The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim: Cutoff for determining final content

[Musharat]

I will be the first to admit I know little about how long it takes once a game is "finalized" to go to physical creation (disc mastering), subsequent product testing, packaging, shipping etc. I'm certain though that Bethesda has a well defined production plan with target dates for each step of production, It seems to me though that with less than 5 months to go before the release date they can't be making many (if any) substantial changes. I'm even wondering if any feedback they might have gotten after e-3 would even be considered in updating or altering game content. Any thoughts?

[Squibbit]

I am not great at math, but i think they still have time for some stuff. Definitely things that are just numbers like item stats. New art may be a stretch. at any rate the deadline i would guess to be a lil over a month. I would think that they would work right up till they needed to start burning disks, which could be a month from the release or less. They've already added horses as a major content sort of thing, I wouldn't be too surprised if a few things asked for are get in.

[Wyvern]

I know CIV IV went gold and then to disc production the week before its release. So they can work right up to the last minutes. Also don't forget we live in the age of day one 1 GB + patches. So they can work on the game even after discs are made. I think that they continue to add new ideas up until a month, and then tweak to perfection up until release day. But anyone’s guess could be right. I say somewhere in October there may be a few tiny bits tossed in, but I have no knowledge of time frames for game production.

[Gustav m]

I would think that Skyrim, because of its complexities, probably isn't a healthy candidate for a last minute alteration, but if it's really minor, I suppose. Just thinking of all the little glitches Oblivion was prone to. Bethesda probably is doing its best to really minimize this. Do I understand 1 GB patches would work on console issue discs as well? They will make every minute count. That may not mean they can work until they go gold, but as close to it as possible. And you can probably bet that some things will be left out for some-day patching as is so common nowadays.

[ApplePowerPC]

I am not expert on these things either, but I'd think it would depend a bit on how much work a certain change would require to make. Things like not having attributes in the game would probably need to be set in stone earlier as many aspects of the game would have to be based around them, and I'd imagine that by the time we learned about that aspect of the game, there was no chance it would be changed, but things like adding an extra type of armor or the frequency of dragon spawns would probably be easier to change later on in development, still, I'm not sure just how late Bethesda could add it in.

[MacIntel]

Probably been and gone by now. In the Todd Howard/Notch video he says that they're ramping up to begin the gold master process, which is the final run of testing where they iron out and squash as many bugs as they possibly can before the game goes gold. If anything the cutoff dates for things being cut smoothly (rather than leaving a ragged Black Horse Courier quest stump on it) is what's coming up. I imagine their deadline for going gold is probably mid-September at the absolute latest, and even that is pushing it.

[Common]

I haven’t heard of a game going gold more than a month before its release. As far as I know the time for going gold varies from 1-4 weeks, though 4 weeks is really rare. The physical production process doesn’t really need much time even if millions of disks need to be burnt. There are machines which can burn like 5 disks in 10 minutes. Then again you could be right. It’s always the developer’s decision and as someone stated many studios go on working on the game after going gold and then release a day one patch.

[desilva]

In all honesty content complete is ether soon or has already passed with a game as large as Skyrim the game play is done by now sound is still being tweaked a bit and testing is the most important thing. As soon as content complete is reached they go into hard core testing and polishing which I am hoping is the case right now tweaking small things not adding anything just making small changes to damage or encounters or loot balancing and smoothing out game play.