GAMERTIMES

Former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden has voiced concerns about the growing cost of game development, describing it as unsustainable and suggesting shorter games as a potential solution. In a recent interview with Eurogamer, Layden discussed the challenges of maintaining profitability in a gaming market where audience growth has plateaued.

Layden highlighted how the industry has shifted its focus to extracting more revenue from an existing player base rather than significantly expanding it. He explained, “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.”

Reflecting on his time in the PlayStation 4 era, Layden revealed, “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.”

He likened the issue to the challenges faced in historical architecture, stating, “It’s like we’re at the end of the 18th century, and we’re realising that building cathedrals is really expensive. Can we continue to build these massive edifices to God for this incredible amount of labour and time? Or should we just build four walls and a roof, and that’s a church, right? I’m afraid we’ve built AAA gaming into a kind of cathedral business, and it just can’t grow any further. In fact, it’s probably grown too far already.”

Layden suggested that the solution lies in creating shorter games. He pointed out that the industry’s focus on long gameplay experiences, which were once appealing to younger players with more time, no longer aligns with the current demographic. “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,” he explained.

He noted how the shift in gamers’ average age has changed their priorities. “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.”

Layden also addressed the high costs associated with intricate game details, emphasizing that such efforts often go unnoticed by a significant portion of players. “On PS1, our expectation walking down the street in a game was that you couldn’t open every door. Now the expectation is you can go in every house, open every drawer and everything is destructible. And that’s nice, but it’s expensive to make that happen. We have to look at that.”

He raised a critical question about resource allocation: “If only 50 percent of players see the end of your game, what about all those millions you spend on the final level, for only half the people to see it? There’s so much money being put into making huge game experiences and people aren’t seeing it. What would Coppola do if you walked out halfway through his movie?”

Layden concluded by calling for a reevaluation of game design, aiming for experiences that players are more likely to complete. “We have to understand – is this a good use of resources? I want a movement that gets more people to finish games, where we make it so compelling they just want to see it, and where it’s not so onerous they don’t have to spend three months doing it.”

This perspective highlights the growing need for the gaming industry to adapt to changing audience expectations while addressing rising development costs.