Alex Hutchinson has a lengthy resume in AAA game development [...] One might think such familiarity would make him comfortable working in that part of the industry, but speaking to GamesIndustry.biz at the Montreal International Games Summit last month, Hutchinson spoke more of fear in AAA than comfort.
"If you look at budgets, the cost of games has been increasing astronomically over the last decade, but the cost to consumers hasn't really moved, so that's the really scary part," Hutchinson said. "People are looking at the fact it's $100 million to make the game and saying we just can't sell it like that. So then you have to turn around and sell it for $150, or find another way to get some money, or cut the budget. So there's three uncomfortable decisions in there someone has to make."
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"When you're spending a lot of money, you have to justify your project by saying it's going to appeal to a lot of people, which essentially means it cannot be a strong flavour," Hutchinson said.[...] "So it was interesting with Typhoon to say if we trim the budget by a lot, then we don't need to sell as many copies. Which is actually kind of fun, because then we can make something [different]. You're never going to get a $100 million horror movie made, but you can get a $10 million horror movie made, which could be equally brilliant. I think the same is equally true of video games."It's interesting that Hutchinson draws parallels between games development and the movie business, because there's an old saying that comes from the movies: it can be good, it can be fast, or it can be cheap, but it can only be two of those things.
Ninja Theory proved that it can be both good and cheap, if you're willing to take the needed time in the development cycle. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice took three years to develop, was every bit as good as just about anything that was published by any AAA publisher, and cost a fraction of what a AAA developer would have paid to make exactly the same game. And then they sold it for US$40; no season passes, no pre-order bonuses, no paid day-one DLC, no MTX (cosmetic or otherwise)... no AAA bullshit of any kind. Just an excellent game, made on a sensible budget, sold finished and complete for less than the US$60 that the AAA companies now say just isn't enough for them to turn a profit anymore.
Not only did Ninja Theory make Hellblade cheaply, and sell it at a budget price, they also advanced the art of making video games in the process.
Motion capture animations is one of those things that has separated AAA from indie in videogames, providing a level of polish that was only available with an enormous budget... until Hellblade. The motion-capture technique that Ninja Theory came up with, which allows them to render mo-capped animations in their game engine, in real time, costs a fraction of the Hollywood-movie technique that the AAAs are using, and allows smaller developers to add mo-cap to their own games at a fraction of that AAA cost:
So, anytime anyone tells you that AAA-quality games just can't be made for ten or twenty million dollars anymore, call bullshit, because what they're saying is demonstrably false. And by that, I mean that Ninja Theory have done the demonstration already, quite literally live on stage, and then published their results to critical acclaim and commercial success, all without any of the normal AAA bullshit.
So, why can't AAAs do this? Well, because they have a relentless and inflexible development schedule; they always have to do it fast, and if they also attempt to make a decent game at the same time, their costs increase exponentially.
Crunch costs extra; hiring a cast of thousands on short-term contract for your crunch period costs extra. And not only are their extra costs involved, but short-term contract hires who know that they'll be worked for sixty or eighty hours a week to get a game out, only to be let go afterwards, are hardly going to be as passionate about the project as your long-time developers, or as productive (low morale and exhaustion both being the bane of productivity). Yes, if you're determined to get your game out on the schedule that you've promised to your shareholders, then you can make it happen if you throw enough money at the problem, but you can't control the cost of development at the same time... or even guarantee the quality of your output, if the recent trend in day zero patches and the like is any indication.
So, what's the solution? For the AAA developers, there might not be one, anymore. Having trained their shareholders to expect a major-franchise release every single year, they may not be able to relax that pace of development at all, which means that every one of their studios will keep on pushing games out every other year, and paying the price in crunch, morale, burn-out, and increasingly discontented customers in the process. Larding games with mobile-style pay-to-win loot-box mechanics is not the answer, but with no other answers available, the AAAs will continue to push in that direction, viewing gamers as nothing but a collection of valuable "whales" and worthless "minnows," and paying only the least possible amount of lip service to the ideal of the player experience... and leaving the field wide open for smaller developers, who are willing to spend an extra year making games that they can sell on those games' merits as games.
Or, as Hutchinson puts it:
"I think there's still a big opportunity in the middle of the market," Hutchinson said. "I think you can make a game with a small team that competes with parts of AAA games. I don't think you can compete obviously with the full smorgasbord. But one of the reasons I wanted to start Typhoon was the idea that we don't need to make the buffet anymore. We don't need multiplayer and single player and co-op and second screen activity and VR support and 3D TV... You can actually just pick one of these things and focus."This is hardly a new thought, of course; Jim Sterling has done more than one Jimquisition episode on the subject. But as we move into 2018, it's worth remembering that 2017 brought us the best possible proof of this concept, and the perfect rebuttal to the tired and threadbare arguments of the AAA publishers' apologists.
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