Naughty Dogs creative director, Neil Druckmann, tycker att utvecklare till dyra AAA-spel kan lära sig en del från mindre indietitlar. I synnerhet när det kommer till hur karaktärer porträtteras i dem.
I en intervju med Games Industy International säger Druckmann hur han blev "blown away" av indiespelen Gone Home och Papers, Please, mycket på grund av deras sätt att berätta en historia och spelmekaniken i dem.
"With big AAA titles, it's sometimes hard to make these gigantic shifts as far as what a game is or what kind of story it could tell," säger han.
Druckmann påpekar att tack vare den växande indiescenen så är det möjligt att förändringarna kommer att ske snabbare hos de större utvecklarna.
"As more and more examples come to light, I think more people are pursuing better narratives. And I hope criticism of games and game narratives is becoming more sophisticated. I think before you would have had a hard time talking about tropes and how women are represented in games, or how characters of color are represented in games. But now I'm kind of excited by the discussion and the kind of criticism games are getting."
Han säger att många av dagens stora AAA-utvecklarna vill satsa säkert, men tror att framgångsrika indititlar kommer få dem att själva våga ta sig an nya koncept.
"A lot of times in AAA games, people feel like they need to play it safe because there's so many parts of a giant corporation working on a global scale to launch a title that they don't want to take too many risks. But once you have enough evidence to say 'Hey look, this is actually not a risk, this can succeed commercially,' then creativity can flourish and new avenues can be pushed."