Nothing "safe" about making completely unappealing games.
this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2024
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That's the ironic thing about it. Because they're so safe it becomes completely bland.. basically all bit ensuring it won't be as successfully anyway
They're being so safe it's unsafe
Meh. If it has no major flaws (except the blandness) they can pretty much prop up the sales with marketing.
News at 11
Maybe they should spend less money. Something like Hollow Knight was made at a fraction of the cost of a AAA game, but is excellent.
If you spent a tenth as much on each game, you only need one or two games to do well for the whole set of ten to be a success.
hollow knight wasnt so good because they spent less money, they had creative freedom to do what they want.
This is generally how Blumhouse makes films and they've been pretty successful from a business perspective.
If the studio is already rather large and retains a number of employees then you're either asking for them to divide into small teams and produce a bunch of projects in parallel (none of which will potentially sell well or be able to maintain the momentum the studio has with previous AAA title releases), or you're essentially asking them to downsize into a smaller studio, laying off 80-90% of their workforce, to produce non-AAA titles again.
Those smaller projects now have smaller marketing budgets (1/10th each). Smaller marketing budget generally means less sales, unless something goes viral (0.1% of the time or less, so really you need 1000 projects not just 10). Not to mention price point is going to be at $20 or maybe $30.
Internally on each game you'll need people to take up the roles of like art director, or whoever decides the look and feel of the art for the game. With AAA titles you used to have one of those (I assume), but now one person has to look after 10 projects, or other people have to step up (one for each project) to do that job. Should they get paid more? Now your smaller projects are costing more money.
It's sort of like saying 9 women can make a baby in 1 month. We know that's impossible. AAA studios are not structured around creating 10 smaller projects.
They probably ought to start then. It makes sense to build a small successful project and then build up that team to make a larger version of it, like Larian going from Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2 to Baldur's Gate 3. It makes far less sense to just start with the big team and make something outside of your wheelhouse like Suicide Squad. If the thing they used to make is not trending toward a place where it allows them to scale up, or if the team is just tired of making it and needs a new creative outlet, maybe what the industry needs is an off ramp that will change a large team into multiple small teams.
What workforce?
Big studios are already ditching the idea of maintaining insitutional knowledge by doing more and more using cheaper contractors.
The downsizing is happening either way.