# Video games **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Tags:** video-games-e-games\ **Created:** [November 1, 2022, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-games/974131 "2022-11-01T12:30:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![stosh1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@stosh1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stosh1)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2022, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-games/974131/1 "2022-11-01T12:30:40Z")
I like to play a game called “Angry Birds 2”. I don’t know where this ranks with video games, but there’s a lot to it. I was wondering how long it takes to come up with a video game? From the idea to the completed product? ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2022, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-games/974131/2 "2022-11-01T12:52:44Z")
Anything from 48 hours or less (game jams) to years (huge productions). ---
**Author:** ![CorpusNeptune](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/corpusneptune/32/17561_2.png) [@CorpusNeptune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CorpusNeptune)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2022, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-games/974131/3 "2022-11-01T13:00:41Z")
Modern big-budget video games usually spend 2-4 years in development. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2022, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-games/974131/4 "2022-11-01T13:17:43Z")
> [@stosh1](#): > > I was wondering how long it takes to come up with a video game? From the idea to the completed product? “Video game” is an immensely broad category, spanning from something as simple as monochrome **[pong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong)** or **[breakout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_(video_game))** all the way up to **[first-person shooters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-person_shooter)** utilizing high-quality graphics and non-player characters that exhibit really complex behavior. I think @DPRK already has the general answer: an astute coder can slap together a crappy-but-playable game in little time at all, but anything with complex graphics and/or gameplay will take a team of developers months or years to polish into something worthy of release. In the case of the original Angry Birds game, it looks like it went from concept to release in less than a year: > **[Angry Birds (video game) | Development](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angry_Birds_(video_game)#Development)** > > In early 2009, Rovio was in a state of bankruptcy; the staff began viewing proposals for potential games. One such proposal came from senior game designer Jaakko Iisalo in the form of a simulated screenshot featuring some angry-looking birds with no visible legs or wings. While the picture gave no clue as to what type of game was being played, the staff liked the characters, and the team elected to design a game around them. In early 2009, physics games, such as Crush the Castle, When Rovio bega... In contrast, the wildly successful Flappy Bird only took “several days”: > **[Flappy Bird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flappy_Bird)** > > Flappy Bird is a mobile game developed by the Vietnamese video game artist and programmer Dong Nguyen (Vietnamese: Nguyễn Hà Đông), under his game development company .Gears. The game is a side-scroller where the player controls a bird, attempting to fly between columns of green pipes without hitting them. Nguyen created the game over the period of several days, using a bird protagonist that he had designed for a cancelled game in 2012. > The game was released in May 2013 but received a sudden s... ---
**Author:** ![jjakucyk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3d9bf3/32.png) [@jjakucyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjakucyk)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2022, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-games/974131/5 "2022-11-01T13:36:31Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > In the case of the original Angry Birds game, it looks like it went from concept to release in less than a year: What helped is that the physics are based on an earlier game called Crush the Castle. Even if they didn’t actually reverse engineer it they based their own physics engine on how that game plays. Angry Birds became so much more successful because of the characters and the story behind it, even if the gameplay is nearly identical. There’s other factors like “engine” based games, where the story, characters, gameplay, and even the user interface are just wrappers around the same underlying code. The Unreal Engine, for example, has been around since 1998 and is still used today to streamline development of first-person shooter type games. So yeah there’s not a single answer to the question. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2022, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-games/974131/6 "2022-11-01T14:41:22Z")
> [@jjakucyk](#): > > So yeah there’s not a single answer to the question. In a sense there is, in that the more complex a game is, the more time it will take. Shy of that, there are too many variables in play to really be able to predict such a thing, at least by the layman. I wouldn’t be surprised if studios have project management stuff to try and forecast that kind of thing. ---
**Author:** ![WhyKickAMooCow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/9fc29f/32.png) [@WhyKickAMooCow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyKickAMooCow)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2022, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-games/974131/7 "2022-11-01T15:45:33Z")
In the case of “Duke Nukem Forever” it took 14 years… ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2022, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-games/974131/8 "2022-11-01T16:27:08Z")
Star Citizen has been in development for 11 years and counting. There’s pretty wide consensus that they may never deliver anything but accounting irregularities. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2022, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-games/974131/9 "2022-11-01T21:07:46Z")
[Moderating] Moving from Factual Questions to the Game Room. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2022, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-games/974131/10 "2022-11-01T21:11:53Z")
[Not moderating] It can vary tremendously. Some of the games I’ve enjoyed the most in recent years were developed by a single person (either entirely, or with a handful of others contributing things like the background music). And many of these individual developers have some other regular job, and are making games as a hobby, so the total development time can’t be longer than the free time available to one person. On the other hand, if you fire up Fable and watch the credits, it literally takes 40 minutes for them to all scroll past. That’s a lot of people to make a game, and even if each of them only played a small part, it really adds up. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2022, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/video-games/974131/11 "2022-11-01T23:02:06Z")
Or Star Citizen which is on ten years now (I think) and still under active development.