'The model we're under, the big retail model, is creaking'
The commercial pressures associated with triple-A games production are squeezing innovation out of the creative process, a studio director at Ninja Theory has said.
Tameem Antoniades, whose studio is building the next Devil May Cry for Capcom, said original games were only thriving outside of the retail games bracket.
“The whole digital revolution is happening now and it can't come soon enough,” Antoniades said in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz
“The model we're under, the big retail model, is creaking,” he said.
“There's this stranglehold that the triple-A retail model has, which I think is just crushing innovation and access to creative content.”
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Ninja Theory is part of a diminishing tribe of British independent studios that still build triple-A retail games, along with Splash Damage, Frontier, Rebellion, Crytek UK, Eutechnyx and Slightly Mad Studios.
But huge numbers of British game designers, coders and artists are swarming to digital platforms such as smartphones and social networks.
The few UK indies that continue with triple-A projects do so with huge commercial expectations placed on them. Games sold at £40 apiece need to return on huge budget and marketing costs.
“If you're paying that much to buy a game, you don't want to take chances,” Antoniades said.
“You want everything to be there, all the feature sets. You want it to be a known experience, guaranteed fun. That's not healthy."
Profit margins continue to narrow. UK games retail has been in gradual decline since 2008, while project budgets still soar.
“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,” Antoniades said.
“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.”
Antoniades appears to suggest that working on triple-A projects is more done out of necessity than choice.
"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,” he said.
"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.”
There's plenty of innovation out there. You just have to look in the right place. AAA studios are not the place to look for innovation. You need to look at indie studios.
Today's niche game could easily be a Triple AAA title tomorrow (ex. Demons Souls). He shouldn't confuse not being able to create a game that appeals to consumers as somehow stifling his studios' ability to create something innovative.
To me triple-A means quality, not inflated costs in every area. Nintendo make AAA, always has. Does not mean they have 100+ staff on every title. That's a western invention, most likely American, where more bucks means bigger balls. Trouble is, the wiener behind can still be tiny... Not that I believed the world is going to get saved by the 'indie revolution' of "another-drag-this-papercut-object-game-made-for-£50k-but-how-the-hell-to-we-get-in-Top100-on-Appstore?" either... That's why we focus on triple-Z! http://zzzem.com
Well the fact of the matter is that AAA titles need big funds and the risk needs to be calculated in order to make that decision. But the problem is that there is inadequate information, or rather, there is not enough coherent data on new products.
Angry birds is a perfect example of this. The type of game was already popular on the Internet, but the data proving this was somewhat lacking. There are countless games that *might* pay your wages but gathering the data to be sure of that is a nightmare, and you'll be shooting yourself in the foot by putting all your eggs into that basket.
And when you've got 100+ staff it just wouldn't be fair to risk their futures on a risky project.
Having said that, we are now in an age where we have the communication and collaboration technology to allow large groups of indies to share resources to create independent AAA quality titles. Why do 100 different indie groups need to each have their own unique 3d models of people, buildings and cars? Why do 100 different indie groups need to each invent the same wheel?
Digital distribution also makes it easy for majors to publish more of the innovative products that they develop (but aren't able to release due to the projected sales). There are countless war stories of completed games that never saw the light of day, many of which were well produced and had a market.
