Why external and distributed development is the future of AAA games

07.03.2024 - 13:13 / gamesindustry.biz / Sponsored

It’s no secret that game development has seen a massive expansion in scope in recent years.

What would have once taken a development team three or four years to make now requires much more people, and four to six years to ship. This is not only due to the size of the games, but also the complexity and expertise involved in making cutting-edge titles.

External development has become increasingly popular in recent years, with companies outsourcing parts of development to third parties. At the same time, distributed development is another model that sees a variety of teams working collectively on the same project worldwide. By unifying development and project management, studios can tap into global teams with diverse skill sets and talents beyond geographical boundaries – saving studios precious time, money and resources.

More projects are being developed by multiple companies through external development. Games worked on by a single team, in one location, are now an increasingly rare occurrence. Look at the long closing credits of blockbusters, and you can see various companies being featured alongside the core development team.

Despite their differences, external development and distributed development are really two sides of the same coin. The former just means that external parties are tasked to perform specific services, while the latter refers to work done across multiple locations by several teams. In other words, distributed development can be performed in-house across several studios by one parent company, or via one external company with a global network of developers.

"As games grow larger in scale and visual quality, it is becoming incredibly difficult to do everything in-house"

“As games grow larger in scale and visual quality, it is becoming incredibly difficult to do everything in-house,” says Mike Sherak, Virtuos’ assistant director of customer success. “By adopting a distributed mindset, developers can make larger games with partners who offer more cost-effective options and diverse perspectives. Development can also be done at all hours of the day, which shortens the development timeline as well as the turnaround time for hotfixes.”

Given how external and distributed development are aiding companies with capacity planning and access to diverse skills, it’s no wonder that more games are being made this way. Both development models cater to the high fidelity and complexity that modern games demand, including cutting-edge graphics, complex gameplay and realistic physics. And with the boom in game releases that consumers have come to expect from the industry, these approaches take a significant load off the core team leading the project.

Take for instance the most popular games in recent memory, an