It goes without saying that the video game industry has been undergoing profound changes for several years now. Many have sounded the alarm on this issue, and a former executive has offered a similar assessment.
Throughout his long career, Stéphane D’Astous has held several high-profile positions. In 2003, he was director of operations at Ubisoft before becoming general manager of Eidos Montreal for seven years. He has also served as general manager of Quantic Dream, director of operations at Krafton’s Montreal studio, and vice president and director of operations at iWOT Games Montreal.
In an interview with Thunderpick, D’Astous expressed his concern about the “great consolidation” of the video game industry and the rise of new players such as Tencent, NetEase, and Saudi Arabia. In his view, things are changing, but not “for all the good reasons”. He believes that “The people with the money and the decision power are much fewer, and their pockets are much deeper.”
Furthermore, he also states that today’s decision-makers “don’t have the same DNA of the decision maker 15 years ago; it’s much more Excel than passion-driven.” He claims executives now have unrealistic expectations, which leads to extremely long and costly development timelines.
“The teams were quite small back in 2005-06, and it gave birth to a bigger, ambitious game, which is a logical business creative process to follow. Not having the discipline of saying ‘no’ to what we call ‘scope creep.’ Somebody must say if it’s not reasonable, to say no. All this is also to have proper stage-gating, because this will avoid digging the hole deeper if it’s in a bad way.”
