Takashi Iizuka, the producer on Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, has said that AAA developers can take lessons from how indie studios operate.
Speaking to GamesRadar+, the Sonic lead said that the precarious economics of AAA development are not lost on Sega, saying that even when the work is done and a game is out in the wild, it needs to sell huge numbers to make sense.
This comes as Sega revealed Sonic Pico Park at Summer Game Fest, an indie title made by the developers of Pico Park. It’s the latest example of AAA giants handing their megaton IP to smaller studios, following titles like The Rogue Prince of Persia and Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse from Evil Empire.
“I can’t really speak for the other companies and maybe what they’re thinking, but you know, from a Sega perspective, we do realise that making our big titles takes a lot of time, a lot of money,” Iizuka said.
“It’s a huge investment of the staff and the resources that we have, and then once you’ve invested all that time and energy into something, you really need to sell a lot of units in order to survive in the industry.”
He contrasts this approach with indie studios, which can come up with ideas “very quickly” before “moving forward and making more stuff”, adding that companies like Sega could “learn from the indie development scene”.
“[It’s] really stimulating working with those indie developers, because you get to feel that smaller team energy and that quickness of working to get an idea into an experience,” Iizuka said.
Iizuka compared the economics of the games industry to those in the film industry, pointing to the huge sums that companies like Disney are betting on plays that could take “many, many years” to pay off.
“But then you see movies like Backroom, these much smaller creative efforts that are still becoming these great successful hits,” he said.
“So I do see a parallel in the movie industry to what’s kind of happening in the game industry with the amount of investment and the actual entertainment that people are consuming and enjoying.”
