Kotaku spoke with a number of developers about the technical and sometimes strange reasons longer-than-ideal loading screens show up in modern game releases.
"You're kind of betting on what the biggest deal-breakers are for the players. A game that preforms poorly can still be played, but a game that crashes reliably is a lemon. "
- Designer JP LeBreton explores one of the considerations developers have to keep in mind when loading problems crop up close to release.
Several veteran developers sat down with Kotaku to explain how each of their games handles loading screens, and in many cases offer examples of the sometimes strange factors that can lead to a game shipping with longer-than-desired load times.
The story offers an interesting look at how issues like that creep up in game development, and also potentially contains some advice on fellow developers can avoid some of the specific problems mentioned.
One such tidbit of advice comes from Jan Theysen of King Art Games. Theysen explains that, after having to shorten loading times through post-release patches for The Dwarves, his team is actively seeking out ways to avoid those same issues early on into the development of their next project.
"Making clever packages, optimizing the memory handling, and reducing the amount of data in the memory is pretty complicated if you do it late during development," explains Theysen. "So for our upcoming games we introduced new systems in our workflow that force everybody to think about loading times from the beginning."
Check out the original story over on Kotaku for more developer comments on the topic of load times, including takes from devs who have worked on games like Obduction, BioShock, and Firewatch.
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