Video Game Reviews 4 You

Posted September 7, 2011 by M.H. Williams

Ninja Theory is currently crafting a brand-new tale for Capcom’s Devil May Cry, but creative chief Tameem Antoniades believes that the current AAA business model is killing creativity. Antoniades points to smaller-scale development as the creative way forward in the future. He explained to GI.biz that high game prices prevent customers from experimenting with titles, meaning developers continue to refine the gameplay fans are already used to.

"We're in this kind of AAA bracket, I guess you could call it," said Antoniades. "The high budget, high stakes retail model - the barriers to entry for that are so high, so difficult, that we seem to be getting, being offered, decent work in that area. It's hard to say no when you've got a team of 100 and you have to keep the payroll going. Another big project comes along, you tend to go for it.”

"There's always an opportunity between projects to explore things, a lot of team members are hobbyists, they create their own iPhone games and things like that so I can see us kind of taking a punt with that. It can't come soon enough,” he continued. “The whole digital revolution is happening now and it can't come soon enough. The model we're under, the big retail model, is creaking.”

While one bad title can kill a studio these days, a number of veteran developers are using the opportunity to form smaller studios working on smaller, more innovative titles.

"It's such an opportunity for fun creative games to reach a target audience, there's this stranglehold that the AAA retail model has which I think is just crushing innovation and access to creative content. If you're paying that much for a game, you don't want to take chances. You want everything to be there, all the feature sets. You want it to be a known experience, guaranteed fun. That's not healthy,” he said.

Is the AAA retail model giving way to something larger and more inclusive?