Twilight Princess:
Twilight Princess was originally concepted as a sequel to Wind Waker, which came out in May of 2003.
The style of Twilight Princess was originally going to be the same as Wind Waker, but it was changed due to the creators feeling as though this was the reason that Wind Waker didn’t sell more.
Was first announced at E3 in 2004 (May 11th – 14th), which means development for the game was well under way at this point in time, or the teams creating it at least had a clear idea of how the game would pan out.
Release of Twilight Princess was delayed various times due to the creators deciding (seemingly halfway through development) that they wanted to release the game on both GameCube and Nintendo Wii.
Twilight Princess was initially released in November of 2006.
This means the average time spent on this game was 28 months/120 weeks/2.3 years.
Journey:
Development began in Spring of 2009.
There were many sceptics in the team that questioned whether the game design they wanted, which relied on the importance of human interaction and teamwork.
This was also thatgamecomapany’s first 3D game, so many were concerned that they wouldn’t have the skill or funds to create Journey successfully.
The development of Journey was stressful for everyone involved, but the game released in March of 2012.
This means the average time spent on creation of this game was 48 months/206 weeks/4 years.
Sky: Children of the Light:
This game took 7 years to make for various reasons:
Thatgamecompany, now with experience of making 3D games, wanted to create another storytelling game, similar to journey. This naturally is going to take a while to perfect.
Apple gave the company a warning that app sales were down three years into development, with the message that they should make their game free to play.
Thatgamecompany complied with this, with Jenova Chen, the creator, researching into free-to-play games to see how successful they were, and why.
Unfortunately, due to the prolonged development of the game, many of the staff were replaced during production.
Sky is still incredibly popular, even now after it’s release in July 2019.
This is because DLC and events are held frequently in the game, meaning playing will always have something new to do.
Ways to combat any errors or issues that may arise:
Make sure there are alternatives to some features that may need to be replaced later on, or that people aren’t sure on.
If this feature is key to how the game is played, then thinking of a similar or simplified version of the feature that could be used instead.
If this isn’t possible, create a new feature entirely.
Make sure the project plan is editable and flexible, so that if issues arise there is time and space to correct them.
This will also mean that other departments working on production won’t be as interrupted or behind as a result.
The three games above have an average of 229 weeks of total development, which is 4.4 years.
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