Blurring lines: How AAA and indies can benefit each other | Opinion

As an industry, we're currently caught in a perfect storm of rapidly-evolving technology and the spiraling demands of modern AAA games, with a huge number of developers working for years to meet the level of scale and fidelity audiences have grown to expect.

These sizable undertakings are now routinely measured in hundreds of millions of investor dollars, increasingly complex to resource for and develop, and rely on the promise of shifting a mountain of copies in order to turn a profit. The numbers are big, the margins are slim, and the risks are increasingly high.

Something has to give, clearly. Player appetite for sparkling next-gen AAA games isn't going anywhere – hey, I wanna play 'em too! – but the financial and human cost of putting out these monster-scale games is getting higher and higher, and becoming an unsustainable model.

I'm writing as someone who's operated for a long time at both ends of the spectrum. I've paid my rent through releasing independent games, I've freelanced on bigger and bigger projects for almost a decade, and now I work as an associate design director on some of the biggest AAA games. I've opened (and reluctantly shuttered) independent studios, before landing in an exciting AAA co-development shop. I've truly seen it all.

If our entire ecosystem is to truly prosper at every scale, we must push the exchange further, and figure out what can come back up the chain

Therefore, my experience across the whole breadth of the games industry tells me precisely one thing: the lines are blurring between the extreme ends of the video game industry, and the gap is closing. Delineating between AAA, AA, and indie – generally based on project scale – is becoming less and less useful.

I say good! Let the lines blur a little. Let's forget about the silos, and cross the streams. Video game development is an ecosystem, not opposing camps. When one part of our system flourishes, so too does the rest, and we grow and evolve together.

It already works in one direction, small studios have benefited enormously from trickle-down technology and platforms engineered and maintained by the big guys. I could spin up a greenfield independent project in Unreal Engine 5 today at effectively zero cost if I so choose, and release it to a massive audience using the same mainstream technologies and platforms as the biggest developers and publishers use themselves. Undeniably great for everyone.

This in turn means, for example, that the middle ground – the AA development scale, whatever you like to call it – is now thriving. Why? Because they're getting the best of both worlds, combining world-class tooling and platforms with the tight scope or creative compromise of smaller budgets and leaner design aspirations. It's a potent mix.

Smaller-scale productions like Pacific Drive or Stray retain the wild creativity of the independent studio, but are presented through exceptional rendering and physics and tooling. AAA behemoths built these engines, and small studios are running with them – inarguably a positive thing.

But if our entire ecosystem is to truly prosper at every scale, we must push the exchange further, and figure out what can come back up the chain. If the AAA development machine is going to keep putting out wonderful games at the top end – and I sincerely believe it will – we must reach outward into the rest of the games ecosystem, learn from it, and look inwards at changing the way we do things. Let the transfer work the other way.

There is an often-repeated phrase in indie circles that I reference a lot: "I want shorter games, with worse graphics, made by people who are paid more to work less, and I'm not kidding."

It's a fun one-liner, but there is a lot to think about here. With my AAA developer hat on, this line is a clear provocation. It says to me: "Let's do a little less, but do it extremely well." And in doing so, we reduce the human cost of getting it done and the risks involved.

Shorter games? To me, this is really about scale. The sooner this industry wriggles itself free from the notion that mind-boggling length or monstrous amounts of content is the only way to measure value for money for the player, the better.

Worse graphics? There is always an appetite for gaming at the cutting edge, of course, but there must be a tradeoff point. Games like Hellblade become feasible as brilliant technical showcases because they're short, well-designed, and compact. And yet, they are not compromised in their ambition to deliver a perfect, cutting-edge experience that stays with players long after the credits roll.

Pay people more to work less? If these juggernaut projects can become a smidge more thoughtfully constrained, or just a little more elegantly designed, what happens? Happier devs. Lower risk. And if we're really lucky, good people stick around.

A provocation of my own, then. Consider creating a mind-blowing amount of content while also shooting for ultra slick visual fidelity. This is no problem if you have $200+ million to spend, a studio of many hundreds of people to build it, and the better part of a decade to deliver it. But this cannot possibly become the expected norm.

AAA must compromise somewhere, and this is where I firmly believe we can learn from the bold design and constraint found at the smaller ends of the spectrum. As a sector, we must begin to understand that even the mildest of limitation breeds creativity and invention, not compromise. Just like our smaller counterparts, we too can design features artfully, engineer systems efficiently, and strike out confidently through more focused and sustainable productions. You don't have to design and build the entire universe, sometimes you just need to deliver a great story or experience inside one. Let's pull the camera in a little bit.

$200+ million to spend, a studio of many hundreds of people to build it, and the better part of a decade to deliver it... cannot possibly become the expected norm

This isn't just about project scope or design, our makeup as a AAA industry might be worth shifting too – in fact, I believe this is quietly happening already. D3T is one of a new generation of successful, mid-sized expert shops that operate as independent AAA partners. We drop in on projects, shore up with our expertise, get things over the line sustainably and efficiently, and move on to the next challenge. In, bang, and out.

What's interesting here is that, having emerged from the indie scene and ended up in co-development, it turns out that I've been doing the co-dev model all along. I've spent almost two decades making careful compromises, finding the right people to join forces with on projects, and adjusting the scale and fidelity of the work to deliver maximum bang for buck with reduced risk for clients. It worked as an independent developer, and I'm seeing it work at a much bigger scale in co-development now too.

AAA must compromise somewhere... we can learn from the bold design and constraint found at the smaller ends of the spectrum

I don't believe anyone who professes to know what the future of this industry is, but perhaps this shift in team makeup and approach is one of the answers. Perhaps the little guys who can form up, move fast and create things collaboratively are on to something, whether it's our independent cousins or, like D3T, the bold co-dev shops taking a different route into delivering AAA games.

No matter how big you are, keeping a beady eye on developers elsewhere on planet gamedev is always a good idea, in order to learn the art of compromise, efficiency, and bravery. This is how AAA can begin to make small but vital improvements, and keep making killer games.

We're entering a new era for everyone making games at every scale. The industry isn't going to change... It's changing right now. Where to next?