He believes that the future lies with smaller teams and naturally smaller budgets.
Large studios are struggling to release successful games, and it’s no secret why. Due to longer development cycles, soaring budgets, project cancellations, and mass layoffs, the industry is finding it increasingly difficult to reliably complete projects. This results in fewer blockbusters being released each year. These problems are attributed to various factors, including excessive profit-seeking, poor management, the harmful effects of private equity, and general market forces (e.g., audiences playing fewer new games). However, Alexandre Amancio, the former director of Assassin’s Creed, believes that the problems run deeper. In fact, he believes these issues stem from the current structure of the largest game studios.
In an interview with GamesIndustry, Amancio—who directed Assassin’s Creed: Unity and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, said that the sheer size of modern development teams makes sustainability and innovation extremely difficult. He believes the industry could solve some of its problems by operating more like the film industry, where teams are assembled for specific projects rather than maintained as permanent studios. He also shared some insights into his work on Assassin’s Creed: Unity and what he would do differently if he could go back in time.
“There’s a theory that says whenever humans create something involving more than a hundred people, the dynamic completely changes. As soon as you surpass that number, the ratio of managers to people working on the game increases dramatically. You end up with a very management-heavy structure. You need people to coordinate the people coordinating. Many AAA studios mistakenly believe that you can solve a problem by throwing more people at it. However, adding people to a problem causes the efficient people working on it to stagnate. It just creates a lot of variable noise. I think the future lies in smaller teams. The gaming industry treats itself as part of the software industry, but it’s really a weird hybrid. I think we can learn from the film industry, where core teams are supplemented with outsourcing or co-development for specific needs. This allows you to assemble the right crew for the right project at the right time.
When we started developing Assassin’s Creed Unity, two games emerged. One was a traditional Assassin’s Creed game with the main protagonist carving his path through the French Revolution. However, we also wanted to create a co-op game. We found a clever way to hide a character creation system within Assassin’s Creed. Rather than having just one blood ancestor in the Animus, there is a database of millions of people, and you search for an ancestor. The more details you provide about that ancestor, the more refined the search becomes until you find a match. At one point, we had to choose between the two games, so we decided to make the one that people would recognize most. But somewhere inside me, I still wish we had gone for the other one,” said Amancio.
To a certain extent, this would simply formalize what the gaming industry often does anyway. After completing projects, developers often lay off staff as they transition back to the design phase in an attempt to reduce production costs. However, making this official would allow developers to prepare for such events. The big difference is that film production usually takes weeks or months, while game development takes years, even in its fastest form. This means developers must settle down.
Source: PCGamer, Gamesindustry
