Dan Daglow is the rare video game creator who's remained around the industry for over half-a-century, having worked on some earliest digital games back in the '70s – including one of the first RPGs in the form of the simply-titled Dungeon. He's seen big publishers become more and more reliant on sequels as the years have worn on, and he reckons it takes a lucky indie shot like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 to break through the noise of the familiar these days.
"For each of the big publishers, how many years has it been since they had a major new IP? Some really big IP developed internally," Daglow muses at a Game Developers Conference panel attended by GamesRadar+. "For each of the big publishers, consistently, the answer is, 'Oh, my god, Merry, not the skeleton into the well, and the trolls are coming.'"
Daglow waits a beat for his Lord of the Rings reference to be acknowledged – an audience member dutifully shouts out "fool of a Took" – he continues: "The answer is, it's been a while for all of them, and it's not their fault. When you get that big, the only games you can go after are games you think are going to maybe sell something that gives you hundreds of millions. You can't build clever little games anymore, because that doesn't please the stock market. That doesn't make your revenue go up. That's what you have to do."
The fact that publishers need guaranteed, big time hits "makes it hard to build new things, because new things are unpredictable and they don't start out, 'Oh, yeah, we can – no, I'll sign up to $600 million for that idea.' No, that's not how it works."
Daglow highlights a chart showing rising development costs as he explains, "if you're spending $440 million on a game, that's not something where you're taking chances and doing anything unpredictable. And yet, we go to the Dice Awards and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 wins Game of the Year with a team of 35 and a much smaller budget than anything on the last slide."
The success of Sandfall Interactive's RPG, which looks like a AAA production but was built on a much smaller budget, has become a go-to example for many observers about the possibilities for games taking a different approach than the major publishers. Expedition 33 takes a host of obvious inspirations from beloved games, but it recombines them in a way that feels fresh.
If you're looking for originality, Daglow suggests embracing indies over AAA games. He highlights the spaces where indies showcase their games at places like GDC, which offer a "nice and warm" vibe. "That's where a lot of exciting new ideas are coming from," he concludes. "And you walk down and you look at all the streets and you see things that are different and unique, and a lot of them are not going to find an audience, but some of them will."
