作者：Jeffrey Grubb

Joe和Antony Russo拥有一个很棒的夏天。这对兄弟导演并发布了Marvel的暑期大片《美国队长2》。在基于较小预算的独立电影领域和电视领域打拼了一段时间后，他们终于获得了这次机会，并尽全力去创造出世界上最大的电影之一。

这是我们在游戏中并未真正看到的故事。

独立的AAA级游戏开发的经历恰恰相反。一些众所周知的顶级开发者选择推出大型项目而开始经营自己的小型开发工作室。同时，负责畅销独立游戏的最受关注的人才则开始为带有更多预算的大型发行商创造更大型的项目。他们或是坚持于自己最初的目标，或者专注于扩展能够让自己变得更受欢迎的游戏。

而这里所存在的问题是，为何在游戏领域中会出现“向上倾斜”的趋势？

我们可以看向一个关于离开大型发行商或大型开发商而开始做一些较小的项目的AAA级开发者的列表：

Cliff Bleszinski：他曾主导了《战争机器》系列游戏，并在2012年选择离开Epic Games。虽然他创建了自己的工作室Boss Key Productions，并与全球知名发行商Nexon共同创造了一款免费射击游戏。现在他是Boss Key的首席执行官。

Keiji Inafune：作为《洛克人》的设计师，他在2010年宣布离开效力了23年的Capcom。几个月后他创建了Comcept，并开发了《Mighty No.9》，可以说这是《洛克人》的精神继承者。现在他是Comcept的首席执行官。

David Goldfarb：他是《Mirror’s Edge》和《战地3》的开发者，曾经效力于DICE，现在在Overkill负责《Payday 2》的开发并且也开始创建自己的团队了。

Patrice Desilets：在育碧，Desilets是作为《刺客信条》和《刺客信条II》的创意总监。他在2010年离开了这家法国发行商。2011年，他帮助THQ创建了其新蒙特利尔工作室，在那里他开始致力于一款名为《1666》的全新AAA级行动游戏。当THQ破产时，育碧收购了他的工作室和新游戏。2013年5月，育碧解雇了Desilets。而他现在正在自己最近刚刚创建起来的工作室致力于某些全新内容（未公开）。

Brian Reynolds：他是最早转向制作一些小内容的知名游戏设计师之一。在作为经典策略游戏《文明II》和《国家的崛起》的首席设计师后，Reynolds继续在Zynga创造了《FrontierVille》。2013年，他创建了SecretNewCo。与Bleszinski一样，他的团队也与Nexon合作致力于一款新游戏。如今Reynold是SecretNewCo的首席执行官。

David Jaffe：在索尼的时候，Jaffe是负责《烈火战车》和《战神》的开发，这两款游戏是该发行商最大的项目之二。在2007年，他在离开了Sony Computer Entertainment America后选择自己创建了Eat Sleep。现在他是新公司Bartlet Jones Supernatural Detective Agency的首席执行官。

Ken Levine：他花了10年时间致力于创造《生化奇兵》和《生化奇兵：无限》，即作为Irrational Games的负责人。而在去年发行了《无限》后，Levine和发行商2K Games在2月份关闭了Irrational Games。Levine从之前的工作室中带走了15个人并组建了一个较小的新团队，并将为2K创造全新的数字游戏。

而在独立领域中，许多开发者已经创造了一些引起轰动的作品，但他们却并未走向育碧，任天堂或索尼等大公司。以下便是其中的一些例子：

Marcus “Notch”Persson：他创造了《我的世界》，这可能算是世界上最大型的游戏。Persson身价高达数百万，但是他却将组块的建造工作交给了其他人。而现在的他正在创造一些较小型的游戏。

Edmund McMillen和Tommy Refenes：开发商Team Meat在2010年发行了《超级食肉男孩》并广受好评。这两个人现在正致力于新游戏《Mew-Genics》中。

Jonathan Blow：这一独立开发者曾经在2008年凭借平台游戏《时空幻境》而备受关注。他是游戏领域中众所周知的一个人。现在他正在开发《The Witness》，即伴随着丰富的3D视觉效果的开放世界益智游戏。

Zoe Quinn：《Depression Quest》的开发者并未在发行了自己的游戏后加入大型发行商。相反地，他以故事设计师的身份加入独立工作室Loveshack Entertainment，并致力于自己的全动态电子游戏。

Dean Hall：这位诞生于新西兰的开发者为开放世界军事射击游戏《Arma II》创造了非常受欢迎的僵尸生存模组Day Z。现在他完全效力于《Arma》的开发商Bohemia Interactive。他是少数选择致力于一家大型开发商的例子之一，但他也说过，自己将会在年末离开Bohemia并回到新西兰进行独立开发。

我敢保证你们会从上述开发者中看到一个共同主题或趋势。即大多数前AAA级游戏负责人现在都变成了自己工作室的首席执行官。当提到更年轻且总是趋于独立的开发者时，他们并不会遵循着热门趋势而追求与大公司合作。

所以到底发生了什么事？

操纵大局

很多事情归根究底便是关于谁真正掌控着一个项目。让我们回到效力于Marvel和迪士尼的Russo兄弟，他们必须做到世界上最大的公司之一的要求。他们可能会在开始制作前接受许多要求。但一旦开始创造电影，导演便会操纵整个局势（这在大多数电影制作中都是一样的）。他们将决定一个场景该是怎样的，他们将成为演员寻求答案的对象。

再一次地，在游戏中并不是如此，并且为此存在多个解释。

开发商是公司

当迪士尼让Russo兄弟去创造《美国队长2》时，他们还继续通过各自的组合去雇佣一个团队的员工。他们并未尝试着组建一个专注于与同样的人创造类似的电影的公司。相反地，该公司将继续拥有所有权，而所有负责创造该电影的人都可以利用自己这次的经历去创造其它内容。

而游戏开发则不是这样。这更像是一个乐队组合在一起去创造一张专辑—-但却是伴随着上百名员工，一位首席执行官，一位首席市场官，一位首席财政官以及一位首席技术官。有时候，开发者是在一家拥有多个工作室的发行商底下工作。这将导致游戏的负责人需要与许多具有发言权的人争抢总控制权。

Goldfard说道：“对于我来说这其实很简单—-当我越来越老时，每一天我对制作某些内容的热情也不断减少。我不再会花费2年时间致力于一支大型团队去创造非常大型的游戏—-即伴随着各种摩擦和妥协。但不要误解我，我仍然很崇拜这些游戏。在很多情况下我也喜欢制作它们。但现在的我应该做些更加实在的内容。”

团队规模

许多负责大型游戏的开发者发现，控制一个AAA级项目并不是关于想出一些理念并执行它们。而是关于将任务分配给工作室中的一些小团队，并确保所有人都能够相互交流。这意味着那些负责《刺客信条》发行的人并未致力于创造某些重要场景；相反地，他们是负责管理一个基于办公室体制的大型组织。

这并不能留给创造性表达足够多的空间。

Goldfard说道：“最终人们都会想要获得自由。在AAA级领域中找到自由更加困难，因为在这里，团队的规模会将交流等简单的事情变得更加复杂。有些人会在这种情况下不断发展并将其当成自己的终极目标。我对此并不是很开心。现在我深刻认同物以稀为贵这个道理。”

发行商将人才藏了起来

除了公司结构和大型工作室规模外，发行商总是会将个人的贡献掩埋在公司的名号下。当公司随便捏造一个事实时，你便很难感受到自己的成就。

Bleszinski在Reddit上写道：“我真的真的不喜欢‘隐藏开发者’的做法。这散发出了不安全感。如果人们知道谁是开发者，那么开发者便会具有影响力。这便是所谓的101业务。”

据称，育碧在从THQ手中收购了Desilets的工作室后解雇了他。在再次分裂前他们让他回来待了几个月。我们不知道Desilets的游戏《1666》（仍然由育碧所有）的状态，但我们可以推断出发行商和设计师在Desilets的最新游戏和工作上的金钱利益方面未达成一致意见。

企业家精神vs.个人主导

AAA级开发者一直在寻找对于自己所创造的游戏的更多控制权。他们想要的是更小的团队，这样他们才能成为主导者。所以这些开发者便开始创建自己的公司并扮演首席执行官的角色。这是因为游戏总是伴随着企业家精神和个人主导的结合。

电影制作金字塔的顶端站着的是导演，但在游戏开发中却是首席执行官。Bleszinski，Jaffe和Inafune可能都拥有日常交易并总是与之前的执行官打交道。他们可能意识到应该避免再次妥协，所以他们需要冠予自己同样的头衔。即为了操纵局势，他们需要运行自己的公司。

独立开发者并未真正拥有与首席执行官同样的冲动去经营自己的工作室。就像在Mojang，Persson便让别人去顶替这份工作。Jonathan Blow甚至在自己的工作室Thekla中未拥有一个真正的头衔。Edmund McMillen和Tommy Refenes则只是两个在一起创造游戏的人。

避免他们称自己为首席执行官的元素与推动他们继续愉快地创造自己的游戏的元素是一样的。

Blow说道：“管理《刺客信条》并不能推动我的发展。只会阻碍我继续向前。这表示我便失去了选择做什么的自由，并且会降低我的生活质量。”

新工具会让大预算游戏变得更加古旧

在年初，育碧发行了《Watch Dogs》。这是一款开放世界游戏，即尝试着重新创造一个科幻的交替世界芝加哥，让玩家可以使用智能手机去入侵这个城市。你可以前往芝加哥的任何地方并做任何事，共有100多个人参与了这款游戏的制作。

当人们在玩《Watch Dogs》时，开发商Hello Games也在呈现其即将问世的独立游戏《No Man’s Sky》。这是一款科幻太空探索游戏，让玩家能够选择做任何事，并穿越银河到达任何地方。每个玩家都是从自己的星球开始游戏，那里存在着独特的动植物。

惊人的是，作为一个只有4个人的开发团队，Hello Games在《No Man’s Sky》的开发中做了许多工作。当育碧使用好几百个人去创造“芝加哥”时，这个团队只用4个人便创造了一个关于银河的游戏。

Blow指出越来越多开发者开始发现它们可以无需发行商的帮助而做好自己想做的任何事。

Blow说道：“是的，AAA级项目的预算变得越来越高，但我并不担心，因为我可以在自己所拥有的预算内做出自己想做的任何事。”

像Unity和Unreal Engine等开发工具包能让我们更轻松地创造出华丽的3D环境和角色。索尼，微软和任天堂都很欢迎开发者去发行他们自己的数字游戏。Steam便让人们能够发行一些未完成的游戏并通过促销去完成剩下的内容。

Bleszinski本来可以留在Epic，但他可能最终创造出自己现在所想要的游戏，并且这款游戏可能与其它大型工作室的游戏一样出色。

然后我们便有钱了

Blow告诉我们，他并不认为电影这个比较物可行，因为导演主要是受利益所驱动。他们将会因为拍出一部大受欢迎的电影而获得巨大的报酬。Blow表示自己并非受到利益的驱动，我也相信他，但他同样也会凭借《The Witness》年末于PC，手机和PlayStation 4上的初亮相而赚到巨大的利益。

这对于所有从AAA级开发转向独立开发，并且不愿意继续为动视或艺电等公司管理大型游戏的人来说都是事实。这些公司可能运行得很好，但是你在此却需要放弃上述所提到的自由和生活质量。

Blow说道：“在低端，独立游戏所赚到的钱就会较少，而在高端，独立游戏所赚到的钱便会更多。Notch拥有数十亿美元的收益，这并不是任何效力于育碧的程序员或设计师能够赚到的钱。许多独立开发者已经赚到了好几百万美元，再一次地，这对于那些效力于主流公司的人来说仍然是笔小数目。你可能需要拥有一家大公司才能做到这点。”

Blow强调很多独立开发者仍在吃着拉面并想办法支付房租。这些依靠游戏谋生的人可以通过艺电所提供的固定薪资获益，尽管这并不是Bleszinski，Reynolds或McMillen真正面对的问题。

如果Reynolds的新策略游戏发行了，它便有可能成为下一款《Clash of Clans》。去年这款手机社交策略游戏便赚到了10亿美元。作为该开发商的首席执行官，这种收益层级将把Reynolds变成一位百万富翁。

当提到AAA级开发者为何要选择独立时，这真的很重要。即从独立开发者变成AAA级开发者并不是向上发展的一步。你将会获得更多自由，更多声誉，并组建一支关系更加紧密的团队去创造与AAA级发行一样优秀的游戏。如果所有的这些都是真的话，你自然也会赚到更多钱吧？

并不是每个AAA级开发者都会选择独立

显然，像马里奥和塞尔达的创造者宫本茂这样的人便有可能选择永远待在任天堂。《合金装备》的创造者Hideo Kojima也是如此—-即使他在Konami内部创建了自己的Kojima Productions工作室。这些产业传奇并不是唯一选择继续在发行商系统下工作的人。

尽管育碧解雇了Desilets，但是该公司仍然拥有来自《Rayman》的创造者Michel Ancel和《刺客信条》与《分裂细胞：黑名单》的制作人Jade Raymond等知名开发者的贡献。

Raymond在2014年加入育碧，她凭借自己的努力成为了该公司的执行制作人。她仍继续攀升着，就像现在她便成为了育碧多伦多工作室的总经理。

Ancel是在1990年加入育碧。他想出了平台游戏《Rayman》的游戏理念并负责了大受欢迎的行动冒险游戏《撕裂的天堂》的开发。他分别在2011年负责《Rayman Origins》和2013年负责《Rayman Legends》的开发。尽管他身处发行商系统，但似乎在他的游戏开发中体现出许多创造性自由。同时，育碧仍然在他身上施加了不少压力。2013年，该公司迎回了一位开发者并将《Raymond Legends》移植到各种平台上。Ancel以及育碧蒙波利埃工作室的其他开发者对于这点都不是很高兴。

真相是，如果开发者发现可以无需创造建自己的业务便获得创造性自由，这便会是最理想的情况。

育碧的制作人Patrick Plourde说道：“创造一个业务与制作一款游戏是完全不同的两回事。”他从致力于《孤岛惊魂3》转向指导自己的角色扮演游戏《Child of Light》。“也许我是个特殊例子，但现在我拥有许多创造性自由能够‘创造我一直想创造的游戏。’我现在已经在这么做了。组织一队超级厉害的人去创造一款游戏真的很轻松，而如果是我自己去执行这样的项目的话，必然会辛苦许多。”

所以并不是所有人都会选择离开发行商系统。但是我们仍然很难想象当许多独立开发者能够独立创造出某些内容时，他们还会努力去争取Plourde那样的位置。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Why triple-A devs are going indie (and why indies aren’t going triple-A)

By Jeffrey Grubb

Joe and Anthony Russo had a pretty good summer. The brothers directed and released Marvel’s summer blockbuster Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The pair got that opportunity after working with smaller budgets in the independent-film scene and on television, and they worked their way up to making one of the biggest movies in the world.

That’s a story we don’t really have in gaming.

Independent and triple-A gaming development is experiencing the opposite, really. The big names from top developers are leaving their jobs directing huge projects to start their own, smaller development studios. Meanwhile, the hottest talent responsible for beloved, best-selling indie games aren’t moving up to direct larger projects for major publishers with enormous budgets. They’re sticking to their roots or focusing their efforts on expanding the games that made them popular in the first place.

The question is why is “upward mobility” in gaming broken?

We can point to a list of high-profile examples of triple-A developers leaving behind their positions at major publishers or big developers to do something smaller and more focused:

Cliff Bleszinski: He left developer Epic Games in 2012 after directing the Gears of War series. He just started his own studio, Boss Key Productions, and he’s making a free-to-play shooter in partnership with global publisher Nexon. He is CEO at Boss Key.

Keiji Inafune: The Mega Man designer departed Capcom after 23 years in 2010. A few months later he started Comcept, which is developing Mighty No. 9, a spiritual successor to Mega Man using crowdfunding. He is CEO at Comcept.

David Goldfarb: This Mirror’s Edge and Battlefield 3 veteran moved on from working at developer DICE to overseeing development on Payday 2 at Overkill. Now he’s starting his own team.

Patrice Désilets: At Ubisoft, Désilets oversaw Assassin’s Creed and Assassin’s Creed II as creative director. He left the French publisher in 2010. In 2011, he helped THQ start its new Montreal studio, where he began work on a new triple-A action game called 1666. When THQ collapsed, Ubisoft — the publisher Désilets left in 2010 — purchased his studio and his new game. In May 2013, Ubisoft fired Désilets, according to the developer. He is now working on something secret at a new studio he recently started.

Brian Reynolds: He was one of the first big game designers to go do something smaller. After acting as lead designer on classic strategy games Civilization II and Rise of Nations, Reynolds went on to create FrontierVille at Zynga. In 2013, he founded SecretNewCo. Like Bleszinski, his team is working on a new game with Nexon. Reynolds is CEO at SecretNewCo.

David Jaffe: While at Sony, Jaffe directed Twisted Metal and God of War — two of the publisher’s biggest properties. In 2007, he formed Eat Sleep Play after leaving Sony Computer Entertainment America. He is now CEO of his new company, Bartlet Jones Supernatural Detective Agency.

Ken Levine: He spent the last 10 years making BioShock and BioShock Infinite as the head of developer Irrational Games. After releasing Infinite last year, Levine and publisher 2K Games closed Irrational Games in February. Levine took 15 people from his former studio and formed a new, smaller team that will make digital games for 2K.

And on the independent side of things a staggering number of developers have made smash hits but aren’t moving on Ubisoft, Nintendo, or Sony. Here are just a few:

Marcus “Notch” Persson: Minecraft. He made Minecraft, which is perhaps the biggest game in the world. Persson is worth millions, and he’s passed on development of the block-building phenomenon to others. He’s building some small games now.

Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes: The developers known as Team Meat released Super Meat Boy to critical acclaim in 2010. The pair is now working on a new game, Mew-Genics.

Jonathan Blow: This independent developer broke onto the scene in 2008 with the beloved time-bending platformer Braid. He is one of the best-known names in gaming. He is developing The Witness, which is an open-world puzzler with rich 3D visuals.

Zo? Quinn: The Depression Quest developer didn’t join a major publisher after launching her own game. Instead, she joined the indie studio Loveshack Entertainment as its narrative designer while she works on her own full-motion-video game.

Dean Hall: This New Zealand-born developer created the extremely popular zombie-survival mod Day Z for the open-world military shooter Arma II. He now works for Arma developer Bohemia Interactive on the full, standalone version of Day Z. He is a rare example of someone going on to work at a large developer, but he has already said that he will leave Bohemia later this year to move back into independent development in New Zealand.

I’m sure you noticed a common theme or trend among the above developers. Most of the former big-name triple-A directors are now CEOs at their own studios. When it comes to the younger, always-independent developers, they don’t follow up their hits by seeking out an opportunity with a corporation.

So, what’s going on?

Running the show

A lot of what’s happening comes down to who is really in charge of a project. Going back to the Russos, working for Marvel and Disney, they had to answer to one of the world’s largest conglomerates. They probably agreed to a lot before starting production. But once filming started, and this is the case on most films, the director(s) are running the show. They decide what a scene looks like, they are the ones the actors go to for answers.

Again, in gaming, that’s not really the case and for multiple reasons.

Developers are corporations

When Disney brought in the Russos to make Captain America: Winter Soldier, they went on to hire a team of contract employees through their respective unions. They didn’t try to form a company that would focus on making similar movies with the same people over and over. Instead, the corporation will go on owning the property, and everyone who made the film can use their experience to get more work making another one.

Game development doesn’t work like that. It’s actually more like a musical band that comes together to make games in a process that’s reminiscent to producing albums — but only with up to hundreds of employees and a chief executive officer and chief marketing officer and chief financial officer and chief technology officer. Sometimes a developer works under a publisher with multiple studios. This leads to situations where the director of a game is fighting for control with multiple people who all have a say.

“For me it’s pretty simple — I’m getting older and the time to make something that I feel passionate about shrinks every day,” Goldfarb told GamesBeat. “I have no interest in burning two years of my life on a very large team making very large games — with all the friction and compromise that comes with it. Don’t get me wrong. I adore those games. I have loved making them in many cases. But it’s time to do something else that is closer to the bone.”

Team size

Many developers responsible for big games find that directing a triple-A project isn’t necessarily about coming up with ideas and executing. It’s all about delegating tasks to huge subsets of teams inside a studio and making sure everyone is communicating. That means someone at the top of an Assassin’s Creed release isn’t working on exquisitely crafting important scenes; instead, they’re managing a massive organization rife with office politics.

This doesn’t leave a lot of room for creative expression.

“At the end of the day, people want to be free,” said Goldfarb. “That’s the best way I can put it. Finding avenues for that freedom is harder in triple-A, where the sheer mass of the team size makes simple things like communication incredibly difficult. Some people thrive in those conditions and want that to be their end goal. I got there and was profoundly unhappy with how it made me feel. For now, it simply feels like less is more.”

Publishers hide the talent

On top of the corporate structure and massive studio sizes, publishers often bury the contributions of individuals under the name of the company. It’s hard to feel good about your accomplishments when the corporation pretends like they came out of thin air.

“I really, really dislike ‘hiding the developers.’ It reeks of insecurity,” Bleszinski wrote on Reddit. “If people know who the developers are, then the developers have leverage. It’s Business 101.”

Hell, Ubisoft allegedly fired Désilets after acquiring his studio from THQ. They had him back for a few months before splitting up again. We don’t know the state of Désilets’s game, 1666, which Ubisoft still owns, but we can infer that the publisher and the designer had disagreements that cost Désilets his latest game and his job.

Entrepreneurship vs. auteurship

Triple-A developers are looking for more control over the games they make. They want smaller teams where they can act more as auteurs … so some are starting their own companies and taking the role of CEO. That’s because gaming has always had a combination of entrepreneurship with its auteurship.

The director is the top of the film-making pyramid, but in game development, that’s the CEO. Bleszinski, Jaffe, and Inafune probably all had daily dealings and struggles with their previous executives. They likely realized to avoid ever having to compromise again, they would need that title themselves. To run the show, they need to run the company.

Independent developers don’t really have that same compulsion to operate their own studios as CEOs. Persson lets someone else hold that top job at Minecraft developer Mojang. Jonathan Blow doesn’t even really have a title at his studio, Thekla. Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes are just two guys making a game together.

That same thing that keeps them from calling themselves CEOs is probably similar to what has them all happy continuing to produce games on their own.

“Me going to direct Assassin’s Creed would not be a step up for me. It would be a step down,” Blow told GamesBeat. “[It would represent a loss of freedom in what I choose to do and a decreased quality of life.”

New tools make big budgets seem archaic

Earlier this year, Ubisoft released Watch Dogs. It’s an open-world game that tries to re-create a science-fiction alternative-world Chicago where players can hack the city using their smartphone. You can go anywhere in Chicago and do anything, and it took hundreds of people to make it.

As people played Watch Dogs, developer Hello Games was showing off its upcoming indie game No Man’s Sky. This sci-fi space-exploration game gives players the option to do anything and to go anywhere through an entire galaxy. Every player starts out on their own planets, which features unique flora and fauna.

The crazy thing is that Hello Games did the bulk of the work on No Man’s Sky as a four-person development team. Four people built a game that creates a galaxy while Ubisoft is employing hundreds to make Chicago.

Blow points out that more developers are starting to discover they have the power to do whatever they want without having to go through a publisher.

“Yes, the budget is higher [with triple-A], but I don’t care about that because I can do everything I want within the budget I have available now,” said Blow.

Development kits like Unity and Unreal Engine are making it easier than ever to build gorgeous 3D environments and characters. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are all welcoming developers to publish their own games digitally. Steam is enabling people to release unfinished games and use the proceeds from the sales to finish the titles.

Bleszinski could have stayed at Epic, but he’ll probably end up making the game he really wants now that he’s on his own, and it will probably look just as beautiful as a game from a big studio.

Then we have the money

Blow told GamesBeat that he doesn’t think the movie comparison works because directors are financially motivated. They’ll get the really big paydays by taking the blockbuster projects. Blow said he’s not financially motivated, and I believe him — but he also stands to make plenty of money when The Witness finally debuts on PC, mobile, and PlayStation 4 later this year (hopefully).

That’s true for everyone that is going from triple-A to independent and everyone who is an indie sensation now who doesn’t want to go on to direct the big property for Activision or Electronic Arts. Those companies might pay well, but it’s not so much better that it makes up for giving up the aforementioned freedom or quality of life.

“At the low end, indie money is a lot lower, and at the high end, indie money is a lot higher,” said Blow. “Notch has like a billion dollars, which is not an amount that any programmer or designer working for Ubisoft could ever make. A bunch of indies have many millions of dollars, which, again, is pretty rare for people working regular jobs in the mainstream. You probably have to have owned a chunk of a company to get that.”

Blow notes that a lot of indies are eating ramen and struggling to pay their rent. Those people, the smaller studios living game from game, could benefit from the regular paycheck that someone like EA provides — although that’s not a problem Bleszinski, Reynolds, or McMillen are really going to face.

If Reynolds’s new strategy game takes off, for example, it’s possible that it could end up as the next Clash of Clans. That mobile-social strategy game made nearly $1 billion last year. As CEO of the developer, that level of revenue would turn Reynolds into a millionaire.

And that’s really the big thing when it comes to why triple-A developers are going independent while the reverse isn’t happening. Going from independent to triple-A isn’t a step up. You’ll get more creative freedom, more prestige, a more tight-knit team with the potential for a game that looks and feels as good as a triple-A release. If all that’s true and you stand to potentially make more money? Well, I don’t think we’re done seeing recognizable talent leaving cushy positions with publishers to start their own thing.

Not every triple-A developer is going indie

Obviously, someone like Mario and Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto is probably going to stay at Nintendo for the rest of his life. Same thing with Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima — even if he started his own Kojima Productions studio inside of Konami. These industry legends aren’t the only ones who continue to work within the publisher system.

While Ubisoft apparently fired Désilets and isn’t missing him, the company still enjoys contributions from talented big-name developers like Rayman creator Michel Ancel and Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell: Blacklist producer Jade Raymond.

Raymond joined Ubisoft in 2014, and she has worked her way up to an executive producer role within the organization. She is continuing her ascent up the executive ladder as she is now the managing director of Ubisoft Toronto.

Ancel joined Ubisoft way back in 1990. He came up with the idea for the platformer Rayman and directed the beloved action-adventure game Beyond Good & Evil. He is most recently responsible for Rayman Origins in 2011 and Rayman Legends in 2013. While he works in the publisher system, he seems to have some creative freedom on his games. At the same time, Ubisoft does still exert a large amount of pressure on him. In 2013, the company had the developer go back and port Rayman Legends to a variety of platforms after previously promising it as a Wii U exclusive. Ancel and his other developers at Ubisoft Montpellier were famously not happy with that.

The truth is that when a developer can find creative freedom without having to start their own business, that is likely an ideal situation for many.

“Starting a business is a whole different beast then just making a game,” Ubisoft producer Patrick Plourde told GamesBeat. He went from working on Far Cry 3 to directing his own role-playing game Child of Light at the publisher. “Maybe I’m a special case, but right now I have so much freedom creatively that I don’t feel the need to go out and ‘make the game I always wanted to make.’ I am already making them now. It’s really easy to assemble a team of super talented people to make the game happen, and we can get a lot of exposure on the project that would be more difficult if I would be on my own.”

So not everyone is abandoning the publisher system even if it seems that way. Still, it’s hard to imagine a lot of independent developers trying to work their way up to Plourde’s position when they can get something similar on their own.(source:venturebeat)