• Valheim took 4 years to make.

    I work in gamedev. Even with simple graphics, making a successful game generally takes a lot of time to make. It’s not just graphics. Design, writing, QA, art, console compliance, and a huge amount of engineering effort especially in multiplayer games. It takes time to get right. And we’ve all seen what happens when “AAA” games are released before they’re ready just because a bean counter said they had to.

    The blockbuster hits with simple graphics that a solo dev made in a few months are the exception, not the rule.

    • Exactly. I’ve been working for several years in the industry and the most time consuming part of the development is not graphics; it’s design (in all shapes) + implementation + iteration until all is polished and the game is good no matter how it looks.