Tidligere PlayStation-chef siger at spil bør være kortere

De fleste lader til at være enige om at den nuværende produktionsmodel for AAA-spil ikke længere er holdbar. Spillene er blevet for dyre, kræver for mange ansatte og tager for lang tid, så hvad er løsningen?

Nogle mener at AI kan effektivisere produktionen, men spørger du tidligere PlayStation-chef Shawn Layden, så skal vi nulstille forbrugerens forventning til volumen i de her store spil - de skal simpelthen være kortere.

I et interview med Eurogamer slår han fast at omkostningerne er blevet for høje, og at spil er blevet en "cathedral business":

"Every generation it costs twice as much to build a game. What costs $1 million on PS1, then costs $2 million, then $4 million, then $16 million. It goes exponentially. [During] the PS4 generation, which was the last I was associated with, game dev was $150 million if you want to be top of the line, and that's before marketing. So by that math, PS5 games should eventually reach $300 million to $400 million, and that is just outright not sustainable."

Så hvad skal der ske? Layden mener at det ret åbenlyst skal handle om at gøre spillene bedre og kortere:

"For the longest time, we kept banging on about '100 hours of gameplay'. 'This is going to be awesome. It's 100 hours of gameplay,' like that's the most important thing to know. That was a metric in the early years, when the average gamer was 18 to 23. And when you're 18 to 23, you're time rich and money poor. But as the average age of the gamer moved into the late 20s, the early 30s - well, it's the opposite, right? Maybe you aren't money rich, but you're definitely time poor. So I think our approach is a mismatch to that market, to reality."

Man kan mene hvad man vil om Layden, men hvad synes du der skal ske for at modellen kan blive mere holdbar?