Former head of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios Sean Layden believes that creativity has disappeared in the big gaming industry, the AA games segment is dead, and new ideas can only be found in indies. He spoke at the opening of Gamescom Asia conference together with the founder of indie publisher Raw Fury Gordon Van Dyke. This was reported by GamesIndustry.biz.
"[In the past] we spent a lot more time looking at games and not asking 'what's your monetisation scheme', or 'what's your recurrent revenue plan', or 'what's your subscription formula'? says Layden.
In the past, you didn't have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a game, so publishers could afford to take risks. The key question was "Is it fun?".
But today, the development of a modern AAA game costs hundreds of millions of dollars, so experimentation can be too expensive. That is why the industry is now looking towards sequels and proven solutions.
'Well, if Fortnite made this much money in this amount of time, my Fortnite knockoff can make this in that amount of time,' Leyden parodies financiers in large gaming companies.
Of course, players' expectations have also increased. Mid-segment games from such companies as Interplay, Gremlin, Ocean, and THQ can no longer interest the mass player. So these companies also have to move to AAA.
When asked what strategy the few AA studios that still exist should choose, Leyden said that AA has a natural niche, which is to create new things, not cheaper versions of big-budget games.
”Seek unique ideas or a different spin on something you know, he added, but most importantly: don't lead with monetisation,” emphasizes Layden.
Sean Layden's thoughts on this matter can hardly be called "fresh". This is not the first time he has talked about the stagnation of big-budget games. But they are definitely relevant. Leyden believes that the indie industry is now a beacon for players, offering a lot of new ideas and game formulas.
This is confirmed by recent studies that show that the indie segment is catching up with AAA in terms of revenue. To a large extent, this is achieved by quantity: in 2014, more than 13 thousand games were released, 99% of which were indie.