It’s ”crushing innovation and access to creative content.” The price point is stopping consumers taking a chance - makes you want ”a known experience”.
”We’re in this kind of AAA bracket, I guess you could call it,” said creative boss Tameem Antoniades of Enslaved developer Ninja Theory, currently working on Capcom’s new Devil May Cry origin for Dante.
”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. It’s hard to say no when you’ve got a team of 100 and you have to keep the payroll going,” he said.
”Another big project comes along, you tend to go for it.”
Antoniades would rather the digital revolution speed up some more so they can start ousting the triple A model as ‘the norm’ when it comes to the industry.
”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. It can’t come soon enough.”
”The whole digital revolution is happening now and it can’t come soon enough. The model we’re under, the big retail model, is creaking.”
”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,” he continued.
”If you’re paying that much for a game, you don’t want to take chances. You want everything to be there, all the feature sets. You want it to be a known experience, guaranteed fun. That’s not healthy.”
Ninja Theory’s last two titles were Heavenly Sword and Enslaved. Do you find yourself shunning ‘triple A’ titles for more digital and indie IPs?
