What are some common reasons on why games are cancelled/freezed, and what can we do to avoid it? Is it bad product management? Developers underestimating tasks? Clients always wanting to add something into the product, and we not being able to say ‘no’?

boynextdoornews

In these situations, there are two main kind of reasons why a game project gets put on hold or cancelled. The first is that reasons by the project team itself. The second is for reasons greater than the project itself.

Every game project has some kind of planned schedule. Each of the major phases of development, from concept to initial design to preproduction to production, is marked by a green light meeting for the people funding the project to review the progress and determine whether the game is meeting its goals at that point of development. Sometimes the project gets stuck going in circles, sometimes the leadership doesn't have a clear vision of what the game will be, sometimes there just isn't creative agreement on the team. Lots of problems can arise that cause the game not to hit its goals. If the game is behind schedule and doesn't hit its goals, it may be held up and told to go back and fix this or that, or improve and try again. If a project fails to pass these gates too many times or the funding for it runs out, the game can be cancelled.

Then there are reasons greater than the project itself that can affect a game project. If the publisher bet big on some other game release and is suddenly revenue is way lower than expected, the games that are still in incubation can get cancelled in order to save money and try to save the company. If a particular executive leaves who particularly fancied the project, it's also easy for such a project to get cancelled. Economic situations might call for a publicly traded company to cut costs, and any project that isn't shipping within two years might get cancelled. A publisher might get acquired by another company, in which case layoffs and project cancellations typically ensue.

One thing you'll probably notice about these is that there's precisely nothing a player can really do about any of these circumstances. These are all decisions made far above our heads and we are individually powerless to stop them from happening. It is unfortunate that this is how things are, but it's the truth - business is business, and there's more than a little luck needed for the completion of a successful development project. We can't blame ourselves because we're not the ones making these decisions.

[Join us on Discord] and/or [Support us on Patreon]

Got a burning question you want answered?

Добавить комментарий

Ваш адрес email не будет опубликован. Обязательные поля помечены *