eli5: For games that are in development for long stretches of time (like cyberpunk – 8yrs), how do developers deal with advancing technology?

Question

Or are games like Cyberpunk or Red Dead just made with early-mid 2010’s tech?

Edit: to clarify, development didn’t actually start 8 years ago, but rather the game was announced 8 years ago. Thanks to the commenters for letting me know!

In: Technology

Answer 1

One thing to note, as someone mentioned, it wasn’t actively being developed, software wise, for eight years.

Any program, but games especially, start with pre-production, which is story boarding, deciding the market you want to push to, etc.

After that it’s completely possible for a game to sit, not being worked on at all for years (this generally will depend on how big the studio is/if the team tasked with it is busy)

After that it’ll go into active development, and be there for anywhere from 2-5 years (could be longer, but that’s a generalization). As for during this time, other people have answered it more in depth

Tl;dr it wasn’t in development for 8 years, more like 4 (if what another redditor said is correct)