Some games are waited for many, many years after their announcement. But there are reasons for this – and some stem from fear.
The development of video games sometimes progresses at a snail’s pace – that’s at least the impression fans can get. Often, there are many years between the official announcement of a game and its release. But there are good reasons why games are announced so early. This is revealed by BioWare veteran Mark Darrah, who explains the cynical reasons behind it.
One reason: Fear that the publisher will cancel the game otherwise.
The trailer for the latest Dragon Age installment:
Where does the information come from? Mark Darrah is a long-time veteran of BioWare who led the “Dragon Age” franchise for a long time and was also involved in the original Baldur’s Gate. On his YouTube channel, he now frequently talks about game development and reveals the peculiarities involved.
What did Darrah say? At the beginning, Darrah addresses the question of why the development of large AAA games actually takes so long. From his perspective, this is not the case, but the external perception is just that. The actual development of a game usually begins much later than players realize. When a game is announced, it can very well be that maybe only 10 people are working on a game that will later require hundreds of developers.
There may be the small seed of a team, but honestly: There will hardly be any work done for a long time.
Darrah also reveals that studios can appear a little misleading and cites a prominent example: The Elder Scrolls VI. The Skyrim sequel was already announced with a trailer in 2018, but to this day – 6 years later – there is still little new information about the game.
They give the impression that work is being done on it in parallel, that the team is actively working on the game, when in fact only a few people are holding meetings and not much is being accomplished.
Even though Darrah does not mention a concrete example here, Mass Effect 5 immediately comes to mind. The first teaser was released in 2020, and it is also known that a large part of the team has mainly worked on Dragon Age: The Veilguard in the following years.
But Darrah does not see this as cheating or deception, and he also gives reasons why a game should be announced long before its release:
There can be reasons why it is important for a developer studio or for a publisher to have the game known in the public perception already. It could be that the publisher’s catalog seems a bit weak, and they want to remind the public that they still have a few good titles up their sleeve.
But a reason could also simply be the developers’ fear for their jobs or the project.
It may also be that the developer studio wants the game to be announced because they are worried that the publisher would cancel it otherwise. Announcing a project early is not the best strategy, but sometimes it just has to be.
This also seems logical. Once a game is already in the minds of fans who are eagerly anticipating its release, it is likely to be harder for the publisher to back out of a project. If a game is still unknown, then it is easier to make that step.
For fans, this may sometimes seem very strange. When a game is announced, usually with a fancy trailer, it can certainly mean that hardly any work has been done on the actual game so far. A particularly prominent example even comes from BioWare itself – namely Anthem. When they showed the trailer back then, the team itself didn’t even know what the finished game would eventually look like. The very tight development schedule and many problems during production led to the game completely flopping and not meeting fans’ expectations.
Do you think it’s good when games are announced many years in advance? Or would you prefer to learn about a new game only shortly before its release?
