L’eterno debate over which titles are better between the two categories I’m about to talk to you about, well, really gets lost in the mists of time, that is, when major video game productions began to “rake in” numbers and attract the attention of companies and entrepreneurs.
Those who, until a few decades ago, had relegated the industry to a corner, the nerd niche, in plain words. But then the so-called triple-A games arrived, mega-productions worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster, and things changed.
Today, in 2025, we are once again witnessing the needle shift in what is the compass of preferences: on one side, AAA titles, announced with great fanfare, massive funding, and interests revolving around merchandising, action figures, and the like.
On the opposite front, we have independent games and titles developed by production companies that entrust their products to multiple smaller teams, with much reduced budgets, and yet… They work, they really do work. What is happening?
In a recently read article that aroused my interest (
thegamebusiness), insiders, managers, and investors were interviewed, sketching a snapshot of the current situation that raises questions but in turn provides interesting, even unexpected, answers.
Let’s take a step back: Cyberpunk 2077.
Oggi, the work of CD Project RED is known more or less by everyone and is considered a formidable title, following the numerous adjustments, the introduction of patches that in the years after its disastrous release have almost completely fixed the flaws, or rather the abysses that existed at the beginning. It was an investment of over four hundred million dollars, between production, development, and the massive marketing that was done before and after release: the result, because of the problems we all know about (it’s a hypothesis, but a plausible one if you think about it carefully), gives us one of the possible causes of the almost total downsizing by the companies that invest in video games, preferring to limit the risks inherent in financial debacles, as well as the dreaded rejection by fans.
Perhaps it is also in light of the Cyberpunk 2077 case study that Spike Laurie, one of the partners at Hiro Capital, says that “there is optimism. It’s about going back to the fundamentals of good business (…). Teams of 500, 900 and 1000 people have been reduced to much smaller and leaner groups, and this creates a good foundation.”
Laurie talks about good business, associating it with the possibility of working with much smaller development teams than those that usually work on triple-A products, and this is telling. Even if 2025 seems to contradict this trend, with titles that in soccer jargon we would say can carry the team on their own (Death Stranding 2 and Indiana Jones, just to name a couple, but I could go on), it should be considered that for the most part these are productions that were already in development some years ago.
One of the main questions raised in the article in turn reflects the “new vision” of today’s investors: why invest twenty or thirty million euros in an AAA project that will not ensure a significant return on capital, when we can launch projects of a different nature and with other, more effective and stronger means, perhaps with the presence of emerging game designers and rising talent?
As Alexis Garavaryan, CEO of Kepler and Kowloon Nights, rightly states, «successful teams tend to start more modestly, building gradually.»
What to build?
The new IPs, intellectual properties capable of disrupting both on a narrative and entertainment level the old that still resists, but it will not be able to do so forever.
The new frontiers are social networks, Discord taking the lead, the platforms with content generated by the users themselves (Roblox): this year has already become a borderland, and only those who have the foresight, the long-term vision and, why not, the courage to believe in a story will truly be able to make a difference.
