In-between games

There is a practice I have noticed some AAA studios do –> Series of main releases with smaller releases of the same franchise in-between.

As you can imagine developing games takes quite a bit of time and investment.
A lot is betting on a single release, just imagine a game in development for three years and then it flops in sales.

Not a fun place to be in.
3 years of expenses + marketing cost is significant no matter the size of the studio. That’s also one of the reasons why we see such a pitiful lack of innovations in new AAA releases. It’s simply too much risk.

On one hand, it’s reasonable. There are many developers who work at the studio and if the developed game fails, a lot of them will lose jobs. It’s actually insanely risky business model when you think about it.

You bet bunch of money and time on one product, if it does well you get to do that again and if not everyone loses their job.

Most other industries would laugh at how stupid business model that is. This is also why so many games are switching to freemium or live service system, it’s a lot more predictable business model.

Another alternative is what I would like to talk about today.

I have noticed some studios release smaller scope game in-between main releases. Good example is XCOM.

We had XCOM 1 -> XCOM Enemy Within -> XCOM 2 -> XCOM Chimera Squad -> ??? and we will likely see XCOM 3.

Same could be said about Assassin’s Creed, Ghost Recon, Final Fantasy and many other franchises.

It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. You get to release a smaller game with smaller budget a lot sooner, get some income coming in and you also get to try more experimental mechanics and changes to fundamentals of the franchise.

If the smaller title fails, it’s not as big of a deal. Worst case scenario you get paid R&D out of it. You tried some ideas that can be taken into the next main game.

It’s not a bad way how to diversify and experiment with mechanics. Game dev is very risky and this can be one of the approaches to make it work and be sustainable.