While I agree, listing successful games is just confirmation bias. For every indie darling, you’ve got hundreds of flops.
The reason triple a games are so mediocre is because it’s safe. You dont have to take a huge risk, and your chances of failing are smaller. Even if you do fail, the chances of recouping your investment are pretty decent.
Again, I think indie games are generally better than pretty much anything the triple a scene puts out. But that’s because they took a huge risk that happened to pay out.
Let’s say the ratio is 1/5. Rather investing in 5 diverse small - medium projects @ 2 million each or in one big 20 million project with a increased risk for bad management decisions and safe (boring) story & mechanics which leads to at best ok ratings? I would choose the former but i’m not a CEO type.
Let’s say the ratio is 1/100. Rather investing in 100 diverse small - medium projects @ 2 million each or in one big 200 million project with a increased risk for bad management decisions and safe (boring) story & mechanics which leads to at best ok ratings? I would choose the former but i’m not a CEO type.
And the reason it has to be safe is not just because of investors, but because they’re giant companies structured for making big games. You can’t use a full team of UI designers on a small indie game with a fast development cycle. You can’t really split those resources up among 100 tiny projects either. So if you want to make use of your big company and your in-house engine and all that, you have to make a billion dollar game and it has to earn back that money and it can’t take any risks.
While I agree, listing successful games is just confirmation bias. For every indie darling, you’ve got hundreds of flops.
The reason triple a games are so mediocre is because it’s safe. You dont have to take a huge risk, and your chances of failing are smaller. Even if you do fail, the chances of recouping your investment are pretty decent.
Again, I think indie games are generally better than pretty much anything the triple a scene puts out. But that’s because they took a huge risk that happened to pay out.
Let’s say the ratio is 1/5. Rather investing in 5 diverse small - medium projects @ 2 million each or in one big 20 million project with a increased risk for bad management decisions and safe (boring) story & mechanics which leads to at best ok ratings? I would choose the former but i’m not a CEO type.
The problem is, it’s nowhere near 1:5. It’s more like 1:100 if we include only games with a decent amount of effort put in.
Ok let’s use those numbers:
Let’s say the ratio is 1/100. Rather investing in 100 diverse small - medium projects @ 2 million each or in one big 200 million project with a increased risk for bad management decisions and safe (boring) story & mechanics which leads to at best ok ratings? I would choose the former but i’m not a CEO type.
And the reason it has to be safe is not just because of investors, but because they’re giant companies structured for making big games. You can’t use a full team of UI designers on a small indie game with a fast development cycle. You can’t really split those resources up among 100 tiny projects either. So if you want to make use of your big company and your in-house engine and all that, you have to make a billion dollar game and it has to earn back that money and it can’t take any risks.