Shawn Layden's advice on making games faster and cheaper

gamesindustry.biz:

It was back in 2020 when Shawn Layden began sounding the alarm around rising game development costs.

In the interests of time

Shawn Layden shares his tips on ways to make games faster (and therefore cheaper):

1. Most gamers don't see the end of your game. So design fewer levels, make your games shorter.

2. The tech advancement in games is not getting noticed by the majority of your players, so ask yourself: is this worth the investment?

3. Try AI and develop tools to do some of the heavy lifting, and don't just throw people at the problem.

4. Be disciplined and strict on what you can deliver and when. Don't spend too long on an idea if it's not working.

Speaking as part of Gamelab Live, Layden said the current rising cost of AAA game development was become unsustainable, and that when the industry moves to the PS5 and Xbox Series X generation (which was due to take place later that year), the industry might struggle to grow.

Now, four years later, we have caught up with Layden as part of our new GI Sprint series of video, podcasts and articles, which is all around lowering the cost of game development.

"Sadly, it does my heart no good that I think I was right," Layden tells us. "And it wasn't any great prediction. It was watching trend lines of over 25 years of gaming. The numbers only go in one direction. Games don't get any cheaper, they don't get shorter, they get more complex, they become more costly.

"The large blockbusters, when people are swinging for the fences, they're coming in at $150 to $250 million bracket, and that is a huge burden on the game development business model, on the publishers for carrying that, and [that's led] to some of the contraction in the marketplace that we've seen."

Over the next three weeks, we'll be exploring numerous ways that games developers can make games quicker, and therefore at a lower cost. And as part of our opening podcast, Layden shares his views on what studios might want to consider. You can watch the podcast below, download