Every video game company head has his or her big memes that they are famous for. For Reggie Fils-Aime, it was “my body is Reggie.” For Kaz Hirai, it was hyping up the PSP version of Ridge Racer. And for Shawn Layden, it was saying AAA game development was unsustainable three years ago.
When we reported on Layden’s comments, we somewhat softened his message, by stating that Layden would welcome shorter games, that took less time to make. But reflecting on this now, particularly as a result of the Insomniac ransomware leak, its clear that he was speaking the truth on the hard facts that even gamers didn’t want to hear. (Note: There is an imperative need to discuss information that went public because of the leak, but this does not constitute an endorsement of said leak.)
We reported that Insomniac barely broke even on Sunset Overdrive and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. Furthermore, even after accounting for newer sales figures for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, it’s clear that the title was not successful enough to warrant making new Ratchet & Clank games, at least not immediately.
We also reported that in spite of the success of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Sony has plans to fire people at Insomniac. In this case, the issue was very specific; Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 did not make enough money to justify the budget placed on it, and Insomniac would be placed on a tight leash in the future.
It was these leaks that prompted Shawn Layden to respond to a fan on Twitter in regards to the unsustainability of AAA game development with this:
“I reckon we’re going to be hearing A LOT on this topic in 2024.”
But going back to the original interview, where he made those original quotes, one can see that his explanation was quite clear. Rather than predicting something, Shawn was just describing where video game development was already going. It only took a leak three years later to confirm that.
So, quoting directly from the VentureBeat interview three years ago, here’s what Shawn said:
“I still remember when games would cost $1 million to make. Those days are long gone. The cost of creating games has increased. Some studies show that’s gone up 2X every time a console generation advances. The problem with that model is it’s just not sustainable.
Major triple-A games in the current generation go anywhere from $80 million to $150 million or more to build, and that’s before marketing. It’s a huge up-front cost.
Extended over time, it takes three or four or five years to build a game while you’re not getting any return on the investment. You just continue to pay into it looking for the big payoff at the end.
I don’t think, in the next generation, you can take those numbers and multiply them by two and expect the industry to continue to grow. The industry as a whole needs to sit back and think, “What are we building? What’s the audience expectation? What is the best way to get our stories across, to say what we need to say?”
That’s going to cause the industry to look at the kind of games we’re doing, where we go from there, and what we’re putting into them. It’s hard for every adventure game to shoot for 50 or 60 hours of gameplay. That’s going to be so much more expensive to achieve.”
Gamers have talked a lot about how much better liked Shawn Layden is than outgoing Sony President Jim Ryan, and that’s partly because Shawn is clearly a more personable guy. But this demonstrates that Shawn saw this problem looming in the horizon and Jim did not.
It’s certainly unfortunate that Shawn is no longer in a position to help Sony get out of their current situation. On a larger level, it’s worrying that other game companies, not just Sony, have just been following this trend of bigger bets, to disastrous results.
But hopefully, the fact that game companies had to learn this lesson firsthand could guide the industry away from extending this trend even further.
