PlayStation chief Shawn Layden, former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment, believes that “AA is gone” and that it is “a threat to the ecosystem.”

The video game industry is undergoing significant changes. This statement is so obvious that gamers, developers, distributors, and all companies associated with the industry have noticed. Shawn Layden, former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment, also noticed a major disruption in digital entertainment. According to the PlayStation boss, this is due to the lack of AA games – the middle category between indie and top games (AAA), the “collapse of creativity” and the reliance on blockbusters.

Layden shared this opinion at one of the first presentations of Gamescom Asia, which opened in Singapore. In a conversation with Raw Fury co-founder and publishing director Gordon Van Dyke (via GamesIndustry ), the former PlayStation boss pointed to a big problem in the industry: “[In the past] we spent a lot more time looking at games and not asking ‘what’s your monetisation scheme’, or ‘what’s your recurring revenue plan’, or ‘what’s your subscription formula’? We asked the simple question: is it fun? Are we having a good time? If you said yes to those questions, you’d usually get a green light. You didn’t worry so much about the end piece, for better or for worse. Of course back then you didn’t make a game for millions [of] dollars. So your risk tolerance was fairly high.”

“Today, the entry costs for making a AAA game are in the triple digit millions now. I think naturally, risk tolerance drops. And you’re [looking] at sequels, you’re looking at copycats, because the finance guys who draw the line say, ‘Well, if Fortnite made this much money in this amount of time, my Fortnite knockoff can make this in that amount of time'” – continues the former head of SIE.

“We’re seeing a collapse of creativity in games today [with] studio consolidation and the high cost of production.”

While the indie industry is breaking that pattern with creative and colourful offerings that cost far less to produce than a AAA title, Layden laments the industry’s lack of other types of offerings. “In the gaming business you have Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, indie stuff. But then that middle piece, that middle layer that used to be where Interplay, Gremlin, Ocean, THQ, all those companies, made their money… That middle piece is gone. If you [can become] AAA, you survive, or if you do something interesting in the indie space, you could. But AA is gone. I think that’s a threat to the ecosystem if you will.”

“Now if we can just get a bit more interest and excitement and exposure for these lower budget, but super creative and super unusual [type] of games… I’d like to see more of that,” Layden continues in the conversation. “Because if we’re just going to rely on the blockbusters to get us through, I think that’s a death sentence.”

Former PlayStation president: we should not be working on “a dollar store version of God of War”

So, what can AA game companies do to maintain their stability in the video game industry? Layden shares several ideas about this, starting with the basics: bringing the “new” instead of, say, releasing “a dollar store version of God of War.” In short, the former president of SIE believes that AA developers can take risks with concepts that are completely new to the industry.

“Bring something that you sort of challenge yourself to see – the gaming media, this medium, is so flexible, it can do so many different things,” he continued. “So I think your strengths in AA are going to be [that] your time to market should be faster. You know, to get 1,500 developers to do the next [GTA], that’s not the place you need to go for your AA. If you’re a developer, you’ve got to be able to say, ‘I can get something up and running in two to three and a half years’.”

“If you’re going to pitch me your AA game, and in the first two pages of your deck is your monetization and revenue, subscription scheme, I’m out. Your first page has to be ‘This game needs to be made and here’s why,'” comments Layden. “I want to see that fire, I don’t want to see ‘here’s the chief accountant on the team that’s going to explain to you the [game’s monetisation]’.”

Source: GamesIndustry.biz