Oops! Rockstar did it again: GTA 6 release has once again been postponed for another 6 months, following the earlier delays the studio had been announcing. What’s interesting is that while this news is evidently frustrating to franchise fans, even with all the delays taken into account, GTA 6 actually fits in the AAA average time to develop a video game.
The good news is that if you are reading this article, you’re probably not releasing a triple-A title – which means a game idea that’s on your mind can almost definitely be completed faster. In this article, we’ll dive into how long does it take to develop a game of any sort, starting from mobile casual games, ending with double-A or triple-A titles, while, of course, covering anything in between.
Game Development Timelines by Game Type: From Mobile to AAA
Below, we’ll break down each major game type with real examples so you can clearly see how each category compares to the previous and the next.
Mobile Games
6 to 12 months
One important thing to understand about mobile games is that they are never truly “finished”. Unlike PC or console titles, mobile games are built around continuous updates and live operation. There is usually a milestone where the game becomes financially viable – when player acquisition costs start paying off after a series of updates and enough time in live operation.
At that point, the project can be scaled and optimized rather than simply “completed”. It’s also worth keeping in mind that without regular updates, content refreshes, and balance changes, a mobile game quickly loses visibility and players.
With that said, mobile video game development time tends to move the fastest because their scope is usually tighter, production pipelines are streamlined, and the hardware limitations keep teams focused on efficiency. A typical mobile game takes 6 to 12 months to develop.
Example 1 – Hyper-casual titles (up to a few months):
Hyper-casual hits like Flappy Bird or basic tap-timing puzzles often go from concept to store-ready in a matter of weeks. These games don’t require heavy 3D art, complex systems, or long QA cycles. Studios crank out prototypes quickly and test them with real users almost immediately.
Example 2 – Mid-core mobile RPGs or shooters (12-18 months):
When you introduce progression systems, character development, or real-time multiplayer, the timeline stretches. A mobile dungeon crawler with gacha mechanics, for instance, might require backend tools, consistent balancing, a content delivery pipeline, and deeper QA – all of which push development further.
Mobile teams rarely build the entire game before release. Instead, they start with a prototype or a soft-launch version designed to collect core metrics and validate audience interest. These early builds help teams understand who the game is really for, how players behave, and whether the core loop is strong enough to scale
In this context, “finishing the game” isn’t a meaningful milestone: mobile development is about validating, iterating, and growing the product over time rather than reaching a single final endpoint. Take Clash of Clans that has been in development for 17 years as of today: it didn’t take that long to build the first playable version, yet continuous updates, live-ops features, balance changes, and content expansions are what actually keep a successful mobile game alive and profitable over time.
Even with such specifics, mobile games have the shortest development cycle on this list. They’re the quickest to test and ship, but as we move into indie territory next, you’ll see how creative ambition – not hardware – starts shaping longer timelines.
Indie Games
Average of 3 years
Indie games cover a massive range. Small passion projects built by solo devs, as well as ambitious multi-year productions created by compact but specialized teams, can be roughly categorized as indie, and, as a matter of fact, the discussion about what’s still indie and what’s not is very much on in the gamedev community. Their development time usually falls between 1 and 3+ years, depending on scope, art style, tools, and whether the project is full-time or part-time.
Below are three examples that show how dramatically indie timelines can vary.
Example 1 – Hollow Knight (≈ 3 years) and Silksong (recently released after a longer cycle)
Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight is one of the best examples of an indie game that punches far above its weight. Starting with a game jam product, a tiny team delivered gorgeous hand-drawn art, rich combat, fluid animation, and a sprawling interconnected world – all in roughly three years.
But here’s the important part:
Success raises expectations.
Silksong, which was recently released, took significantly longer than the original. Why? A few reasons:
- The scope widened beyond “a sequel” into “a complete evolution of the formula”.
- Stakeholders realized Hornet’s characteristics and capabilities required a more extensive level of building and harder challenges.
- The team took the time to refine the game instead of rushing to meet hype-driven deadlines.
Silksong proves a key point about development timelines: when quality is the priority and the team is small, years melt away fast, and Steam servers crush easily. To be fair, the latter wasn’t just a merit of development but a brilliant work of marketing: we will talk about gamedev marketing best practices more extensively in our upcoming article.
Example 2 – Stardew Valley (≈ 4.5 years)
Eric Barone developed the entire game solo – art, code, music, UI, gameplay systems, everything. What began as a small love letter to Harvest Moon grew into a massive farming simulation with deep relationships, events, seasons, dungeons, and post-launch updates.
This example demonstrates how solo game development time inflates when one person must handle every discipline. The game might have been simple on paper, but the execution was huge.
Indie games can take just as long as AA productions, depending on ambition. Compared to mobile games, they scale significantly in systems depth, art requirements, and QA needs. And as we move into AA titles next, you’ll notice how teams grow not just in size but in specialization, which shifts timelines again.
AA Games
AA games sit comfortably between indie productions and massive AAA blockbusters. These projects usually involve mid-sized teams, higher budgets, and a polished but focused scope. Development time is typically 4 years.
AA games aim for high production value without trying to compete with sprawling, cinematic juggernauts. They often focus on one strong hook – whether that’s narrative, combat, or a distinct visual identity.
Example – Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (≈ 3 years)
Ninja Theory coined the term “Independent AAA” when building Hellblade. Despite being produced by a relatively small team, the game delivered:
- top-tier motion capture,
- stunning visuals,
- psychological depth,
- cinematic storytelling.
They achieved AAA-like quality through smart scope management. Ballooning team size didn’t turn out to be a strategy.
Example – A Plague Tale: Innocence (≈ 3 years)
Asobo Studio crafted a rich narrative experience with stealth mechanics, companion AI, and striking visuals. Not massive like an Assassin’s Creed, but polished, atmospheric, and emotionally driven.
AA games sit right at the sweet spot: bigger and more ambitious than indie, but without the multi-studio complexity of AAA development. As we move into the next category, you’ll see how increased scale, team size, and player expectations push timelines far past the 3-4 year mark.
AAA Games
3+ years
AAA development is where production truly becomes a coordinated global operation. These games are built by hundreds of developers, often spread across several studios, and require massive budgets, advanced engines, and intense QA cycles. The typical AAA game takes 3 to 6+ years – and delays are more common than on-time launches.
AAA games take so long not because teams work slowly, but because the scope and expectations are staggering.
Why AAA games take years
Here are the big reasons AAA timelines stretch so far:
- Content volume – thousands of animations, dozens of environments, cinematic storylines, open-world systems, hundreds of NPCs.
- Cross-platform optimization – PC, multiple consoles, cloud versions.
- Complex gameplay systems – AI ecosystems, physics, branching quests, narrative scripting.
- Massive QA requirements – every system needs testing across every configuration.
- Tooling and tech development – often built alongside the game itself.
Even with a huge team, tasks must be sequenced carefully. You can’t finalize animation before combat systems are stable. You can’t finish quests before the world is built. You can’t optimize until the full content is present.
Example 1 – The Witcher 3 (≈ 3.5 years)
CD Projekt RED created a vast open world with cinematic side quests, branching storytelling, monster hunting systems, and tons of handcrafted content. For a game of this size, 3.5 years is incredibly efficient – but only because they already had strong internal tools and experience.
Example 2 – Red Dead Redemption 2 (≈ 8 years)
Rockstar’s magnum opus took nearly a decade because everything was done at an unprecedented scale: realistic wildlife AI, dynamic weather systems, contextual animations for nearly every action, a massive narrative, seamless world streaming, and truly cinematic fidelity across thousands of interactions.
The result is a masterpiece, which also represents the upper limit of what AAA production can look like when ambition is dialed up to eleven. AAA games take dramatically longer than AA not because developers are inefficient, but because expectations are enormous and the systems involved are deeply intertwined.
Compared to indie or mobile timelines, AAA production is a marathon run by hundreds of people at once, with the stakes being much higher.
VR and Metaverse Games
VR and metaverse projects usually fall somewhere between indie and AA productions in terms of timeline, with development typically taking 1 to 3+ years. What sets them apart is the type of work involved – especially interaction design and performance optimization.
In VR, the player’s body is the controller. That means every movement, gesture, and perspective shift has to feel natural and comfortable. Throw in the need to support multiple headsets, input devices, room-scale setups, and you’ve got yourself a highly iterative development cycle.
Example 1 – Beat Saber (≈ 1 year to Early Access)
A small team built a laser-focused experience with extremely tight mechanics. Because the scope was clear– rhythm, movement, slicing blocks– they could ship early and iterate live with community feedback.
Example 2 – VRChat (multi-year ongoing development)
A metaverse-style platform is never really “done”. VRChat launched after years of foundational development but continues growing:
- avatar systems,
- world creation tools,
- social features,
- safety moderation,
- massive scalability improvements.
These games evolve like operating systems – constantly updated, continuously expanded.
VR and metaverse games sit in a unique position: smaller than AAA in scope but often more experimental and iteration-heavy. Their timelines vary because the tech is new and the design language is still evolving. Compared to AAA, they’re faster to launch but much slower to finalize due to ongoing refinement and community-driven updates.
Common Reasons Game Development Takes Longer Than Expected
Even with a solid plan, game development rarely moves in a perfectly straight line. Games are creative projects built on top of complex technical systems, so it’s normal for the timeline to shift along the way. Some delays are small bumps, while others can push a release by months. Here are the issues studios encounter most often.
Scope creep – easily the biggest culprit. A project begins with a clear vision, but as prototypes become fun, the team starts imagining new mechanics, more levels, more content, more everything. Each addition sounds small on its own, but together they can double the workload.
Technical debt and unforeseen engineering challenges also slow teams down. Maybe a system that worked fine in early builds collapses under real content. Maybe a physics interaction behaves unpredictably. Maybe the engine needs custom tools the team didn’t anticipate. Fixing foundational problems mid-production takes time and usually requires reworking more than one feature. + intellectual property issues
Content bottlenecks are common as well. AAA and AA games depend heavily on parallel pipelines, and when one department falls behind – animation, level design, VFX, narrative, audio – everything downstream gets delayed. Large teams plan for this, but even strong pipelines hit unexpected slowdowns.
QA discoveries can also stretch development. Testing might reveal crashes, performance dips, or weird edge cases that force whole features back into iteration. And if you’re shipping on consoles, certification requirements add additional rounds of fixes.
Finally, team turnover or changes in direction can disrupt momentum. Bringing new people up to speed or shifting priorities mid-development almost always extends the schedule.
Delays in game development aren’t signs of failure – they’re a reflection of how interconnected and unpredictable games can be, especially when ambition is high.
How Long Does It Take to Make a Game Solo or with a Small Team?
If big studios operate like orchestras, then small teams and solo devs operate more like garage bands – scrappy, flexible, and often ridiculously creative, but limited by how many instruments one person or a tiny group can realistically play at once.
Games made by small teams typically take 6 months to 3 years, while solo projects often stretch anywhere between 1 and 5+ years depending on scope, available time, and whether the developer is learning as they go.
Here’s what that looks like in the real world.
When a Small Team Builds a Game
A compact 3-6 person team can actually move surprisingly fast when everyone is specialized and communication is easy. These teams often excel in genres like 2D platformers, roguelikes, cozy sim games, or compact 3D exploration titles.
Example – Dead Cells (≈ 3 years by a small team):
Motion Twin was relatively small while building Dead Cells, and their “roguevania” approach meant lots of iteration. The stylized 2D animation helped reduce content overhead, allowing the team to focus on combat feel, progression, and replayability across a few years of focused development.
Example – Hades (≈ 3 years):
Supergiant Games isn’t a giant studio despite its name. Their tight-knit dev process, strong pipeline, and early access model allowed them to iterate quickly while still crafting a polished combat system, deep narrative structure, and stylish presentation. It’s a perfect showcase of what a seasoned small team can achieve in a controlled timeframe.
Small teams tend to be fastest when:
– the art style is stylized or minimalist
– the scope is well defined early on
– the tech stack is familiar and production tools are stable
Things slow down quickly when the project grows beyond what a handful of people can handle.
Building a Game as a Solo Developer
Solo development is a whole different ecosystem. One person is responsible for… well, everything: coding, design, art, UI, audio, marketing, testing, porting, community management. If you’ve ever wondered why solo projects take years, that’s the answer. The work is simply massive.
Example – Stardew Valley (≈ 4.5 years):
Eric Barone taught himself every discipline during development. What started as a small farming sim grew into a huge, content-rich world that demanded thousands of work hours. It’s a perfect illustration of how passion can extend a timeline not because of inefficiency, but because the ambition keeps expanding.
Example – Undertale (≈ 2.5 years):
Toby Fox built most of Undertale himself, bringing a unique vision to life with simple art but deeply interconnected systems and narrative structures. Even with minimalistic visuals, delivering a complete RPG with branching endings takes serious time.
Solo dev timelines depend heavily on:
– the developer’s experience
– whether the game is full-time or a nights-and-weekends project
– how large the content scope becomes
– how many disciplines the person needs to learn along the way
Many solo projects start small and grow big accidentally – a very human, very common pattern.
The Reality for Small Teams and Solo Devs
Smaller teams are incredibly creative, but they trade the speed of large-scale parallel work for flexibility and focus. What an AAA team can build in a month might take a solo developer half a year – simply because there are fewer hands and fewer simultaneous workflows.
How to Reduce Video Game Development Time Without Sacrificing Quality
You can’t cheat gravity in game development, but you can make the process a lot smoother and faster with the right tools and production choices. Shorter timelines don’t come from cutting corners, but from eliminating unnecessary slowdowns. Here are the approaches studios use to keep development moving without burning out the team or compromising quality.
Using Ready-Made Assets
Pre-made assets are one of the quickest ways to speed things up, especially early in development. Instead of spending weeks modeling props, animating basic characters, or building placeholder UI elements, teams can grab existing packs and jump straight into gameplay tests. This is incredibly useful for prototypes, vertical slices, or mobile and indie projects with tight schedules. Most teams still customize assets later, but the early time saved is huge.
Outsourcing
Outsourcing is basically the fast lane of game development. When the internal team is swamped or lacks a certain specialty, external partners can take over art, animation, VFX, engineering support, or specific features. This lets multiple pipelines move in parallel instead of waiting for one group to finish their part.
Studios often rely on partners who already have proven workflows and genre experience. Stepico, for instance, frequently helps teams ramp up production, deliver complex art or animation at scale, or prototype new mechanics faster than their internal capacity allows. Good outsourcing and good game development services don’t replace the core team – it boosts momentum when the clock is ticking.
No-Code and Low-Code Tools
Engines like Unity and Unreal offer visual scripting tools that let designers prototype and iterate without a full engineering cycle. This reduces back-and-forth, cuts down on waiting time, and helps teams validate ideas earlier. These tools aren’t meant to ship final systems on their own, but they speed up experimentation dramatically.
AI in Game Development
AI tools are slowly becoming the “secret sauce” for reducing repetitive work. They help with level blockouts, placeholder art, animation cleanup, dialogue variations, and even automated testing. AI won’t ship a game for you, but it frees developers to focus on the creative work that actually matters.
Final word
Developing your own game is strongly romanticized – and in a way, it should remain so – but passion alone rarely solves tight deadlines, limited resources, or the pressure to deliver a playable build before an investment round, publisher pitch, or major industry event. When time is short or specific expertise is missing, scaling your team strategically often matters more than pushing harder.
Let Stepico professionals fill in for you exactly at those moments, helping accelerate your custom game development, fill production gaps, and bring clarity to complex timelines with experienced game designers, artists, and engineers. Whether you need extra hands, senior-level expertise, or a reliable outsourcing partner to keep your project moving forward, working with a team that understands real production challenges can turn uncertainty into progress.
FAQ
How can studios realistically estimate production duration early on?
The most reliable way to estimate how long does it take to make a video game is to compare your concept with already released titles of similar genre, scope, and platform. Early estimates should be grounded in production reality, not best-case scenarios. Teams also need to account for iteration, testing, and unexpected rework. Without benchmarking, early timelines tend to be overly optimistic.
Why do initial development estimates change so often?
Answering how long does it take to develop a game accurately is difficult before the core loop is validated and technical risks are exposed. Many unknowns only appear once production begins and systems interact with real content. Features that looked simple on paper often require multiple revisions. This is why timelines evolve as the project matures.
Which stage usually consumes the most time in development?
Production almost always dominates total video game development time, regardless of project size. This is the phase where content creation, system integration, and polishing happen simultaneously. Dependencies between disciplines slow things down naturally, even in well-organized teams. More people doesn’t always mean faster output at this stage.
Is there a standard structure most teams follow?
Most studios follow a recognizable game development timeline that includes pre-production, production, QA, and post-launch support. While the structure stays similar, the duration of each stage varies greatly depending on scope and platform. Skipping or rushing early phases usually causes delays later. A clear structure helps teams spot risks early.
Why do teams still miss deadlines even with planning?
Teams often underestimate how long does it take to make a game because planning focuses on building features, not stabilizing them. The average time to develop a video game doesn’t account for unexpected QA discoveries, scope changes, or post-launch responsibilities. Small delays compound over time, especially in content-heavy projects. Realistic buffers are what separate achievable timelines from aspirational ones.
