Spector examines the industry shift from AAA titles to social and mobile games

In a recent interview, famed developer Warren Spector has noted that the general shift of the industry has gone from focusing on the single player experience to massively multiplayer experiences such as social networking and mobile apps.

Part of the reason is the tremendous cost and effort towards making a AAA title. Studios went from having teams of ”about 10-12 people” to the point of Epic Mickey requiring ”nearly 300 people”. The early days featured games having a $225,000 budget, but now, according to Spector, ”Without getting specific, game budgets (today) can easily top $30 million, with plenty of games costing more.”

Having bigger budgets have also resulted in having less control over projects, ”and it’s just inevitable that with greater risk comes greater caution,” related Spector. It has led to the safer arena of social networking games, games that don’t require heavy hardware needs but still make tons of money. Spector sighed, “On the downside, social and mobile have changed expectations of game costs – both for developers making games and consumers playing them. When you can only charge so much for a game before you lose sales to competitors and you can only spend so much making games.”

Costs have led to some sacrifices with AAA titles. ”If you’re talking about triple-A, boxed console games sold at retail, I think you’re seeing somewhat less ambition than in the past, just because the stakes are so high,” said Spector. He also stated, ”I really am sad that single-player story-based games have reached a level of sophistication that doesn’t embarrass me JUST in time to have MMOs, social and mobile change the game, as it were”, then adding, ”Selfishly, I look at social and mobile games and think, ‘Didn’t I just spend 20+ years of my life trying to get away from graphics and gameplay models like this?’”

Spector does think that apps and digital games are where the real innovation is coming from. ”I think the mobile and social spaces need to be more aggressive, creatively – trusting creatives a bit more and metrics a bit less would be a start. On the indie scene, the digital download, PC scene or the XBLA scene, things are pretty exciting. There’s plenty going on that’s artistically ambitious and risky, if you take the time to look,”