Yet another Hacker News

BioWare co-founder: game execs "have never made a game" and don't get it

77 points entryleveljobsc 6 hours ago 66 comments

Sydrik 1 hour ago | parent

If you want truly creative games, it won't be AAA game studios but indie game devs. AAA game studios play a different game (pun intended) and it will serve its audience and more especially, their shareholders. There is enough space in the world for them and truly creative indie game studios.

ViktorRay 1 hour ago | parent

I don’t know about this. I feel like nowadays it is just as rare for an indie game to be truly creative.

There are certain genres that the big AAA studios basically pump out and certain genres that indie devs basically pump out.

Jtarii 1 hour ago | parent

I think there is still roughly the same number of worthwhile games that get released each year, they are just buried by a ever increasing pile of shit.

rowanG077 1 hour ago | parent

This has been my feeling as well. Even less so actually. There are realllly good games release nowadays. Like literally insane level of quality. But you also get an insane amount of stinkers. And those stinkers are increasingly coming from AAA studies.

rcxdude 36 minutes ago | parent

I'm not so pessimistic: while the ratio is getting worse, there are more good and interesting games coming out, and the best ones are getting better.

dingdongditchme 57 minutes ago | parent

I guess the question is what is "truly creative" for you? Does Half-Life Alyx count? How about the original Half-Life? Pong? Outer Wilds?

To me the likelyhood of a creative game coming from AAA studio is less likely than indie. Basically the same as movies. It can happen, but a truly creative game/movie/story is hard to come by in any sense. Was it the Ilyiad?

mathgeek 53 minutes ago | parent

While the philosophy is always interesting on what an original thought is, in this context most folks use terms like "truly creative" as a proxy for "something folks enjoy that doesn't feel like a copy of something else". Emphasis on _feel_.

HFguy 36 minutes ago | parent

I agree.

The required investment is just a lot larger in AAA. So just from a risk management perspective, people look to reduce the risk level.

Doesn’t really lend itself to creativity unless people involved have a track record.

marginalia_nu 24 minutes ago | parent

There is shovelware at any level, but at the same time I think indie games have been a more consistent stream of good memorable entries than big budget studios the last 10 years.

I really have to rack my mind to find think of anything that I feel has been memorable the last decade, and even then half of them are AA titles. Nioh 2. KCD2. Expedition 33. Yakuza: Like A Dragon but not the sequel. The Elden Ring DLC. Prey 2017. Doom 2016 and Eternal. I guess Stalker 2 has been getting pretty good too.

For good indie games I can drop dozens of names without stopping to think. There's Hollow Knight and Silksong, Hedon, The Drifter, Lunacid, Cruelty Squad, Voin, Paradise Killer, Blue Prince, Fallen Aces, Not For Broadcast, Heaven's Vault, Chants of Sennaar, Dead Cells, Blasphemous, Immortality, Axiom Verge, The Blind Prophet, Cross Code, Cultist Simulator, Astalon, Dread Delusion, The Witness, The Signifier, ... I can keep going.

flerchin 34 minutes ago | parent

We don't really want creative games. We do want fun ones. Fundamentally, games are fun mechanics paired with a narrative that supports the mechanics. Note that the narrative is supportive, and fun is primary.

Maximizing profit often points the gaming cos towards gating the fun behind a paywall, or teasing the fun that could be had behind the next payment. It turns out that players don't find that fun (see Star Wars Battefront 2).

PowerElectronix 33 minutes ago | parent

For the most part, yes. We luckily still have AAA studios run by creative developers like Kojima

FranzFerdiNaN 26 minutes ago | parent

Indie game devs cant deliver the kind of more cinematic experiences that Bioware could, or that Square-Enix can with Final Fantasy, at least not graphics-wise. Maybe if AI further matures smaller studios can do that too eventually, but right now AAA-studios have AAA-budgets that are required.

jawilson2 23 minutes ago | parent

Perfect, I skip cut-scenes usually anyway. Ain't nobody got time for that.

kibwen 1 hour ago | parent

It's even worse than that. The execs at these companies don't just not make games, they don't play games, either. They fundamentally cannot understand what makes a good game because they don't engage with the medium, and do not care to.

Joker_vD 1 hour ago | parent

Hey, everybody (who matters) knows that an MBA can successfully manage any kind of firm; there is no field-specific knowledge required, nosirree.

Y_Y 1 hour ago | parent

MBAs are the best, Plato knew this

iugtmkbdfil834 1 hour ago | parent

As an MBA, I can confirm. We might not necessarily do it well, but we can do it:D

Ekaros 44 minutes ago | parent

As long as share price goes up while you are there does anything else really matter?

zokier 1 hour ago | parent

But that brings up important point, is this complaint about execs in any way specific to games industry? It is very common across businesses that execs haven't actually done grassroots work in their companies field?

goldcd 1 hour ago | parent

and I'm OK with most of that.

The business side is more critical than the development side - so business folks should be running what is a business. If the business goes down, it'll take the down game, however great it is.

The big but though, is that to be a successful business you need to feed, nurture and protect the creative side. The creative side in turn has a responsibility to the business - if you've burnt through a hundred million and decide you need to start-over, that's on you.

My completely uninformed opinion is that once the business screws with dev ("Let's turn this thoughful narrative game, into a free-to-play-shooter!") dev probably just check out, do what they're told, and take the pay-cheque until it stops. I'm not a game dev, but I've had dumb corporate overlords.

Basically EA can burn in hell - but the development side is rarely faultless.

I don't think Indie games "are better" - but I think they tend to better deliver on a coherent vision. Most crash and burn, but the few that make it to my Steam account are wonderful. Not because they're all perfect - but because I heard a voice in it.

RugnirViking 1 hour ago | parent

It's much worse than they havent played games at all. They would probably object and say that they do play games, they've played some mario cart that one time, and they play mario party and some monopoly game with their children. They almost certainly have played at least a few brief moments of their flagship games at a show or something.

They assume their own experience is more or less what everyone else has, including their players. A sort of dabbling, disinterested experience, flowing from one piece of content to another.

It is worse than not having played games at all because when people around them take on the task of making games with intensity and zeal and solemnity and great care, they can roll their eyes and think "it's not that serious, nobody really cares about this stuff". When people have passionate arguments about creative direction they feel they can see the bigger picture and rise above the petty squabbles by saying that the artistic direction doesn't matter. They know it doesn't matter, because it doesn't matter to them, and to all the other people who, presumably, are like them.

I think that they are wrong, but I think the task of explaining to them why they are wrong is like trying to teach a devout atheist why religion matters. It will be a long and hard uphill battle and in many cases likely utterly impossible.

trashb 46 minutes ago | parent

  > They assume their own experience is more or less what everyone else has, including their players. A sort of dabbling, disinterested experience, flowing from one piece of content to another.

Actually with games this is a huge problem that players and even creators have. Due to the different play styles and player types it seems very hard for people to understand that there are other player types. This is one of the main drivers for conflict in the gaming space. People think all players experience games the same, they are not. One classic example is in MMO's like WOW where you have a clear distinction between the PVP and PVE playertypes, PVP players are usually "Killers" while PVE players are usually "Explorers". (Bartle taxonomy of player types)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_type...

You can extend this to the amount of interest in games, casual vs competitive gamers.

pigpop 6 minutes ago | parent

"If you try to please everyone, you'll end up pleasing no one"

This isn't to say that games (and other media) should always be laser focused on one type of person but you do have to use good judgement to decide who your audience is, what they like and what you should leave out of the game. MMOs show some natural segregation of players when they have private servers, you end up with many PvP only or PvE only servers along with many other variations of things the game mechanics and mods allow e.g. strict role play servers.

There's even terminology directly related to your quote, casual gamers vs hardcore gamers and it should be well known by now that if you make compromises in your game to suit both you'll end up being disliked by both. It's better to lean in to one play style a measured amount. If you're making a game with PvP as a core mechanic make sure the PvP experience is good but not so hardcore that it alienates people who are new to PvP. Don't sacrifice important parts of the gameplay because you might also want to attract PvE only players.

maeln 1 hour ago | parent

Probably not a popular take, but it's fairly common to have CEO's for big company who where never part of the production of one of the product they company sells. The idea is that at some point, your business is so large and oversee too many projects. Intuition, and experience doesn't cut it. Big firm want rationalization. This is why management become obsess with metrics, KPI and such. It rationalizes business decision. This won't be business that innovate, but that's not what their investor wants. Shareholders at EA want predictable reasonable growth, and governance match that. You don't get brought up by EA, Microsoft, Activision, etc, and then act surprise that management want you to produce "generic AAA game with a coat of paint based on X popular franchise".

Innovation and risk taking is something that smaller business do.

dingdongditchme 54 minutes ago | parent

I think Innovation in big companies does happen, but often it get's stiffled by the bean counters before something comes by it, but that is also a good thing. Small businesses should always have the potential to bring the goliath to its knees if the big business has outlived is usefulness to society as a whole.

trashb 53 minutes ago | parent

There is very few companies where the executives don't engage with their own product. Imaging a film studio where the CEO has never watched a movie, or a publishing house where the CEO doesn't read books. I don't think you need to enjoy the product personally but you do need to engage with the medium at the very least to be able to understand what you are selling and to whom you should listen for feedback.

pigpop 24 minutes ago | parent

There are examples like back in February when Chris Kempczinski posted his infamous sampling of a McDonald's meal (even though he apparently does eat McDonalds regularly, he didn't put on a very good show of it). Steve Jobs famously not letting his kids use iPads. Howard Moskowitz initially refusing to drink soda during an interview and saying "I'm not a soda drinker. It's not good for your teeth." and then when persuaded to do so describing it as terrible and overwhelming. The most relevant one would be Strauss Zelnick who said in a 2025 interview "I'm not a gamer. I don't play videogames at all. I'm not the Consumer-in-Chief." justifying it by saying that his job is to hire talented developers and let them make the decisions but I would question whether you can choose the right talent if you don't understand the audience for the products they'll make.

It's very easy for executives and management to be so disconnected from the people who make up the market they are serving. When success is determined by innovation that serves that market, detachment can be a fatal flaw.

maeln 12 minutes ago | parent

Yes, but in the interview he was talking about creating games, not consuming. I am pretty sure that CEO at those big companies probably have played game in their life. They might not be hardcore gamer who fire up Dota 2 after work, but they likely engage with the medium. I mean, the current EA CEO has had a long career being involved in the sport division of EA.

pigpop 48 minutes ago | parent

That business model is at odds with any creative enterprise. It's one thing to scale a business that has a successful product that needs very little improvement over time other than efficiency gains which can be handled by a management class whose only involvement needs to be ensuring the core model is maintained and not degraded while improving operational efficiency. It's a very different thing to having to constantly innovate and create new and better products especially when those products need their own artistic merit to stand on. If you're just making the next FIFA game you'll be fine but anything that requires a plot will go over like a lead balloon.

maeln 26 minutes ago | parent

Yes, it's the industrialization of culture. The music and movie industry shows us exactly how that works out. Big major and big studio don't innovate, they sell you well known name, reinforce it with marketing, and buy up the latest trend from smaller studio. Nothing new under the sun. Company like EA or Activision will continue to buy smaller studio that managed to get a few decent game going, will milk the franchise while its popular, then get rid of it.

pnt12 32 minutes ago | parent

On the other hand, FromSoftware, creators of games such as dark souls, bloodborne, and elden ring, placed their main director as CEO. He still directs their main games, and admits to focus more on games than on business.

The trend has been they focus on quality, rarely compromising their vision, which started as niche gameplay ideas that are now a new genre, adopted in many new games. And the effect has been that they got a reputation for quality, and sell more and more games with each new release, with elden ring selling like 36M copies.

maeln 9 minutes ago | parent

FromSoft has less than 500 employees. They are a big studio, but still a studio. They are not a publisher with a large portfolio like EA or Activision, MS, etc. Different business, different governance. FromSoft is owned by kadokawa, who's current CEO is an MBA dude.

randusername 50 minutes ago | parent

Okay, devil's advocate:

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (2020) cost over $700 million to make.

I can't imagine anyone qualified to run billion dollar projects has much time for any interests other than running billion dollar projects.

These projects wouldn't be sustainable without an audience of gamers rewarding it with purchases and microtransactions.

trashb 39 minutes ago | parent

  > I can't imagine anyone qualified to run billion dollar projects has much time for any interests other than running billion dollar projects.

Seems to me that understanding their product (core product) and the market is one of the major parts of their job. Even if that means getting informed by your r&d and sales department to steer the development department.

counter example: Concord

We are seeing that there are a lot of players that did stop rewarding the companies as described. The problem is that the signals are not being picked up in these studio's. Partially due to the big divide between critical acclaim vs player reception that we have been seeing in games in the past decade.

bellgrove 14 minutes ago | parent

Not defending execs but having worked in games for nearly a decade, it is difficult for even the most passionate game studios to really understand what makes a good game. Creative processes are difficult; and for every BioWare or hot indie darling there are probably 10 or more studios who've failed and that you've never heard of.

HardHardman2033 1 hour ago | parent

Well sure, and I suppose the bosses at McDonald’s never bother to taste all the regional variations of their burgers, right? Personally, I suspect that in the future, the biggest indie game developers might band together into a single publishing collective. In such an organization, everyone right down to the janitowould understand how games are actually made. Most importantly, they would grasp at every level of the hierarchy that independence and creativity in the decision making process are the essential ingredients that make a game something we, the players, truly desire.

trashb 58 minutes ago | parent

> Well sure, and I suppose the bosses at McDonald’s never bother to taste all the regional variations of their burgers, right?

This is a funny thing to post after the recently viral video of the McDonalds CEO allegedly not being able to take a bite out of a McDonalds burger without gagging.

Your comparison also doesn't make sense, it's more like the executives of AAA game studio's have never seen or bothered to understand how a game is made. To keep the fastfood analogy perhaps it would be similar to the McDonalds CEO never having cooked or stepped into a kitchen, and would never choose to eat a burger. It's like if the CEO of Warner brothers has never set foot on a set or in Hollywood or even never seen a movie.

I suspect (as the comment from Zeschuk also suggests) most AAA game studio's are run by executives that never played a video game in their lives let alone enjoyed it. And they literately don't know how the sausage is made.

glimshe 1 hour ago | parent

XBOX will be the big validation of the model. They purposefully chose an executive who doesn't know a thing about videogames. The business side is obviously important, but can a videogame company be successful if it's run by bean counting business optimizers? I doubt it, but time will tell.

mathgeek 56 minutes ago | parent

I assume they don't see themselves as a video game company anymore (although the marketing won't reflect that). They see themselves as a media company with IP to be mined.

zimpenfish 21 minutes ago | parent

> They see themselves as a media company with IP to be mined.

stares in Minecraft

Ekaros 42 minutes ago | parent

What I find weird is that these companies don't sound like they are run by bean counters... The budgets are something that sound absolutely insane if anyone who cared about costs were involved. It more sounds like they are run by empire builders and their legions of micromanaging middle-managers...

jszymborski 38 minutes ago | parent

I imagine it is bean counters but like VC bean counters... You dump a butt load of cash into games hoping they'll be the next GTA V or Skyrim

SaltyBackendGuy 6 minutes ago | parent

I believe that with the budgets but it's crazy we don't see more risks from a creative perspective. In order for the VC model to work, you need to take risks for asymmetric payoffs. In the end, I guess management would rather follow the internal herd and play it safe.

pnt12 39 minutes ago | parent

The new CEO has been praised by consumers to hear their feedback and steer the company in new directions, eg guaranteeing physical disks, defocusing from AI features, etc.

So even if she doesn't know about creating video games, I wouldn't judge her as "a business first gamers last" type of person.

ChrisRR 5 minutes ago | parent

> guaranteeing physical disks

I wouldn't be so sure about that

softwaredoug 49 minutes ago | parent

Wasn’t Phil Specter former head of Xbox a big part of the original Halo franchise?

wpm 30 minutes ago | parent

Nope. He was head of Microsoft Game Studios Europe from 2001-2008 until he took over globally. By that point the only Halo game to come from Bungie was Reach.

tibbon 25 minutes ago | parent

I thought he did the string arrangements on the White Album

jawilson2 22 minutes ago | parent

Nope, Let it Be. They later stripped it and released Let it Be: Naked. George Martin was still on the White Album.

osdamv 46 minutes ago | parent

I believe on of the responsibilities of C suite of executives was to put clarity on how the chicken is cook.

kleiba2 27 minutes ago | parent

I would really like to get into the gaming industry, despite the horror stories you regularly hear about working conditions. The main problem for me is that I'm really old (>50), and there's no industry near where I live.

iugtmkbdfil834 23 minutes ago | parent

The real question is what exactly is stopping you right now?

cosmicgadget 19 minutes ago | parent

He's really old (>50) and there's no gaming industry near where he lives.

iugtmkbdfil834 16 minutes ago | parent

I know what he said:D What I was trying to subtly get at is that tooling and knowledge is available, so why does he need organizational support? I am not asking willy nilly.

kleiba2 14 minutes ago | parent

Thanks, I believe you're asking in good faith. But note that I wasn't necessarily asking for support, I'm often times just openly interested in any kind of feedback.

kleiba2 16 minutes ago | parent

Like I said, there is no industry near I live, but I'm committed to my area because of the family.

Also, without having tried at all, I'm doubtful whether I could land a gig. Even though I've worked in and around IT most of my professional live, I don't have any relevant experience. And I doubt that I could work in an entry-level position: I'm old on the one hand (not attractive for employers) and have more bills to pay now than I did in my 20s (not attractive for me).

iugtmkbdfil834 9 minutes ago | parent

No worries. And it is a fair reason. I was merely curious. That said, it is now the best and worst time to try ( and you won't know which until you do ).

endemic 4 minutes ago | parent

It was when I saw Derek Yu and Alec Holowka release Aquaria that I realized there's no gatekeeping anymore. Make your game.

However, if you're looking to be part of a larger team, that is indeed a challenge with the limitations you mentioned.

bob1029 16 minutes ago | parent

I think the best answer is AAAA+ scale projects. AI has destroyed the demand for something that can be produced in a few months. The "meso" scale of game development is extremely difficult to work in. Constantly walking a tightrope between too easy and too hard. Rockstar games does seem to have the right idea. They can remain viable by simply never reducing their feature scope and spending unlimited amounts of money.

Perhaps enough indie game studios could align their thinking at the same time to accomplish a similar outcome. In any case, pooling of talent and resources is probably the only way to compete now. The individual developer simply cannot keep up despite being able to do more than they ever were before.

If you seek evidence of Jevon's paradox I think you may find it here. Albeit in a very undesirable form. Even if I can now do 100% more work per unit time, my prospective customer is demanding 300-400% on top of that in terms of the final delivered experience. The water level has gone up everywhere and continues to rise rapidly. Even outside of game development. Deliverables that would have elicited reverence from the business twelve months ago are completely unrecognized now.

wongarsu 4 minutes ago | parent

Imho the strength of Indie games was being able to try ideas too risky to bet AAA budget on, or to target niche audiences deemed too small to make AAA profit

Neither of these is going away. The marketing strategy of teasing your game for months or years to build a fan base is going away. But if you life by "put up or shut up" I believe there is still room to win on vision alone.

If you don't have a unique enough vision (like most AAA, visions are risky) then I agree that you have to migrate up and just outspend everyone else