Iteration Makes Things Better

My favorite example of showing iteration making things better is Larian Studios

From 2014 to 2023 Larian Studios developed 3 CRPG games

• Divinity Original Sin
• Divinity Original Sin 2
• Baldur’s Gate 3

And each time the created CRPG game got better and better. It’s clear that each time a tool was created before it got to be used in the next one right from the start. In reality Baldur’s Gate 3 foundation was laid out in the year 2014. While some games need 10 years to create nothing. Yes I am looking at you Hytale. Others deliver value over time.

Doing iterate does not mean to start over from nothing. But instead taking all created tools and gained knowledge. It’s not about creating a new foundation but building on the foundation that is already there.

This is the reason why having an incredible foundation is important. Good iteration does not mean constantly reworking something. An incredible talk by James Coplien is Why Responsive Iterative Design is Evil

Hytale is a good example of how not to do iterating and starting again at building a foundation instead of building on an existing one. What we want are many small incremental improvements. Not big rewrites.

Later in development they switched from C#/Java to C++. While having most employees being Java mod developer for minecraft. They had to build new system, learn new knowledge and had to throw away the code the build before.

In the same time Larian Studios created three games. While Hytale Studios created nothing but hype.

They wanted to release the game on multiplatform more easily, wanted better Performance and having a stronger foundation for more updates.

In the end they had nothing. It was probably their biggest mistake and killed the project already in July 22nd 2022.