"It's harder to take risks," said Martin Sibille, a vice president at Tencent Games who previously spent 15 years with Electronic Arts Inc.
Top titles can cost up to $300 million to develop — the same as a blockbuster movie. And just as the film industry loaded up on superhero pictures, video-game makers are relying on well-known franchises as budgets balloon, according to executives at some of the industry's top companies.
"The video-game industry has not grown to accommodate budgets," said Saxs Persson, a vice president at Epic Games. "You're going to get things that people perceive as being safe. Nobody wants to play safe. Nobody says, 'This is a good, predictable game.'"
Investors have other options, such as a platform where users can make their own games — like Roblox Corp. or Epic Games' Unreal Editor for Fortnite — because, for big-budget games the "hit rate is too low, it's too unpredictable, it's too long-range, and too many things can go wrong, not right," Persson said.
Indie publisher Devolver Digital Inc. is one of the few firms that hasn't rethought its approach amid the pressure in the industry. The company works with game budgets in the $1 million to $5 million range, like hits Cult of the Lamb and Hotline Miami.
"Our strategy is to weather what's going on right now," said Chief Marketing Officer Nigel Lowrie, who says small developers haven't failed the company yet. "The risks are still there, but they're not so high that it's cataclysmic."
At the conference, one studio head's stark diversion from the trend generated praise from peers. Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke told attendees that his company won't make another sequel to last year's hit Baldur's Gate III. The Dungeons & Dragons-themed game will be the last in the series.
"We want to do big, new things," Vincke said on a panel. "We don't want to rehash the thing that we've done already."
