When it comes to developing hit games, plenty of studios with so-called indie or AA budgets have emerged successful in recent years – and Jon Bellamy, newly appointed CEO of RuneScape creator Jagex, says they serve as proof that it's not all about AAA money.
Speaking in a recent interview with The Game Business, Bellamy looks to new smash-hit gems like Clair Obcur: Expedition 33 – a game that notably wasn't developed with a huge AAA budget or team behind it. "You can take a $400 million budget – and there's not many of them left – but you can still take a swing with that kind of thing," he states, "but you can also take a swing with a tenth of that and deliver not so different results if you get it right."
He's right – and there are various new games that support this idea, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 being just one (hell, I personally instantly think of titles like Hollow Knight: Silksong, which aren't even AA but prove successful). "We've seen that from Clair Obscur and a bunch of others recently," as Bellamy puts it, "and I think that that is a guiding light for many who might have been a bit disheartened coming out of a big studio."
This isn't the first time Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 developer Sandfall Interactive has been praised for its stellar work on the RPG – in fact, former PlayStation head Shuhei Yoshida called the game a "perfect balance" of AAA ambition, AA budget, and "independent vision" earlier this year. Sandfall COO and producer François Meurisse also spoke on the topic of AAA budgets himself, saying games backed by big money don't always work.
"There are plenty of games made with very large teams and for huge amounts of money that don't land," the lead had admitted, "and there is a human cost to running things that way." He certainly wasn't wrong – and judging by what Bellamy and other devs have said after seeing games with smaller budgets, like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, explode in success, I'd say it truly doesn't have to be all about the money.
