Former Sony Interactive Entertainment chairman Shawn Layden, aka PlayStation's previous boss, reckons that gaming's "collapse in creativity" is due to ballooning budgets and risk-averse publishers.
Speaking to Raw Fury's co-founder Gordon Van Dyke at Gamescom Asia, in a panel transcribed by Games Industry, Shawn Layden looks back at his own three-decade tenure at the console juggernaut where he apparently spent "a lot more time looking at games" without asking business-hatted questions like "'what's your monetization scheme,' or 'what's your recurrent 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," Layden continues. "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."
Layden explained that part of this sweeping change comes from ballooning AAA game budgets, which can dip into "triple-digit millions" nowadays. PlayStation itself spent over $200 million each making Horizon: Forbidden West and The Last of Us Part 2 - not to mention the money that might have gone into marketing. So, publishers are looking for more bulletproof money-makers.
"You're [looking] at sequels, you're looking at copycats," Layden says, "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.' We're seeing a collapse of creativity in games today [with] studio consolidation and the high cost of production."
The PlayStation veteran isn't just plugging his ears and ignoring the dozens of great games that release every other week, however. He acknowledged that quality indies are carrying the torch but lamented that everything between your GTAs and your Balatros has mostly disappeared. THQ and the AA space used to fill out that void and publish "lower budget, but super creative" games, but the industry is now littered with either indie games or blockbusters that could bankrupt a company if it doesn't sell a gazillion copies.
It's a trend that's evident if you look at PlayStation's own output in recent years. The platform holder used to publish mammoth hits like Uncharted 4 alongside leaner, out-of-the-box gems like The Last Guardian or Fat Princess Adventures, which just doesn't happen anymore outside of Astro Bot, bless his chibi soul.
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