Yesterday, GamesIndustry International published an interview with Ubisoft Reflections' managing director Pauline Jacquey, whose studio is contributing to Watch Dogs' development. The big takeaway from the interview, as NeoGAF quickly picked up on, is the casual discussion of team sizes for modern AAA games.
According to her, a typical open world action game from Ubisoft can require between 400 and 600 people, and next-generation development may push this ceiling even higher for companies across the board. Ubisoft Reflections, which represents roughly one-third of the entire Watch Dogs team, currently has 90 people on the project. Do the math and you get 270 people, and that number is still growing.
When I think about all the studio closures in recent years, all the sordid tales of mismanagement and unfathomably long development cycles, I have to wonder why major publishers continue to insist that more cooks in the kitchen will result in a tastier meal. This inefficiency is precisely why the industry is in such a financial mess.
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via destructoid http://www.destructoid.com/aaa-game-development-teams-are-too-damn-big-247366.phtml