Industry Risk Aversion and the Role of Courage
DiscussionComments
We saw this with the middleware boom in the mid 2000s. It lowered the barrier to entry, but it also led to a sea of games that all felt like they were built from the same kit.
Those shared toolsets actually paved the way for indie developers to achieve high production values. It allowed small teams to focus on the courageous mechanics rather than spending years building a basic physics engine.
But what about the massive hits that are just polished iterations of a proven formula... does that count as courage, or just very smart market research... it makes me wonder if we are confusing bravery with just knowing your audience!
The current venture capital climate has shifted significantly. Interest rates make unproven concepts far more expensive to fund than they were five years ago.
If we consider that the average development cycle for a AAA title now exceeds five years, the cost of a total failure is not just a lost budget. It could potentially wipe out a decade of accumulated institutional knowledge if a studio closes.
Is the loss of a studio really that bad? Sometimes a total failure is the only way to purge stale ideas from the industry. Why protect a decade of knowledge if that knowledge is just how to make a safe, boring sequel?
the rise of mid-budget aa games solves this.
To what extent does the AA space actually allow for mechanical innovation, or are they simply stripping down AAA budgets while keeping the same safe design patterns? I am curious if the reduced overhead actually correlates with higher experimental variance.