Blockbuster games with outsized budgets and big spectacle are “not really sustainable in terms of the cost of development”, said former God of War exec Meghan Morgan Juinio, adding games need to be “fun first”.
Juinio recently left her position as director of product development at Sony’s Santa Monica Studios, where she worked on the God of War series. She discussed the current state of blockbuster game development with PC Gamer at Gamescom Asia.
“I think it’s already not really sustainable in terms of the cost of development,” she said. “There’s been a ton of layoffs, and a lot of that is focused on the West Coast of the US, and it’s clearly because the minimum costs are so high. Development costs will necessitate that the big publishers create [new] pathways.”
While big budget games like God of War won’t be going away, Juinio believes larger publishers will look to AA or single A games for inspiration.
Ultimately, though, successful games should be fun to play, rather than focusing on flashy graphics and presentation.
“I think what it comes back to,” said Juinio, “is just make something fun. Just make something awesome, and that will achieve what you need it to achieve.”
She continued: “My opinion is that it has to be fun first. It can look the most beautiful, the best soundtrack in the world, it can be winning all the BAFTAs for audio and all this, but if it’s not fun it’s not worth the investment, whether that’s $2m or $500m.
“And I think that’s where the biggest publishers can return: how do we go back to building solid games that are really fun to play. Maybe they aren’t 40 hours long, and maybe they aren’t the most cutting edge – but that doesn’t matter if the core experience is really fun.”
This year, the likes of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Peak have proven that games from smaller teams with smaller budgets can still make a huge impact. Juinio acknowledged, however, there remains an increasing problem of access and game discovery when there are simply so many games being released.
For Sony specifically, Astro Bot is perhaps a key example of critical, award-winning success based on smart AA-sized ambition.
“It’s OK to make a small game,” said its director Nicolas Doucet during a talk at this year’s GDC.
“In order to exist in this very busy world, I think it’s sometimes better to settle for a good spot in the second week rather than a bad spot in the first week,” he continued. “A lot of choices we made with Astro Bot could be labelled as AA… like the size of the team, the size of the game, there’s no voice, it’s not open world, but that doesn’t really matter. We could still make something that gets people really happy.”
