"Collapse of creativity" in the industry according to Shawn Layden - via Eurogamer

[Bryank75]

"Today, the entry costs for making a AAA game is in triple digit millions now," he continued. "I think naturally, risk tolerance drops. And you're [looking] at sequels, you're looking at copycats, because the finance guys who draw the line say, 'Well, if Fortnite made this much money in this amount of time, my Fortnite knockoff can make this in that amount of time.' We're seeing a collapse of creativity in games today [with] studio consolidation and the high cost of production."

Further, Layden stated "AA is gone", which he described as "a threat to the ecosystem".

Noting the general standard of games, including indie titles, is much higher thanks to advancements in tools, he continued: "Now if we can just get a bit more interest and excitement and exposure for these lower budget, but super creative and super unusual [type] of games... I'd like to see more of that. Because if we're just going to rely on the blockbusters to get us through, I think that's a death sentence."

AA games can bring "the new thing" and can be developed far quicker than AAA games, said Layden. Most importantly, though, they must seek unique ideas not monetisation.

"If you're going to pitch me your AA game, and in the first two pages of your deck is your monetisation and revenue, subscription scheme, I'm out. Your first page has to be 'This game needs to be made and here's why'," he said.

"I want to see that fire, I don't want to see 'here's the chief accountant on the team that's going to explain to you the [game's monetisation]'."

Layden also commented on current trends around AI in game development, stating it's "not a saviour".

"Artificial intelligence has been in gaming since almost the first or second games ever made," he said. "So all this excitement about gen AI, I find kind of humorous. I do see its applications in certain places for certain things. But it's just a tool, it's not a saviour. It's a tool in the way that Excel is a tool. It just helps speed you along your tasks."

Layden began working for Sony in 1987, eventually serving as chairman of SIE Worldwide Studios from 2014 - 2019. He's worked as a strategic advisor at Tencent since September 2022.

 

[akira__]

He knew this would happen, made a stand, and got fired over it.

Jim Ryan won, with his gaas plans and pushed the short-sighted "profit now" button, and retired before the shit hit the fan.

I don't agree with Layden on everything, but PlayStation under him was still able to create hype and excitement. And a "Concord" wouldn't have occurred.

 

[BarrierIslandZilla]

I mean he isn’t wrong but also the industry slid into a bad spot while under his watch.

 

[TrishaCat]

Further, Layden stated "AA is gone", which he described as "a threat to the ecosystem".

Not entirely true, there's a myriad of Japanese studios that make primarily "AA" content
Falcom, NIS, Gust, Cyberconnect2, Spike Chunsoft...

 

[Yurinka]

I remember that in the '80s a popular gaming magazine complained in their Tetris review that it was another puzzle and that the industry could be stuck, and same with Street Fighter (the first one, not SF2) regarding action games.

I don't know if people complained about this before with the first arcades and 1st-2nd gen consoles, but since the 8 bit computers era, before consoles like NES and Master System were published here people has been complaining about lack of creativity, being stuck etc.

The reality is that every generation new genres or subgenres appeared, or we saw new platform types or business models, plus evolution of some of the existing ones and cool twists or new IPs. And well, we obviously saw many people investing on what it works because they want to have a profitable busines.

He knew this would happen, made a stand, and got fired over it.

Jim Ryan won, with his gaas plans and pushed the short-sighted "profit now" button, and retired before the shit hit the fan.

I don't agree with Layden on everything, but PlayStation under him was still able to create hype and excitement. And a "Concord" wouldn't have occurred.

Nah. Half of games under Jim Ryan are new IPs and most of the GaaS we know like (plus a few still not publicly announced) weren't greenlighted by Jim Ryan. Were greenlighted by Shawn Layden/Yoshida and pre-Jim Ryan SIE CEOs. Jim Ryan & Hermen weren't the ones who started to work on Concord, Shawn's team did.

Most of the SIE games that we know were greenlighted in the Jim Ryan (Astro Bot, Death Stranding 2, Wolverine) era aren't GaaS. Same goes with the PC strategy: it wasn't started by Jim Ryan, Shawn's team started it.

Jim Ryan basically invested more to grow everything -including acquisitions- and maximized the revenue and profit of all these areas. That includes GaaS but also non-GaaS. Includes PC and mobile but also PS.

In big companies like SIE, when a new CEO joins the party he doesn't cancel all the existing projects and heavily changes their strategy. Instead they continue with most of the stuff and make relatively small changes, and introduce new things that take years to be seen because games nowadays take several years to be made.

Layden also commented on current trends around AI in game development, stating it's "not a saviour".

"Artificial intelligence has been in gaming since almost the first or second games ever made," he said. "So all this excitement about gen AI, I find kind of humorous. I do see its applications in certain places for certain things. But it's just a tool, it's not a saviour. It's a tool in the way that Excel is a tool. It just helps speed you along your tasks."

Shawn has no idea what he's talking about here. Even if people call both things AI, none of the two is AI and are very different concepts.

He's mixing the behavior of the enemies or NPCs in a game, which is one thing, and generative AI to help developers speed up their work (and maybe replace a few of them), which is a completely different thing.

 

[Systemshock2023]

Gamers killed AA. They always measure AA vs AAA and cry "Euro jank" when a game does not have 4k ass hairs and Hollywood voice acting.

 

[quest4441]

Gamers killed AA. They always measure AA vs AAA and cry "Euro jank" when a game does not have 4k ass hairs and Hollywood voice acting.

No one killed AA, the devs themselves did it. They make assburger AA games like banishers and upcoming flop unknown 9. Eurojank doesnt give license to make buggy games with dumb as a dodo AI

 

[akira__]

Nah. Half of games under Jim Ryan are new IPs and most of the GaaS we know like (plus a few still not publicly announced) weren't greenlighted by Jim Ryan. Were greenlighted by Shawn Layden/Yoshida and pre-Jim Ryan SIE CEOs. Jim Ryan & Hermen weren't the ones who started to work on Concord, Shawn's team did.

Most of the SIE games that we know were greenlighted in the Jim Ryan (Astro Bot, Death Stranding 2, Wolverine) era aren't GaaS. Same goes with the PC strategy: it wasn't started by Jim Ryan, Shawn's team started it.

Jim Ryan basically invested more to grow everything -including acquisitions- and maximized the revenue and profit of all these areas. That includes GaaS but also non-GaaS. Includes PC and mobile but also PS.

In big companies like SIE, when a new CEO joins the party he doesn't cancel all the existing projects and heavily changes their strategy. Instead they continue with most of the stuff and make relatively small changes, and introduce new things that take years to be seen because games nowadays take several years to be made.

Working with small studios, and fostering them until they become powerhouses has been a playstation strategy for a long time. Think off insomniac and games from studios of helldivers, and returnal.

New strategy is visible because for some reason arrowhead wasn't acquired. We know from their financial that single player game spending has stayed roughly the same while game budgets have risen, while GaaS exploded.

Shawn left 2019 and concord studio was acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment in April 2023.

When a leader leaves, there isn't a hard cutoff, it will be slow gradual process not only that but there are studios throughout the world and games take around 4 to 8 years to make.

Thus we only a few in the Jim Ryan era games. And the last few years playstation has the new issue with creating excitement and hype. Profit has been by allot increased, but as consumers that is not our top concern. Gaming should be.

Stop capping for executives they dont care about you or gaming. You got me to post Tom Warren tweet...

 

[quest4441]

Working with small studios, and fostering them until they become powerhouses has been a playstation strategy for a long time. Think off insomniac and games from studios of helldivers, and returnal.

New strategy is visible because for some reason arrowhead wasn't acquired. We know from their financial that single player game spending has stayed roughly the same while game budgets have risen, while GaaS exploded.

Shawn left 2019 and concord studio was acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment in April 2023.

When a leader leaves, there isn't a hard cutoff, it will be slow gradual process not only that but there are studios throughout the world and games take around 4 to 8 years to make.

Thus we only a few in the Jim Ryan era games. And the last few years playstation has the new issue with creating excitement and hype. Profit has been by allot increased, but as consumers that is not our top concern. Gaming should be.

Stop capping for executives they dont care about you or gaming. You got me to post Tom Warren tweet...

Eh I would gladly take 10 London studios being sacrificed for Jim Ryan messing up xbox's timeline and in hindsight its business with a lengthy arbitration case, the guy delivered something shawn, house or kodera couldn't

 

[Fenton]

He knew this would happen, made a stand, and got fired over it.

Jim Ryan won, with his gaas plans and pushed the short-sighted "profit now" button, and retired before the shit hit the fan.

I don't agree with Layden on everything, but PlayStation under him was still able to create hype and excitement. And a "Concord" wouldn't have occurred.

Shawn Layden is one of the 'wokest' executives with pride flag and transgender flag in his Twitter bio.

 

[akira__]

Eh I would gladly take 10 London studios being sacrificed for Jim Ryan messing up xbox's timeline and in hindsight its business with a lengthy arbitration case, the guy delivered something shawn, house or kodera couldn't

Oh wow, well done bravo. Such a small post yet completely riddled with Fallacies. Let's digest them.

First item on the menu is a quick False Dilemma that links Xbox failing with the need of sacrificing a studio with people's lives and careers.

As main course you a Zero-Sum Thinking with the idea Xbox should lose for PlayStation to win. We are consumers, and PlayStation should just make great consoles and great games irrespective of Xbox.

To top it off, we have Hindsight Bias combined with a Fallacy of the Single Cause, attributing everything that played out to Jim Ryan, as if he was the only player involved and single-handedly instructed the CMA, FTC, and EU. As if no other exec in his place would've made objections he did. And that Jim Ryan is somehow responsible for Xbox failing. Even though Xbox has been failing since the start of the Xbox one era.

Probably missed a few fallacies, my apologies.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

In the AAA space he's certainly right. It's either your licensed comic book/film adaptations, safe sequels to very big games, remakes of games that still run & play perfectly fine from only a generation ago, remasters of similar, or trend-chasing GAAS. Even many of the big success stories in AAA this gen fall into one of those categories: Spiderman 2, Hogwarts Legacy, Baldur's Gate 3, Tears of the Kingdom etc.

You do have a few exceptions, like Stellar Blade, Returnal, Helldivers 2 & Black Myth Wukong, and some that kinda bend the rules like FF VII Rebirth (it's a remake to a very popular game, but the original was released decades ago), but they've been the exceptions.

There's nothing wrong with having adaptations, sequelization, remakes/remasters, or GAAS in fact they can be healthy for the industry and help fund more original AAA IP and bigger-scope AA. But that's the problem: we aren't seeing a lot of that actually happening. These publishers have become very risk-adverse to creating riskier AAA games, and that's partly the fault of gamers TBH. Some of us talk a big game about wanting to support such and such game but when time comes to prove it, a good number of people don't buy it. Trying to praise the game years after the fact won't do much if you could've bought it at launch but never did. But that's a different conversation.

Even so, I'd say publishers are still mostly at fault there because they kind of set the expectations in the first place, conditioning customers into wanting certain things and not wanting other things. Since they control the distribution of content, it's ultimately them at fault for why we don't see the variety in AAA or market presence of AA we had during the PS2 era, or the PS3/360/Wii era. Sure costs have gone up and inflation is real, but corporate greed for profit margins have outpaced those several times over.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

GAAS has been home to the majority of the industries innovation from the last decade.

Who knew a gameplay centric medium would save gaming?!

 

[Shmunter]

"Today, the entry costs for making a AAA game is in triple digit millions now,"

How about asking why in this question?

Teams are in efficient, bursting at the seams with all manner of redundant experts and consultants. There is absolutely no reason for this with tools and assets that are easier to use than ever. Everything can be made faster and with less people. They’ve done it to themselves.

 

[CrackmanNL]

Stop capping for executives

Fallacy of the Single Cause

It's quite ironic you say this but yet are capping hard and discrediting others in their contribution to one single man cause he was the face of E3 shows you liked lmao. Andrew House & Shu Yoshida were responsible for most of the titles and deals struck with 3rd party of that era. Shawn pushed Days Gone of all the titles with the most marketing and ironically it bombed compared to the others. People didn't buy his pet peeves projects like Concrete Genie & Dreams. The smaller projects he backed flopped, that's just the market speaking not the execs.

The difference with Ryan is that these smaller (creative) titles are outsourced under Yoshida and in my opinion delivered much better results like Kena, Stray, Sifu, Humanity etc. there is quite a list of these with more obscure stuff no one played like Season's A letter to the Future. And these are often released on Extra which ironically shows that people ask for these but don't even play them when even ''free'' cause those same people simply don't mention it like it doesn't exist!

I like Layden but let's not act the 220 million budget for LoU2 wasn't greenlit under him, or the PC ports or the California centric management that has started under him. I will say what I do agree with him not every project needs to make insane amount of money and more artistic projects like Last Guardian for your portfolio & prestige is worth beyond spreadsheet financials.

The only difference is in this era it's often a wrap for the studio cause you don't get another 4-5 years with a budget from publishers if it bombs, basically I call it the THQ level of game publishing has disappeared in the industry but IMO that's more on the devs for abysmal products.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

How about asking why in this question?

Teams are in efficient, bursting at the seams with all manner of redundant experts and consultants. There is absolutely no reason for this with tools and assets that are easier to use than ever. Everything can be made faster and with less people. They’ve done it to themselves.

Market is too competitive for this to be true.

AA games died because AA games didn't sell.

 

[Monkeyclaw]

Lol Akira getting banned on GAF for console warring. Continues here..... Some people....

 

[akira__]

It's quite ironic you say this but yet are capping hard and discrediting others in their contribution to one single man cause he was the face of E3 shows you liked lmao. Andrew House & Shu Yoshida were responsible for most of the titles and deals struck with 3rd party of that era. Shawn pushed Days Gone of all the titles with the most marketing and ironically it bombed compared to the others. People didn't buy his pet peeves projects like Concrete Genie & Dreams. The smaller projects he backed flopped, that's just the market speaking not the execs.

The difference with Ryan is that these smaller (creative) titles are outsourced under Yoshida and in my opinion delivered much better results like Kena, Stray, Sifu, Humanity etc. there is quite a list of these with more obscure stuff no one played like Season's A letter to the Future. And these are often released on Extra which ironically shows that people ask for these but don't even play them when even ''free'' cause those same people simply don't mention it like it doesn't exist!

I like Layden but let's not act the 220 million budget for LoU2 wasn't greenlit under him, or the PC ports or the California centric management that has started under him. I will say what I do agree with him not every project needs to make insane amount of money and more artistic projects like Last Guardian for your portfolio & prestige is worth beyond spreadsheet financials.

The only difference is in this era it's often a wrap for the studio cause you don't get another 4-5 years with a budget from publishers if it bombs, basically I call it the THQ level of game publishing has disappeared in the industry but IMO that's more on the devs for abysmal products.

Layden took a stand got fired for it, that's a brave move but It's not about one person. PlayStation is a huge corporation within a even larger one.

PS success was not because of him, but after he left we got new strategy with short term profit and idea of endless money through the wonder of GAAS.

And that is what I take issue with, the short-sighted strategy of profit now, and GAAS as main focus.

Edit: ah yes, big brain move calling me console warrior in a thread where I criticise the hell out of Playstation current strategy.
Got banned for pushing back against xbots such as adamsapple coping that ff16/ff7 remake would come to Xbox.
Extra points for name calling, that will sure show them.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Layden took a stand got fired for it, that's a brave move but It's not about one person. PlayStation is a huge corporation within a even larger one.

PS success was not because of him, but after he left we got new strategy with short term profit and idea of endless money through the wonder of GAAS.

And that is what I take issue with, the short-sighted strategy of profit now, and GAAS as main focus.

You do realize GAAS is long term profit right? Working on games longer, benefitting from long tails?

Shawn Layden is championing AA games with short dev cycles and no tails.

 

[Yurinka]

Working with small studios, and fostering them until they become powerhouses has been a playstation strategy for a long time. Think off insomniac and games from studios of helldivers, and returnal.

New strategy is visible because for some reason arrowhead wasn't acquired. We know from their financial that single player game spending has stayed roughly the same while game budgets have risen, while GaaS exploded.

Shawn left 2019 and concord studio was acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment in April 2023.

When a leader leaves, there isn't a hard cutoff, it will be slow gradual process not only that but there are studios throughout the world and games take around 4 to 8 years to make.

Thus we only a few in the Jim Ryan era games. And the last few years playstation has the new issue with creating excitement and hype. Profit has been by allot increased, but as consumers that is not our top concern. Gaming should be.

Stop capping for executives they dont care about you or gaming. You got me to post Tom Warren tweet...

Shuhei Yoshida suggested Jim Ryan to create an initiative to scout and support more games and in a better way small external studios. Jim Ryan asked him if he wanted to create it and direct it personally. He said yes and this is how PlayStation Indies was created.

They support now more games than before, and in better conditions for the indies since they kept the IP and are allowed to released them elsewhere to have a better business.

According to the Concord devs Sony was supporting them "since the start", this is 2018 (when the studio was formally founded) or before (the game started in 2016, took around 8 years). Jim Ryan still wasn't there by that time. The SIE CEO was Andrew House until 2017 and John Kodera from 2017 to 2019. Yoshida was in charge of PS Studios until he left to create PlayStation Studios and got replaced by Hermen. Shawn Layden was chairman of PS Studios from April 2016 to October 2019.

AAA games several years to be made, and Jim started in early 2019, so we're starting to see the first games he greenlighted. The first two to be released are Stellar Blade and Astro Bot. The next ones that we're sure he greenlighted are Death Stranding 2 and Ghost of Yotei (maybe Lego Horizon and the Until Dawn remake too but we aren't sure when they started). The GaaS TLOU Online and London Studio's new IP maybe also started in 2019 so he could have greenlighted them, but he cancelled them.

Regarding 2nd party games, this year they will have released stuff from Arrowhead, Shift Up, Team Ninja, Ballistic Moon, Studio Gobo and in theory (at this point I assume Convallaria and Lost Soul Aside got delayed to 2025) Loong Force and Ultizero Games plus they also release the softlaunch of the Destiny mobile game with Netease (in this case not published by Sony, but by Netease). Go back and check how many years they did release half a dozen or more 2nd party games.

Regarding Insomniac: Jim Ryan is the one who acquired them. Regarding Returnal: Jim Ryan is the one who acquired them. Regarding Helldivers 2: Jim Ryan generously allowed them to have a 5 years long delay (it was originally planned to be released in 2019). Regarding London Studio, we aren't sure if he or Totoki were the ones who took the decision of shutting it down. But we know Jim Ryan acquired Firesprite, de facto reviving Liverpool Studio and Evolution Studios (plus also poaching part of Supermassive Games).