Sony: Blockbuster Games Are "A Death Sentence"

Sony's famous for a lot of things, and one of those is their big,
impressive AAA games. Say what you like about the company but their
exclusive titles like "God of War" or "Spiderman" are quality products
(even if not necessarily to everybody's taste). They're often designed
to show off what Sony's Playstation hardware (and later, PC ports) can
do if pushed to the limit, and backed with a sizeable budget.

But even Sony recognizes that sole reliance on this type of game is
ultimately a 'death sentence' for any publisher.* Those games are just
too expensive to develop (especially if you don't have Sony's
resources and aren't using the games as loss-leaders to move your
hardware). Worse, that immense price-tag is stifling the industry
because -when hundreds of billions of dollars are on the line- you
aren't going to take any chances innovating; instead, you're just
going to produce pabulum which appeals to the largest market and
offends the least. This is fine in the short term, but in the long run
it's going to leave you behind the nimbler, risk-taking companies who
aren't so paralyzed by their vast wealth that they can better adapt to
changing tastes and trends.

Which isn't to say that AAA games are a dead and dying breed, but for
too long the AAA companies have only focused on the BIG BIG games,
ignoring smaller, more esoteric titles. A successful company -- one
that looks beyond next quarter's returns-- needs a mixture of games or
it starts to stagnate. And we've seen this with Ubisoft, and
ActiBlizz, and Bethesda (and to a slightly lesser degree, EA), who
have so focused on big-name, easily monetized AAA games designed for
years-long 'live service' campaigns. Sure, those games are popular
(and profitable)... but they're all becoming pretty 'samey' too.
They're safe bets for customers, but they generate less and less
excitement with every release. Meanwhile, smaller publishers are
increasingly attracting gamers' attention with their less-expensive,
more daring titles.

The AAA publishers aren't in any danger of dying out soon --their
warchests are just too big-- but if they stick only to AAA-sized
games, they're going to slowly become more and more irrelevant to the
market. They need to invest more in smaller games, with new IPs and
new ideas.

Which isn't really that new an idea; a lot of people have been pushing
this idea for years. But it's good to see that maybe -just maybe!-
this thinking is finally starting to percolate up in the C-levels of
this mega-corporations. And sure, creating new games can be extremely
risky. The team might not be able to fulfill their vision, or might be
beat to the punch by some other game, or some minor flaw might be
inflated by the audience into a game-killing issue. That's why you
make _smaller_ games that won't consume so much money and resources;
games that you can get results on quicker, without expending so much
time. But it's necessary for the overall health of the publisher and
the industry at large, and it's damn past time the AAA publishers
started recognizing this.

[Shawn Layton doesn't mention this, but smaller games with shorter
development cycles would probably also alleviate the necessity for
mass layoffs after a big game completes, because rather than laying
off all those artists while the years-long pre-production and
programming for  your AAA game takes place, you can just shift them
all over to a smaller project.]

Layton also makes some other interesting points: for instance, the
insistence that titles have mass-appeal world-wide (with particular
focus on the West) instead of making games that might be popular just
in certain geo/political regions. "Look at the markets [in other
regions], they're growing, the economies are robust. There's more
disposable income. You can make a great game in Indonesia for that
market." says Layton. Again pointing to how a focus on just big AAA
games is leaving money on the table.



Anyway, it's an interesting conversation. What do you think: would the
industry be better served with AAA publishers changing focus, or do
you think they should just stick to the tent-pole games they're famous
for?




* technically, former Sony exec Shawn Layden
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/shawn-layden-aa-is-gone-and-thats-a-threat-to-the-ecosystem-going-forward