Den före detta chefen för Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, Shawn Layden, är en av alla höjdare som medverkar under Gamelab Live 2020. Han hade ett samtal med Dean Takahashi från GamesBeat på temat "Where do we go from here?". Det handlade naturligtvis mycket om nästa generation, gled även in på de skenande kostnaderna för storspel som idag kan ta fem år att utveckla och kosta miljarder kronor även utan marknadsföring:
"I don't think that, in the next generation, you can take those numbers and multiply them by two and think that you can grow. I think the industry as a whole needs to sit back and go, 'Alright, what are we building? What's the audience expectation? What is the best way to get our story across, and say what we need to say?'."
Layden menar att det helt enkelt kommer leda till att begåvade utvecklare tvingas stängas:
"It's hard for every adventure game to shoot for the 50 to 60 hour gameplay milestone, because that's gonna be so much more expensive to achieve. And in the end you may close some interesting creators and their stories out of the market if that's the kind of threshold they have to meet... We have to reevaluate that."
Får Layden själv bestämma, är det spel man kan klara på 12-15 timmar han saknar mest bland dagens mastodonttitlar:
"Personally, as an older gamer... I would welcome a return to the 12 to 15 hour [AAA] game. I would finish more games, first of all, and just like a well edited piece of literature or a movie, looking at the discipline around that could give us tighter, more compelling content.
It's something I'd like to see a return to in this business."
Har du saknat mindre titlar i dagens spelvärld?
Shawn Layden under sin era hos Sony. Han ville dock inte prata om varför han lämnade dem så hastigt.
