Throw a rock at the video game industry and you'll either hit a Soulslike, a shooter, or a gritty third-person action game. Even if there are often nuggets of gold to be found, the triple-A space has become one big homonogenous blob.
As reported by GamesRadar+, Larian Studios and Baldur's Gate 3 publishing director Michael 'Cromwelp' Douse has a theory on how we got here, and it paints a pretty upsetting picture for the future of triple-A gaming. "Much of the industry has been aggressively data-driven for so long that over generations of talent the ability (institutionally and/or intellectually) to lead with your gut has become a lost art," he explained.
It's hardly surprising that triple-A studios are so risk-averse and data-obsessed when budgets and dev times have ballooned to such unsustainable heights, spurred on by a hyperrealism race that peaked a generation ago. There's so much riding on every game now that, if it underperforms, it can mean mass layoffs, if not the closure of an entire dev team.
There's just one problem; if triple-A studios are actively avoiding risks, they're getting less and less data to work with.
The abundance...
