Dragon Age Creator Says Studios Announce Games Early Because Publishers Can Kill Them

Dragon Age creator and BioWare veteran Mark Darrah has uploaded a YouTube video exploring why AAA games take so long to develop. He also touches on why studios announce games so ahead of time nowadays. One of the reasons behind it is to protect these projects from being killed by publishers. They may also be announced early to let users know publishers still have important titles on their roster.

Mark acknowledges that announcing games early is far from a good strategy. However, this step is sometimes needed to ensure a project in the works can develop smoothly without any concerns.

It might be because the publisher’s slate is a little weak, and they want the public to remember it still has important games in its back pocket. It might be because the studio wants the game announced because they’re worried the publisher might kill it otherwise,” says Mark.

AAA Games Development Does Not Take As Long As We Thought

The Dragon Age dev also claims that AAA projects do not spend as much time in active development as we think. The truth is that publishers may imply a title is in development when not even 10 people are working on it. We may think a game is in parallel development with some other title, but not much work is being done. Games can take a long time in this ideation stage.

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I suggest watching the whole video to get a grasp on Mark’s wisdom. The Dragon Age creator also talks about the “fidelity death cult” that has continued to prosper in the gaming industry—where devs focus on pushing visuals in games to extreme heights.