How Long Does It Take to Make a Game?

We all know that time is the most valuable asset that we have ever been given. No matter who you are or what you do, time passes at the same pace for all of us.
The tick-tock factor plays a major role in any industry just as it does in our personal lives. An on-time release of a product can dramatically change the outcome of sales figures and its future.
Before you start to make a game, the question of ‘how long does it take to make a game’ probably hovers in your head constantly. Today we are going to answer this question as humanly it is possible. So, set your timers to the reading-clock, and let’s kick into the list.

Table of Contents

What Are the Main Factors in Calculating the Time Span?

1. Genre: The main factor is which genre you are making your game in. A match-3 game takes weeks to execute but an open-world action-adventure is drastically more time-demanding.
2. Art Style: The game art styles play a major role in expanding the time span of making a game. A 2D-pixel game is not that much of a hassle to make, but a fully 3D game on a powerful game engine demands a longer time to develop.
3. Scale: How big is your game? The answer to this question morphs the answer to ‘how long does it take to make a game?’ or even ‘how much does it cost to make a game?’
4. Platform: A multi-platform game needs a lot of debugging and testing so it can run well on all of those platforms that we are talking about.
5. Assets: How many assets do you want to put in your game? The more you demand, the longer the development process.

How Long Does It Take to Make a Game on Your Own?

You should consider previous points and how proficient you are. Making a game single-handedly can alter how much it cost to make a game, but on the other hand, can alter your resources.
Game art pipeline can take from days to 2 or 3 years depending on your criteria of development.

How Long Does it Take to Make an Indie Game?

Let’s summarize it into one word: ambition. Indie games are all about creativity and providing something special so they can go toe to toe with those big names on the market.
In order to make your visions come to life in the form of an indie game, you have to be ambitious; but the more ambitious your project gets, the more time you need to have for its development. Because of that, indie games take about 3-4 months up to 4-5 years to make.

How Long Does it Take to Make a Mobile Game?

Mobile games are so versatile, and their variety range is absolutely ridiculous. You can find thousands of games on any mobile-related market nowadays. The commonly estimated time span for finishing a mobile game starts from weeks to double-digit months.
It is important if they want to deliver a genuine game or just want to publish a money-grab-microtransaction festival.
Games like Genshin Impact took more time to develop and, because of their quality, made their way onto bigger platforms as well.

How Long Does It Take to Make a Triple-A Game?

AAA games are different from any previous titles we just talked about due to their nature. We are talking about big names and big leagues now. Hefty budgets with numerous employees and multiple studios working on a single game.

Depending on their scale, they can be finished in 6 months or take more than 2 years to be complete and ready to publish.

How Long Does It Take to Finish Each Portion of a Game

There are many aspects of game development that should be done before a game is ready to test. The following are the different development segments:

Art

There are many steps that should undergo throughout the process in game art services. But the point is although they all are integrated, many of these entwined steps can be done parallelly.
This makes it possible to save a lot of time for you and your project. The art portion of development usually is done in a matter of 6-7 months to a year, depending on your game.

Coding

The programming and coding of a project can be so simple or so complex. But usually, the proficiency of the programmer plays the main role in this factor.
The coding of a game should be done in 7 months to 1.5 years tops.

Music and Sound

It can be done in a matter of weeks, or it can take up to half a year. It depends if you want to use ready-to-use samples or create your own unique effects, music score and etc.
Making adaptive music and setting it on your codes can take a long span of time for your project.

Testing and Marketing

Tests are reliant on how specific you want them to be. Alpha tests are done on a routine throughout a project, but closed/open beta tests can be crucial for their feedback can save your game from the last minute failing.
The test can be done in days, or you publish an early test just to see the feedback for months.

Unusual Cases

Many games go out of their way to be published in a short period of time. On the other hand, some titles get stuck in development hell, and some of them stay there for eternity.
We tried to exclude them in this article, but you should study those cases as well; they can have very valuable lessons for you and your project development.

How Can Outsource Help You?

By outsourcing some aspects of your project, you can save your project money and time. With a outsource force to do your job, you can be assured that your work will be done in the due time.
There is no excuse for an outsource to delay their job, and you can count on them. The reliability assures your project’s gears won’t stop under no circumstances.
There is also no need for micro-managing these aspects of projects, as they have their own managers to control their human resources and ensure the quality of the outcome.
Also, you won’t have to worry about losing or lack of efficiency of an employee cause there is no employee to struggle with.

Conclusion

Time acts as a sensitive factor in your success and future of it. But it is heavenly depending on many factors which you should consider. We tried to provide you with time spans that are related to today’s climate.