What I don't understand is - how did they not notice that the performances was horrible even high end hardware? How did they not decide to take the time to investigate the performances issues and find the causes we're talking about now?
Optimization is not done throughout the process and later there’s not enough time. Assets are made with bad topology and it would take time to redo them. Or it would take time to write a tool that retopologizes them automatically.
What I’m saying is by the time it’s “time” to optimize, there’s not enough time to optimize. It happens very commonly. But the alternative is taking development slower to do things right. And you simply don’t get investment for schedules like that in most companies. Not to mention that it’s goddamn hard to do when the execs lay off people, ask them to RTO, and induce serious attrition otherwise. Sometimes the team just can’t settle into a good process as people leave it too much. So you’re between a rock and a hard place — on the one hand: attrition and low morals, on the other hand: a tight schedule. This doesn’t apply to Colossal Order from my knowledge, but it does apply to many AAAs.
There is a problem at the root of this - extremely over-ambitious production schedules as norm. Most other things are symptoms. Most of what I described is a symptom.
The scope of work done for this game was exceptionally large for a company with 40 employees, assuming it was done within the usual AAA timeframe.
They even posted on social media 1 week before launch warning people to expect lower than expected performance, and raised the system requirements.
If companies have to decide between prioritising features that they've advertised, show stopper bugs, and performance, guess which one always takes the back seat :)