Sport studios in every single place are grappling with the influence of pricey years-long improvement cycles that may flip large finances video games into big monetary boondoggles. And whereas that dialog has taken place over the specter of big-budget monetary misfires like Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws, it seems even studios turning out hit video games like PlayStation-owned Sucker Punch Productions are nervous about these expansive timelines as properly.
That is in accordance with outgoing studio head and firm co-founder Brian Fleming, who mentioned the subject with Sport Developer after Ghost of Yotei received the award for “Greatest Journey Sport” at the 2026 DICE Awards. “These video games are taking us on-or-off about 5 years proper now,” he stated. “Candidly, we actually want that quantity was 4.”
“If we might get it right down to 4, that will be wonderful.”
Sucker Punch’s course of has actually paid off, not simply with awards but additionally by way of gross sales numbers. Sony reported that the sport “outperformed” its predecessor Ghost of Tsushima in a current monetary report. Fleming stated the need to reclaim these years is concerning the “alternative value” of its builders’ careers.
He stated is that the studio has spent an “inordinate quantity” of time occupied with optimizing instruments and manufacturing processes, however these conversations have been “inadequate.” “That’s like treading water or perhaps even dropping a bit of little bit of floor,” he remarked. “The actual secret we predict going ahead goes to be designing video games that may be in-built shorter intervals of time.”
Fleming clarified that builders should not anticipate “episodic” video games or something of that nature from Sucker Punch, however that the studio is “pondering arduous” about how its design decisions affect the scope of video games it produces—all with the aim of lowering its manufacturing timelines to 4 years (which can nonetheless really feel like eons to different studios).
Sucker Punch’s subsequent recreation will hopefully be made in 4 years
Do not anticipate Sucker Punch to double its workforce measurement in hopes of manufacturing video games at a sooner tempo any time quickly. Fleming downplayed the concept growing the variety of individuals engaged on its video games—or utilizing generative AI instruments—will resolve this specific drawback.
“We do not entertain the concept rising the workforce is the fitting technique,” he stated. “We really feel just like the variety of man-years that went into [Ghost of Tsushima and Ghost of Yotei] is what we predict is the max.”
“This is not about offshoring. This is not about AI. That is about how you consider the delivered product…what it’s, and what you are making an attempt to do, and the way you are able to do that by persevering with to be a sculptor of that venture and subtract away all of the issues that aren’t important.”
Fleming’s feedback align with what we heard from rank-and-file builders final yr when urgent the subject of lengthy improvement cycles. Although we framed the subject as being about “poor management,” a number of builders we spoke with stated it was management’s incapacity to firmly outline the venture that typically lengthened improvement occasions. Fleming’s feedback echo that sentiment, and it will likely be price watching to see if his successors Jason Connell and Adrian Bentley can form that imaginative and prescient.
After all, Sucker Punch management confronted a problem of a unique sort final yr when the studio fired a texture artist for mocking the killing of Charlie Kirk. Fleming defended the firing in an interview with Sport File, saying that “making gentle of somebody’s homicide is a deal-breaker for us, and we condemn that, form of in no unsure phrases.”
