Assassin's Creed actor and metroidvania dev slams out-of-touch execs chasing the live-service dragon: "Too much money is being spent on games people do not want"
Oct. 15, 2024“Games are still very much treated as a business rather than necessarily as an art form”
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Assassin’s Creed actor and metroidvania director Abubakar Salim says “too much money is being spent on games people do not want” by figures “who are not in touch with the medium” and are chasing the next live-service hit.
Speaking withDexerto, Salim - who stars in House of the Dragon Season 2, played Bayek inAssassin’s Creed Origins, and last year released indie MetroidvaniaTales of Kenzera: Zau- suggested that the process of making his own game “made me have a much deeper appreciation for developers and the work that goes into it.”
However, he also suggested that that process had opened his eyes to the fact that “games are still very much treated as a business rather than necessarily as an art form.” That approach, he says, is why “a lot of these big game publishers and companies are going for the games as a service model. They want to try and recreate the next Fortnite because it’s going to make them more money. Games shouldn’t be about that. It shouldn’t be about money, it should be about expression.”
Following up on those comments on Twitter, Salim said that “too much money is being spent on games people do not want.” The chase for the next Fortnite, he says, means that “there are drivers in the industry who are not in touch with the medium and desire to make the next big [game as a service].”
Salim’s comments certainly ring true around several high-profile live-service flops in recent years. The biggest of those wasPlayStation’s Concord, which was shuttered after just 14 daysdespite reports thatthe project’s budget stretched well into nine figures. Elsewhere, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Redfall were both examples of live-service pivots from traditionally single-player studios that were critical and commercial failures.
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I’m GamesRadar’s news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I’ve run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam’s latest indie hit.
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