BioWare veteran believes that sometimes it's worth „throwing the thing in reverse and finding another way forward”
A BioWare veteran has commented on the subject of delaying games. He believes that it is better to postpone the release once for many months or even years than several times for short periods.
Mark Darrah is a BioWare veteran who should be well known to fans of the The Veilguard. For some time now, he has also been publishing materials on YouTube, and the latest one is about delaying games.
Better to do it once and do it right
Postponing launches isn't uncommon in today's times , and it is easy to find games that were originally supposed to debut much earlier. Sometimes it happens several times, a fresh example of which is Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. Darrah suggests that studios should implement a single big delay and reassess the game in development, rather than pushing forward and repeatedly delaying the launch.
If your game ends up being two years late, but you know it's going to be two years late, that opens up your probability space massively. Because you know, 'OK, right, we're not shipping in a month, we're gonna ship in 25 months. Then let's take a step back and re-examine what we've got and potentially undo some of the decisions that we made earlier when we thought we were making a different game, and take a different path.' If, instead, your game ends up moving two years, but it does it three months at a time, when does that re-examination occur?
Lot of such situations can depend on the state of the game. If it truly requires ongoing delays, it's worth considering if it should be re-evaluated from the start. On the other hand, if we're only talking about the need to fine-tune, for instance, optimization, then short delays shouldn't be a bad thing.
Darrah might be referring to DA: The Veilguard, which, back when it was called Dreadwolf, was intended to be a totally different game featuring multiplayer elements. The title experienced several internal delays throughout its long development process, and at one point it was re-evaluated and significantly altered.
For two years, you're always three months from ship [with small delays]. Not only were you not able to take a step back and back up and take a different path, as time goes on, you're digging that debt deeper and deeper and deeper. You are laying band-aid on top of band-aid on top of band-aid, and not only do you not feel like you have the ability to back up because you don't have time, you're actually making it harder and harder to back up, because with each extra band-aid, with each patch, with each thing you do in order to try to make what you have work, you're making it harder to take a different path.
It's hard not to agree with Darrah's words, although money is a big problem in such situations. Games are ultimately a business, and a significant delay or re-analysis of the entire title generates additional costs, which publishers or investors may not necessarily agree to. In the case of The Veilguard, however, even that didn't help, as the game ultimately didn't meet EA's expectations.
Sometimes the right path is to throw the thing in reverse, lose everything you've been working on, and find another way forward.
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