Hero image: The Last of Us Part I key art. Image: Naughty Dog / Sony Interactive Entertainment, via Steam
Within a few days of each other, two of the most respected directors in games made nearly the same argument about where the industry is heading. One got nodding agreement. The other ended up apologising.
On 15 September, at the Japan Game Awards, Masahiro Sakurai announced that the Game Designers Award, which he has run as head judge since 2010, would end after its sixteenth year. His reason was simple: he spent a couple of years looking for someone to take over and nobody would. The last winner is Word Game, a text puzzle game from Taiwanese studio Team9.
He then said the harder part out loud. Originality, he told the room, does not have much effect on sales, because most people stick with what they know. But an industry that loses its originality, in his words, will slowly die.
Same point, different reception
A few days later, Edge magazine published an interview with Bruce Straley, who directed The Last of Us and Uncharted 2 and 4 during 18 years at Naughty Dog. Asked about the state of AAA, he said the verbs and experiences big games deliver had become, as he put it, boring. Then he named an example: God of War Laufey. He praised the craft behind every frame, and said that when he looked at what you actually do in it, he was not excited.
That was the line that travelled. On 18 September Straley posted an apology to the Laufey team at Santa Monica Studio, saying naming their game was a mistake that brought them unwanted attention. He did not walk back the argument. He said the problem was not the developers but leadership and a risk-averse industry chasing live-service hits, and that players may be tired of performing the same actions they have for 20 years.
Why one landed and one stung
The difference is not the argument. It is the target. Sakurai spoke in the abstract and pointed at a winner, a small game that did something new. Straley pointed at a specific unreleased game and the team still making it. Naming a project turns an industry critique into a verdict on people who cannot answer back until their game is out.
That is worth separating, because the argument itself deserves better than being dismissed with the example. Both men are describing the same pressure: big budgets make studios cautious, and caution produces games that are gorgeous and familiar. This week also saw Xbox fold more studios into fewer, larger publishing groups. Whatever the merits of that, it is not a move that makes risk-taking easier.
The fair reading of Laufey is to wait until February and play it. The fair reading of the week is that two veterans looked at the same industry and saw the same thing.
Source: AUTOMATON, Nintendo Life, VGC, Push Square