It’s honestly kinda crazy how long some games spend in development. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy is a perfect example of something that should’ve been quick but ended up being so bloated and took forever to make.
FF7Remake was announced in 2015, got stuck in development hell for a bit, released 2020. The sequel released 2024. The third one still hasn’t been teased yet. How many people are attached to a franchise if it takes 10 years to get the full story? I loved the first remake but dropped the second one, I just didn’t care about the story as much as I did ~5 years ago.
AAA expectations are astronomical, AAs take some extra time to keep up, and indies that actually make it take the time to do their own thing, otherwise they’re almost certainly part of the vas, unseen sea of failed indies.
Also, oldschool game dev was toxic. It had some serious crunch culture, just to start. But I think it also attracted talented devs into “sweet spot” dev team sizes; not too big or too small.
And now, if you do software and want to make any money or provide for a family… well, you don’t do game dev. And that phenomenon has gotten worse and worse.