How long do you think it takes to make a pack for a game?

I think it depends. Expansions I’d imagine take a year and half if not more. Maybe like 10 months to a year on a gamepack. Six months or so for a stuff pack. Kits maybe a few months. That’s what I’d think at least but obviously don’t know for sure.

To design, program, do the audio and integrate with the base game, I would agree but I'm only now getting into the field so don't know. I do know from class that it takes roughly 5 years for a video game to hit the markets.

EP's take a year or less, based on knowing that they had two teams only working on them in TS3 and (at the least the beginning years) of TS4 and they released an average slightly higher than 2 EP's per year.

GP's and SP's are faster, but how much faster, I don't really know how to estimate, because they never shared specific details of how their work is distributed on those.

"Stormkeep;c-18058007" wrote:
EP's take a year or less, based on knowing that they had two teams only working on them in TS3 and (at the least the beginning years) of TS4 and they released an average slightly higher than 2 EP's per year.

GP's and SP's are faster, but how much faster, I don't really know how to estimate, because they never shared specific details of how their work is distributed on those.

Of course I am mainly focused on TS4 but I guess my thought could be extended to any game.

There are, of course, other details to take into account; morale, budget, corporate goals, public interest and team experience/efficiency levels to be some then adding environmental issues such as the pandemic, civil unrest and things like that have to play a part in it..

So if a pack takes around a year, the one that is about to be released was started around a year ago. If they only have 2 teams working on EP's, then the team working on this one will likely be starting on a new pack which will take about a year to be released. The team currently working on an undisclosed pack will then have around a year after their pack drops before their new one will be done.

So if say 12 packs were being considered, it could take around 6 years (2 teams working non-stop) to get all 12 out.

I think it took them about a year to release the stuff packs that the community got to vote on.

I don't think they have two teams working on EPs any longer. It has been quite a few years since they made that comment and the rate of EP's has also gone down significantly. As with any business that does projects, restructuring is most certainly happening pretty regularly, while giving us any real glimpses of the details of that is much rarer.

Don't forget also that Covid is having an impact on their rate of work based on releases last year.

"Stormkeep;c-18058039" wrote:
I don't think they have two teams working on EPs any longer. It has been quite a few years since they made that comment and the rate of EP's has also gone down significantly. As with any business that does projects, restructuring is most certainly happening pretty regularly, while giving us any real glimpses of the details of that is much rarer.

Don't forget also that Covid is having an impact on their rate of work based on releases last year.

Yeah, I added that as the pandemic in the environmental concerns along with civil unrest.

Depends on:
Size and type of pack
How many people are working on it
Do they bother to test and fix it

Ages ago I made modules & whole game for Bioware's "Neverwinter Nights". I quickly discovered that the testing, fixing, testing some more, and so on took more time and effort than the initial construction. All it takes is for one (1) character in all that code to be missing or wrong to wind up with a mess. And that was a comparatively simple engine. To the question, I'd say at least a year to have even a chance for things to be right.

The team did give us an idea some years back, I think shortly after Cats and Dogs came out. If I remember right, they said:

*EPs can take anywhere from 1 to 3, sometimes even more years to develop. Cats and Dogs took over 3 years because it is one of the most complicated EPs to make, and is essentially creating brand new "Sims" from scratch.

*GPs take on average 5 or 6 months, up to a year.

*SPs take around 3 months, but the community SPs took much longer due to voting and info sharing.

** Of course, these were just averages at the time but we were also told that it can vary. Sometimes devs can be pulled off one project to assist with another if the deadline is approaching or the project is falling behind. They also said that they always have multiple projects in production at once, some assets take much longer than others, and they usually have to plan way ahead for themes, schedules and release dates. It should also be noted that when they said this, we were not in the middle of a pandemic and they were still working in the dev offices at full convenience so working from home could have completely altered how they function now.