Traditional AAA Single Player Games Ten Times More Expensive: Remedy

Thomas Puha, Head of Communications (Remedy Entertainment) in an interview shared some insight on why it is hard to focus on Traditional AAA Single Player Games.

Remedy Entertainment, the maker of popular games like Alan Wake, Max Payne series, and more had planned to shift from single player experience to compete with the trending changes in the gaming industry. Talking to Gameindustry.biz, Thomas Puha (Head of Communications) has shared some insight about what challenges are pressing the company forward to adopt a new style. This clears Remedy Entertainment is moving far from traditional AAA single-player titles. But this does not mean the end of its trademark storytelling, new titles will have these elements.

Codenamed P7 is an upcoming game by the studio which will feature a co-op multiplayer mode. Thomas Puha revealed that the cost of working on traditional AA games has gone up to ten times higher than what it was before. This turns to be a costly deal for the studio. According to him, traditional AAA games are very expensive to make, compare to which gamers expectations are very high. Below is his full statement.

“The reality is the traditional AAA single player experience is just really expensive to make. The expectation level from gamers is really high in terms of how long the game is, what sort of features it has, how good the production values are. All those things are very expensive to do. And if you go back 10 years, you could still say the console market is roughly the same size. In the end, the audience you’re selling to is relatively the same size but the cost of making the game is ten-fold these days. So that’s an obvious problem.”

His further comment also focuses on creating something at a sensible scale with a sensible budget. This indicates clearly the company’s objective to pick games-as-a-service platform. Focusing on free-to-play MOBA or an Early Access Shooter game looks like the next big thing coming out from Remedy Entertainment.

“We have this saying at Remedy: ‘It’s just really hard making games,'” Puha said. “And it’s both the developer’s and publisher’s responsibility to create something at a sensible scale with a sensible budget and that there’s a market for, right? But there’s no escaping the fact production costs a lot more than it did before”

From the statement, it is clear the firm is facing difficulties in standing against expensive AAA games today compared to a decade ago. So shifting according to marketing trends is their way of a plan to survive.

Source: Gamesindustry.biz