Assassin’s Creed Unity Director Says Smaller Teams Could Save AAA Game Development
Alexandre Amancio, the creative director behind Assassin’s Creed Unity and Assassin’s Creed Revelations, has once again shared his views on the state of the video game industry. According to him, the current structure of AAA game development is broken — but he believes there’s a way to fix it.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Amancio discussed his vision for a more sustainable and creative future for big-budget games.
The Problem with Modern AAA Game Studios
Amancio, who no longer works at Ubisoft and now serves as Senior Vice President at FunPlus, argues that many major studios make a common mistake — assuming that adding more people to a project will solve problems.
He explained that many AAA studios “think that you can solve a problem by throwing people at it. But adding people to a problem stagnates the people that were already being efficient on it. It just creates a lot of variable noise … So I think the future lies in smaller teams.”
He used Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag as an example to illustrate his point.
“Let’s say you’re working on the naval system on Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag. That’s an amazing feature you can give to a co-dev studio because it’s self-contained: with good direction, you can give the co-dev studio autonomy over making it as fun as possible, as long as all of the points where it connects with the main game remain stable.”
Amancio believes that smaller, focused teams can work more efficiently and deliver better creative results, especially when they are given autonomy and clear boundaries.
He emphasized the importance of constraints in the creative process, saying: “Constraints are the secret behind any good art. And whether they’re artificial or they’re real constraints, they have to be imposed. Our brains are all pretty much structured the same, so given the same inputs, we’ll output similar ideas… I think ideas are important, don’t get me wrong… It’s constraints that force you not to use that first idea. Sometimes it’s financial or it’s technical, but that forces you to find something different, and mastery and excellence exists in those decisions.”
He concluded by noting that restrictions often lead to innovation, as they push creators to find new and better solutions instead of relying on the first idea that comes to mind.
In other news, rumors suggest that Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced — a remake of the classic game — might soon be announced, as a related domain name has recently surfaced online.
