Former WoW Developer Says Workers Don’t Want To Return To AAA Companies

Summary

• The rising scale of AAA has increased the divide between AAA and AA/indie games.
• AA games are integral to innovation within the greater gaming industry.
• The scale and restrictions of AAA development have scared off even the most passionate developers.

With the gaming industry steadily growing every year, the monolithic AAA gaming companies have become virtually untouchable. Despite the strong AA and indie scenes, it still feels like a competition to see who can get picked up by a massive publisher or whose work will reach the AAA level.

For many developers, hitting AAA-level employment is the ultimate goal, but Chris Kaleiki, a former World Of Warcraft PvP and class designer who is now leading the brand new Notorious Studios, states that he and his coworkers see things a little differently.

With constant burnout and game releases bearing more and more effort, often taking years to barely reach early access, the job of AAA developer is more stressful than ever. In a recent interview with Gamesradar+, Chris Kaleiki explained how his smaller team has a new, profound outlook on AAA development.

He discussed the growing divide between indies and AAA titles and how his team of former AAA developers are happy to be at their current AA-budget jobs and leave the massive scale game industry behind them.

Kaleiki’s new gaming studio, Notorious Studios, is already toting its upcoming PvPvE extraction fantasy title, Legacy: Steel and Sorcery. Coming from former WoW developers, the worldbuilding, setting, and gameplay look very promising.

Coming from this WoW background, Kaleiki and his employees know the struggle of AAA development. He recounts how AAA games have “become more expensive to develop, more complicated, more complex, [so] development times take a lot longer.”

While indie games used to be rare, and AAA games released constantly, the flow rate of massive budget titles has slowed, leading to “this real stretch between indie and AAA.” Despite AA studios bridging the gap, your average experience is often divided into these opposite categories.

The lack of AA gaming studios has been a contentious issue, with important figures like former Sony chairmen often noting that a lack of AA gaming has hurt the industry. AA games are the space to experiment with new ideas and mechanics, so without their constant flow, new ideas within AAA have also ceased.

In the interview, Chris Kaleiki similarly expresses how AA dev teams, like his very own, have become underappreciated within the greater gaming sphere. If respect comes to teams of their size, it could mean the growth of gaming as a whole.

Why Developers Don’t Want To Return To AAA

An integral part of the interview is when Kaleiki describes how his team, largely made up of former AAA developers, are happy in their new positions. He compares the AAA industry to colosseums and monuments that, while impressive and expensive, are not as enticing as one may think to actually build.

He explains, “it’s really thrilling as a game dev to work on the Colosseum… I don’t think that’s going to go away, because players do appreciate those types of games. But it’s not sustainable building this many Colosseums.”

More importantly, who wants to work solely on massive projects that strip individuality from every worker? With tons of management, red tape, and overall guidelines restricting everything that goes into them, large-scale development, while fantastic for some, can be frustrating for others.

Overall, Kaleiki has a credible viewpoint on this side of the industry, having worked once on one of the biggest MMO RPGs of all time and simultaneously formed a new studio focused on smaller AA experiences. In doing so, he can accept how AA teams on a smaller scale come with inherent perks, such as the lack of restraint.

Most AAA devs who have joined our team really do not want to go back to AAA because of some of those perks. But like I said, AAA is fun too because you get to work on a large product that a lot of people know about. You’re working on the Colosseum

AAA development must be insanely time-consuming and stressful. Hearing horror stories about crunch, or even worse, the unpaid and predatory overtime, it’s hard to imagine how some AAA developers could even consider returning to those types of jobs.

We highly recommend the full Gamesradar+ interview if you’re interested in what Kaleiki has to say. Additionally, we recommend you check out his studio’s upcoming title, which helps show the exact scale of games Kaleiki hopes to see in the coming years.