Current development cycles often prevent workers from enjoying a work-life balance. There are not a few cases of labor exploitation that have been reported in recent years, an evil that extends even to other industries. like the cinema. Regarding this same subject, Jenova Chenone of the most important developers behind the creation of Journeycommented in a recent interview given exclusively to GameSpot (Virginia The player) What video games as a service are the best development option to be able to combine a good job and a private life. All this, according to the comments, based on his experience in releasing constant updates for three years for Sky: Children of the Light.
“It’s taken me a long time to get past consoles, where you develop something and tweak and tweak it over multiple iterations, release it, take a break for two or three months, and then move on to another service, I think, now that I’ve been through both cycles, much better for work-life balance“, commented the creative. Chen pointed out, as expected, that the traditional development of big budget video games always ends up drifting into crunch sooner or later. In his own words: “With premium titles, if you have to launch them at Christmas, you have to work hard a year before. you will suffer bite, bite, bite, bite to release the game before Christmas and get maximum sales.
Chen highlights the differences in the times and paces of development, as well as the relationship between the team
Regarding the production process, Chen commented that developing games as a service apparently reduces conflicts between different departments. “It reduces a lot of fights that we have, when working on premium games. We fight a lot towards the end. It’s like ‘it has to come’ in games as a service (…) we have much calmer conversations because it is not a question of putting content or not, but of when we are going to put itRegarding the pace of development of classic games and games as a service, the creator added that “making a premium game is like a sprint, while making a game as a service is like a race. long distance”.
Game development as a service drastically reduces conflict between developers
Finally, in reference to the profitability of games as a service and the gaming communities that form around them, Chen pointed out that in games as a service, there is “a very solid number of players and the revenue is very even, so you can predict how much you can invest to make it big” unlike premium games, where “you’re at the mercy of your publisher or investors to pay your next bill and you have to go through certain stages to get approved and get more money.”