development in general. For now, we’re going to slightly detour from indie games and focus on the larger, commercial game development.
Why games are so heavily monetized nowadays?
As you can probably imagine, this is simply profitable for the companies. Monetization of games (both for PC and mobile) is extra source of income for the companies, which are trying to turn profit for their project. For PC, currently the most popular monetization method are DLCs, which can heavily vary in price. Monthly subscriptions start showing up in some of the games, however they aren’t that popular yet. For mobile games, the overwhelmingly used monetization method is including purchasable bonuses and extras for the game, which are supposed to help progress further. For both platforms, those are very popular monetization methods that work and attract additional millions of dollars of profit for the largest companies out there.
Why games take so long to develop?
With the expanded development possibilities and routes taken by AAA video games developers, as well as the teams consistently expanding in size, with decades of technological progress and popularity gaining, video games have become more advanced and so did their methods of development and extend. What took a few months previously now extends to a few years, where several teams jointly work on one, huge project and make sure it is a quality product that can be introduced to the world. Design process itself takes a long time. Prototyping is also quite extensive. Pre-production phases in which it is determined if the idea is worth it, during which the prototypes are created, take several months alone and full game development only adds to it. Even with larger teams, there’s often so much to do that it still takes a lot of time. Video games are way more advanced now and it rightfully extended the time of development significantly. It may be even further extended for sequels, where new story and mechanics have to be included but in a fashion taking in regard previous versions. Current development time durations are absolutely valid.
That would be it for today’s ‘Tale Tuesday’ – make sure to come back soon for more answers to your questions!
Iguana Mercenary 