Game Dev: “Stop Spending 300 Million+ on Games, Season Passes Need to Go for Online Games”

During an interview with Twinfinite, Luc Bernard, Chief Creative Officer of development studio, Arcade Distillery, wishes developers and publishers would stop spending so much on games.

Because some games are so expensive to make, they end up needing to sell an absurd amount of copies to reach financial goals – Or include season passes or microtransactions. Perhaps that’s why indie games are thriving so much.

I asked Bernard if there was a practice in the industry that would go away. He said, “I wish [developers] would stop spending 300 million – 400 million on games. That’s just me, of course.” 

Bernard goes on, ” Don’t get me wrong, I loved playing Assassin’s Creed: Origins – that was one of my favorite games of the past year, you know? It’s good to have these huge games, but I just wish they [developers] would do more like Focus Home Interactive, where they release smaller games.”

Since games haven’t gone up in price in over a decade, I asked Bernard if he thought the price should go up, to account for inflation and development costs.

Bernard said, “No. Think about a game with a season pass – It’s like $100.00. I suppose online games like Destiny shouldn’t have a season pass. I think it should be free updates with lots of microtransactions.”

I asked him then if we should just do away with season passes, in general.

Bernard responded, ” For online games, not single-player games – Not for RPGs. Give me more and more of those season passes. I actually wish [developers] could continue them forever. But for multiplayer games I think they should ditch the season passes.”

He goes on, “I just think you don’t need to be number one. I’d like for the industry to not make so many big blockbusters.”

Perhaps if we had more AA tier and A tier games, games wouldn’t need to keep you around so long to offset the cost of spending for development? It’s fascinating to see where the industry is today and it will be interesting to see how it changes in the coming years.

Our full interview with Luc Bernard will be out later today.