Wouldn’t count on it. (Destiny)

by Robot Chickens, Monday, May 18, 2026, 12:30 (2 hours, 49 minutes ago) @ cheapLEY

I don’t even know that it’s necessarily lack of direction. It’s not like I know personally, but it seems like it’d be pretty difficult to tell if a game even works as a game and is fun until there’s a significant portion of it that’s nearing some stage of completion.

I think this is it. By the time you've dialed in what works or doesn't work, you've probably started and stopped a million other things with an engine built (frankenstein-ed) to accommodate those other things. At that point, engine efficiencies probably are more easily resolved with a rebuild that focuses on the fun parts while eschewing the others.

Its a little like playing with legos and building something new. Your first take might involve tons of starts and stops as you figure out what pieces fit and create the shape you're going for. Along the way, you may learn some better techniques that can get to that final shape that you didn't know at the beginning. It's too late to rebuild the core, but you at least know the basic target you're aiming for. At that point, you can rebuild the whole thing more efficiently for your second draft and it will likely come together much more quickly.

I can't imagine many video games have a complete picture of the end product in view before the code is started.

On the other hand, the cost of figuring out what's fun along the way must be insanely expensive for AAA studios today (vs rewriting Halo CE as an FPS for the XBOX before launch for example).