‘Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’ performance woes may be explained by its breakneck development time

There’s a lot of buzz around the new Star Wars video game Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and not all of it is good – especially on PC. Multiple outlets are reporting frame rate issues, and it’s so bad that people are warning others to not pick up the game at launch. There’s a lot of finger-pointing, but the issue could be buried in the game’s (relatively) short development time.

A “AAA” game — meaning it’s a game developed by an established, well-funded studio — takes a long time to make. Generally, it can take up to six years to get a game from conception to market. Survivor was banged out in half that time — and during a global pandemic to boot.

Despite the quick turnaround time, director Stig Asmussen says nothing magical happened development-wise. It was just easier to make the game because it was a sequel (to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order).

“If anything, it’s a testament to the team,” Asmussen told Bloomberg. “And, to be fair, it was three-and-a-half years.”

When the team began making the game in 2019, they were forced to adjust to remote work when the pandemic hit. Asmussen said the team adapted quickly.

“I think we were somewhat fortunate because we were really early in production,” he said. “The lion’s share of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor has been working remotely.”

Regardless, three-and-a-half years is nothing to shake a stick at. Think about one of the biggest releases of the year: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which took six years to develop. Other sequels, like God of War: Ragnarök or Horizon: Forbidden West, took four years — and those were straight-ahead sequels for the most part.

To keep things moving, Asmussen said the team worked together well and was willing to cut things from the game when it was necessary to do so.

“We want to be ambitious, but we don’t want to get in a position where we’re kind of setting ourselves up to not hit all our marks,” Asmussen said. “Our philosophy is: ‘It’s okay to fail, but fail fast, fail early.’”

Obviously, Asmussen isn’t going to speak down to a game he spent years making, especially with so much weight behind it. This also isn’t the first game to have issues at launch, and it won’t be the last. With time, it’s always fixed. The question is: how long will it take?

Publisher EA will release the game with a day one patch and said it will deal with issues in more patches in the coming weeks.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor releases worldwide on April 28.