14 DAY TRIAL // The developers of Enslaved and Devil May Cry see the AAA video game development model as a problem for the teams who are aiming to bring massive innovation to their titles.
Speaking to Gamasutra as part of a bigger interview Tameem Antoniades, who is the Chief Creative Officer at Ninja Theory, has stated, “If you’re paying 60 bucks for a game, you want it to give you everything under the sun.”
He added, “It seems like Hollywood’s got much more diversity than the games industry has. And I don’t know exactly why this is, but I suspect it’s the publishing, retail model of 40 pounds, 50, 60 bucks a game doesn’t allow players to take chances with their money. It doesn’t allow publishers or developers to take risks. And the only way you can be sure to sell to someone is to sell them something familiar.”
The developer then pushed the movie industry analogy even further, saying that an art house production that has only cost 20 million dollars can get more viewers and more revenue than a big production that has cost 200 million.
Antoniades does not see similar situations happening in the video game industry and believes that this forces most big developers to play it entirely safe and never press innovation on their customers.
The Ninja Theory executive believes that one way to bridge this gap between AAA games and innovation is to bring all titles to online distribution, where things like shelf life are unimportant and even marketing matter less.
Antoniades has acknowledged that Enslaved, which was widely praised by critics but was not a commercial success, might have been a little too alien for players at times.
The studio is now working on the revival of Devil May Cry, which has been greeted with some criticism by long term fans, precisely because of the innovation the developers are trying to bring in.