so i used to work at a AAA game studio as a quality assurance tester. we were the folks finding the bugs for the devs to fix through development and after launch. i’m gonna talk a bit about game developing re: animal crossing

When a game gets started there are hundreds of ideas with what to do. Throughout development, things get cut, dropped, etc. One of the games I worked on had a fully realized character, animated and voiced, who was cut with ten months to launch.

Games are changing literally up until the final drop, which is why we have launch day patches. The game has to be cleared for certification on the platform before that and typically things are found that need to be changed.

the last three months leading up to the drop of our biggest title were -hell-. QA worked from 9am to 9pm for months straight to get a very thing checked. Devs were sleeping in their offices.

The last three months of ACNH’s development, Covid has already hit the world stage.

They’d already delayed New Horizons to make sure it was done properly, only to get chopped by an absolutely unprecedented pandemic.

But the game came out on time. Within the first two weeks of release, FOUR patches were added. ABSURD. Usually there’s a day 30, 60, 90 patch

Things are constantly being added. THREE of those patches within one WEEK. The game isn’t underpopulated and Nintendo wasn’t being lazy of greedy.

There wasn’t time to pack everything in. Builds have to be tested to make sure that adding that one thing doesn’t break anything

Like, when the AAA game I was on going out, the build we sent out for launch was the WRONG BUILD.

Video games are made by humans who are fallible. Humans who need to sleep and eat.

Be patient with them. The world is figuratively on fire and literally terrifying. Chill.

IN CONCLUSION,