Ex-PlayStation Exec Shawn Layden Says There's Been a 'Collapse' in Gaming Creativity | Push Square

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Shawn Layden, the ex-PlayStation executive who held a number of high-profile roles across Sony Interactive Entertainment, believes there’s been a “collapse” in creativity across the industry due to “studio consolidation and the high cost of production”.

Speaking in Singapore at Gamescom Asia, as reported by GamesIndustry.biz, the executive noted that software used to get greenlit on the basis of whether it’s fun or not. Now it’s all about how much money a release can earn in return.

“[In the past] we spent a lot more time looking at games and not asking ‘what's your monetisation scheme’ or ‘what's your recurrent revenue plan’ or ‘what's your subscription formula’? We asked the simple question: is it fun? Are we having a good time? If you said yes to those questions, you'd usually get a green light. You didn’t worry so much about the end piece, for better or for worse. Of course back then you didn’t make a game for millions [of] dollars. So your risk tolerance was fairly high.”

Indeed, Layden notes that the industry is beholden to its ever-escalating budgets – and that’s stifling creativity as a consequence. “Today, the entry costs for making a AAA game is in triple digit millions now. I think naturally, risk tolerance drops. And you're [looking] at sequels, you're looking at copycats, because the finance guys who draw the line say, ‘Well, if Fortnite made this much money in this amount of time, my Fortnite knockoff can make this in that amount of time.’”

PlayStation prophet has the answers

Layden has spoken for quite some time about the need for shorter games developed in quicker timeframes on smaller budgets. But he also noted that middle-tier games, the so-called AA titles, have largely disappeared. “If you [can become] AAA, you survive, or if you do something interesting in the indie space, you could. But AA is gone. I think that's a threat to the ecosystem if you will,” he explained.

It’s certainly true that those smaller, mid-tier productions are struggling.