Small games can be good for AAA studios, and "directly contributed" to big RPGs like Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2, says Obsidian's Josh Sawyer

Making time for smaller, maybe more out-there games between big projects can help keep gargantuan AAA studios healthy, says studio design director Josh Sawyer of Osbidian.

Sawyer discussed game scope in response to a Twitter post from Jeryce Dianingana of EA studio Cliffhanger Games, currently at work on that Black Panther game. Dianingana argued it "would be nice to have big AAA studios making (not publishing) more small-scope games," pointing to "AA" examples like Hi-Fi Rush from The Evil Within studio Tango Gameworks. 

"We would have more variety, experimenting," he adds. "Releasing more games in the same company more often. Nice for the Mental to work on other things. Not everything has to be 'BIG.'"

Other game developers echoed Dianingana's thoughts in the replies. WB Games Montreal writer Mitch Dyer reckons that "AA games on a AAA budget with a AAA team would probably lead to the best games of all time." 

In a threaded response, Sawyer argues that even smaller, single-A games could have the same creative effect, and that "there's also an upside for the bottom line, which is staff retention."

Sawyer points to expanding AAA development cycles as one potential cause of industry burnout and developer turnover. "On long projects with large headcounts, especially ones fraught with staffing and scheduling issues, high turnover is not uncommon," he explains. "This turnover can occur at all levels, resulting in the loss of a lot of institutional knowledge. In some cases, devs leave the industry entirely.

"Many devs will slog to a release and then either immediately leave or get laid off because the execs need 1/3 the staff to go into pre-production on the next game. The loss of institutional knowledge is devastating at the team level, where execs often don't perceive the effects."

The gap between massive projects like this is where AA or single-A games could come in. "If a company has the funds to bridge the gap between projects, using an A or AA game as a way for (hopefully not completely) burned-out devs to refresh and recharge can be a good thing," Sawyer reasons. 

Sawyer says that making games of this scale has tangibly benefited Obsidian, which is best-known for mammoth RPGs like the upcoming sequel The Outer Worlds 2 as well as Avowed. Sawyer puts the studio's survival game Grounded in the AA camp and classes narrative adventure Pentiment as single-A, and says both "have directly contributed to how we think about current and future projects." (He doesn't name The Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed here, but those are the only known upcoming Obsidian games.)

Avowed was going to be a multiplayer RPG until Obsidian doubled down on "the things it's best at."