It's no secret that triple-A game development is becoming unsustainably expensive, so to support major titles, big studios should look to diversify the scale of their productions.
That's according to Meghan Morgan Juinio, a producer who worked at Santa Monica Studio for 10 years on the God of War series.
Speaking to Game Developer, Morgan Juinio says that big, blockbuster titles shouldn't go away, but that they should be supported by smaller scale games to keep things afloat and to better serve players.
"I think there's an opportunity right now for all of us, at any level, to really look at the strategic long-term view — and that might be five or ten years — [in order to course correct] because of the 'seize the moment' type decisions that came out of the pandemic," says Morgan Juinio.
While there's still value in big triple-A series, such as God of War or Call of Duty — because the "payoff is potentially really large" — she says that investing in smaller productions would help to support those major games.
"I do also think there is an opportunity for those big players to also look to diversify into double-A and single-A, and then perhaps indie as well right? And what size, shape, or form does that take? I don't know [...] but I think we need to look beyond the knee-jerk reaction of the pandemic and post-pandemic couple of years and really think about who do we want to be? What kind of product do we want to put out? We need to plot out intentionally how we're going to get there."
Morgan Juinio points to games like Astro Bot and Split Fiction of examples of cheaper, less time-consuming productions that still resonate with players. Games like these might not have the grand scope or crazy tech, but they can be more innovative and interesting than the usually risk-averse triple-A space.
"What I believe is that we have to make great video games," she says. "It doesn't matter what shape. I think gamers right now are a little bit desensitized to beautiful graphics and size and scale and scope. It's almost a given, right? If a game isn't fun, it doesn't matter how pretty it is. If a game isn't engaging or delivering some hook, then it's not going to connect with players."
We do think Sony has been slowly leaning towards this type of production pipeline for a while. Games like inFamous: First Light, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, and Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales are all smaller-scale entries in some of Sony's biggest franchises, while lower-budget productions like Concrete Genie and the aforementioned Astro Bot are part of the PlayStation fabric too.
Rumour has it that Santa Monica Studio has been busy making a lower-budget God of War game, said to be a side-scrolling Metroidvania action adventure. This would fit the bill nicely as well, if it's true.
What do you make of Morgan Juinio's comments? Would you like to see smaller-scale games from top-tier studios? Discuss in the comments section below.
[source gamedeveloper.com, via gamesradar.com]
Comments 34
Sony tried this for years but the sales for the smaller games were abysmal. People can keep bringing up games like Sly, Gravity Rush and Japan Studio games but unless the majority are on baord then there just isn't any financial worth in making these smaller/cheaper titles.
Maybe they should just loan out their old IP's to more third party devs, but then again Freedom Wars went down that route and that didn't do so well.
I've wanted this for so long. Set a few veteran devs working on a smaller passion project like Pentiment every once in a while.
I would definitely give this a thumbs up. I'm big into this idea.
I'm really into what RGG is doing with Yakuza - having smaller titles reusing assets from the previous game(s) to fill a gap between big entries. It's much better than having a DLC a year down the road for a game that you've beaten and forgotten how to play.
Give me a much smaller Horizon or a Ghost of whatever and I'm into it.
I also think they should be funding smaller games, and indie style games. Why not? Not everything has to be $300,000,000 and take six years to make. Sometimes people just want to play a two hour walking sim or five hour puzzle platformer.
Seems unlikely though.
I think this is why the amount of indie games I play has spiked a lot in recent years. Just more fun filler stuff to play while waiting for the big AAA dogs when they have 3-5 dev times.
I love the Spider-Man games from Insomniac, but it was crazy knowing that when Spider-Man 2 came out two years ago, that I would be five years older when the next one comes out (presumably). As a gamer who is already in their mid 30's, this is painful lol.
So yeah, I'm all for more indies by the bigger devs (smaller teams), or just smaller standalones like Miles, Uncharted Lost Legacy, etc.
While I feel like she's kinda just stating the obvious here, I absolutely agree with her in turn. Smaller-scale games tend to be a lot more focused in their vision due to not having the budget to hide imperfections behind cutting-edge visuals like AAA releases do and given how they're typically viewed as being less important than the standard tentpole releases of any given year, they're allowed to get far more experimental with their gameplay/genre choices (see how metroidvanias and roguelikes dominate the indie sphere for instance XD)
Sony has not been lacking in the quality department when it comes to their game releases but by sprinkling more small titles inbetween like Astro Bot or Miles Morales, the wait inbetween their BIG titles would feel a lot less painful than it currently is imo XD
@Veritas7Ax Its crazy to think that we used to get entire series on a single system back in the PS2/3 days and nowadays with the ballooning costs and development time of modern AAA releases, we're lucky if we even get two games from the same franchise on one system 😭
That's what I'm saying, man. But for some reason, a bunch of people on this site think that's a terrible idea and waste of resources.
@UltimateOtaku91 Maybe they should just try marketing better.
Microsoft just released a smaller game, Keeper, which looks great and is an 83 on Opencritic. It's peak concurrent user count on Steam is 191. So, maybe, that's like 1,000 copies? Maybe with xbox it's like 10k copies, and that's a studio of 100+ people that released no game since 4 years ago.
I remember Dontnod said literally all their AA games failed to break even. Capcom made Kunitsu-gami that was received really well and sold basically nothing.
I think Meghan forgot PS3 + PSP era where Sony studios pumped out A-AA games.
Japan Studio for example, they pumped out a lot of A-AA games from Tokyo Jungle, Afrika, The Last Guy, Puppeteer, Rain, Loco Roco, Patapon, Echochrome, What Did I Do to Deserves This, My Lord?, No Heroes Allowed, White Knight Chronicles etc etc.
Or how Santa Monica collab / published indies like Bound, Fat Princess, The Unfinished Swan, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Hohokum, Escape Plan etc.
But a lot of those games doesn't sold well. Even games like Entwined and Concrete Genie doesn't sold well too and the main reason why Pixelopus got closed down.
I personally okay with the idea of making smaller games. Maybe they could tone down their game budget from $200-300 million to $100 million. Or follow Sucker Punch where Yotei budget is similar to Tsushima around $60 million.
But the biggest question is are the majority of PS owners gonna buy exclusive 1st party games that doesn't look advanced?
@SeaDaVie Literally had no marketing besides a launch trailer on Double Fine's socials. And Double Fine historically hasn't been a top seller.
@PuppetMaster "Maybe they could tone down their game budget from $200-300 million to $100 million."
There. That's the solution. If PlayStation gamers want to be lame and not support these releases, find a budget that'll make them profitable. They don't need to sell like Spider-Man to be a worthwhile venture, just turn a profit. Actually market them, and make games that appeal to Western sensibilities (since that's where all the PlayStations are).
EDIT: Or the nuclear option: port them to Switch, where there's a proven stable of gamers who like low-budget releases.
It's a novel idea in theory, but as other have pointed out, not often in practice.
I think PS should embrace games that allow active involvement in beta, like a big majority of smaller Steam games do.
It's free marketing, it creates a financial buffer and it shows the level of interest the community has in an idea.
The paying part would need reworked though..... and as it's Sony, it's a pipe dream
@RoomWithaMoose I agree, it looks like the game got sent out to die, really. How much better does it do with actual advertising though?
Double-A and single-A are more than 90% of the games that I play. They are just not made in the west.
@Fizza
You're not kidding. It's crazy. "Hey you liked that game? Here's a sequel 1-2 years later!"
All the Jak games on PS2, most of the Sly games, several R&C games in a few years. Yeah, those days feel long gone lol.
How insightful, if she said this years ago. Basically this is what half of us have been saying for years.
Personally i’d want them to expand Team Asobi with another team so that they can make more games more frequently. They also have Media Molecule. And maybe they could create or acquire another smaller but established studio (perhaps a studio like Supergiant Games) so that they have 3 studios developing smaller AA games.
Edit: I forgot they also have TeamLFG now, which potentially has its focus on smaller AA games as well
@Veritas7Ax they really aren't. Like a Dragon, Ys and Trails are still like that.
Sony should be licensing out some IPs they’re not using regularly for younger studios to get their feet wet. Best case scenario? Whatever franchise used is reborn & Sony potentially has a new studio under their umbrella. Worst case? It flops and the IP remains dormant like before
This relates to the article because these bigger studios don’t have the time to work on smaller games nowadays. Production on new Sony Studios games feel like it takes 4ish years on the low end. Let some upstart devs/studios with a fire to prove themselves do so with one of the many, many, many IPs that are sleeping now. I get that studios are protective of their IPs as well though. I’d love for Sony’s devs to all make small standalones like “Miles Morales” or “Uncharted: Lost Legacy” every now and then. But it’s not always feasible.
I'd love this but these games just don't sell. Sony was doing this for the longest time and none of those games as far as i know found success. The money is the most important thing at the end of the day and they aren't gonna keep making games that don't bring in any.
People just don't seem to show up for em
Surely in the not too distant future AI will be the answer to reduce costs and development times?
@Dalamar
I mean, fair. I guess it would be more apt to say that for the vast majority of AAA studios, those days are gone. Some studios and franchises might be able to still pull it off, but they're sadly outliers. Good on them though.
I mostly only play AAA games these days - however, I would personally class Astrobot and SMMM as AAA games.
Im all for slightly smaller projects, as long as the quality is on point, and the price is acceptable.
I thought this article was gonna be about Jaffe when I read the title and I was gonna instantly discredit his opinion on this cause I can't stand that dude. He can't go on anyones podcast without spewing hate for most Sony 1st party and can't go 10mins without saying something like "with my god of war game.....", "with my twisted metal game....." even when its off topic. Seems like that man is sour as F with Sony. He even said he hates Aloy so much he wants to punch her in the face. Lmao. He dissed Kojima too, said he was overrated on a LSM podcast.
People should make the games they want to make, are capable of making, and can afford to make. Company heads at Sony shouldn't be making these decisions. Look at Concorde and several other of their not doing so well live service games.
It took those guys 7 years to make A - AA game Silksong, maybe they should try making AAA games in 5 years instead?
Should do this and rent out loads of IPs to 3rd party studios and just check on the progress every month etc, this would give work to people in the industry and also give some money back into a decaying industry that hardly has any studios left due to closing down etc
@SeaDaVie I mean, it would do better. That's the point of marketing. Will it be a top seller? No. Like I said, Double Fine historically doesn't sell well. But does its commercial success or failure decide the worthwhileness of all lower-budgeted games. Nah.
@RoomWithaMoose The commercial success is the primary motivator for a major studio to fund it though. Making a good game that's peaking at 50% the player count of Magic P*ssy chapter 3 ain't going to cut it when it comes down to it. Certainly not in this economy.
Unfortunately the industry & consumer demand has ***** up the industry. No dev wants to make anything that wont make em millions. AAA stuff is always the same cut & paste open world, roguelike, soulslike crap. Gamers are never satisfied anymore, the constant obsession with resolutions, frame rates is a joke. The indie scene is more interesting nowadays with less constraints. Im reading at the moment possible rumours of Deadspace 4, with the EA takeover. I doubt it will happen though because its all about money, not the gamers.
@SeaDaVie The commercial success of a Microsoft game with no marketing that was presumably green lit to bolster GamePass has little to no barring on the value of PlayStation making smaller budget games. I'm not sure that Keeper's budget is even comparable to something like Astro Bot, they are entirely different markets, and there's still plenty of other examples of sub-God of War priced games that have been incredibly successful elsewhere.
Literally all Nintendo games besides maybe — MAYBE — contemporary Zeldas are cheaper than Sony's AAA. And the majority of them seem to turn a profit. Even Helldivers II was very likely one of Sony's cheaper releases, and it's also one of their most successful.
There is so many risk today.. I wish things were like in the PS2 era and PS3 era where they made games from their own artistic abilities and took risk. But nowadays it has to hit every note or it’s tanked on metacritic and people won’t buy it.
I love the games now but I miss the games that were fun but not AAA.
A couple years ago they were talking about making AA budget games that were to fill in the space between AAA games.
Now a game is about 40 hours long and it’s all good. But taking 5 years to do it is where it’s tiresome to wait as a gamer.
I mean it would be good in the long run not to just hear from most first party studios, when their releases are bookending generations now.
In regards to AA and smaller games the PS5 and every other modern platform has an embarrassment of riches (nods towards games like Clair Obscur, Absolum, Peak, Sea of Stars, Balatro, Silksong, The Last Spell, The Alters, Hades, Stray, Cult of the Lamb, Promise Mascot Agency and Shinobi Art of Vengeance) due to cheap development costs, the low cost of distribution and of course commercial success in the space.
If someone legit only enjoys smaller games that’s cool but I don’t see why one would ignore all the quality smaller games that are out there and get stuck on the fact that the ‘right’ publishers or developers aren’t making them.
square enix made an indie the adventures of elliot but who will buy the game? The Double A or triple A fans? If they price it as triple A who buyin it?
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