Former Trion Worlds chief creative officer and Redwood studio general manager Scott Hartsman believes that AAA game development is fundamentally broken due to cost considerations. He thinks that to fix it developers will have to be more aware of the business side, while executives need to know more about the games being made.
“In past generations, in a lot of places, it was, ‘Devs, just do your dev things and let the business people figure out the business-y bits. Business people, figure out which of the eight widget types it is, get it on the shelf, and here’s some money to get people to buy it.’ That’s all changing,” explained Hartsman.
“Going forward, we’ll see an expansion in both directions as developers become more business-aware and non-developers become more product-aware. That’s actually a great thing. It means more people inside of games companies will have to care about the customer than ever before. People of all disciplines now need to be “product people” who are always conscious of their impact on customers and what they experience. Especially online,” he added. “Conversely, we’ll also start to see more traditional product people with a keener sense for what it takes to succeed as a business in ways their customers will genuinely appreciate.”
Source: Massively
