Underneath the professional atmosphere, there was a defiant tone to this year's Game Developers Conference. During the GDCA awards, Larian Studios boss Swen Vinckeabout the state of the industry. In an interview with PC Gamer, Summerfall Studios co-founder and former Dragon Age lead writer David Gaider expressed similar conviction that something has to give.
"There's this fear that exists—if we don't have everybody working overtime and we don't make AAA games that have $200 million budgets and the focus is on photorealistic graphics and 1,000-hour playtimes—we need to pack all that in and work everyone to death making it and that's the only way to make games.In past years, conversations about crunch at large studios were central to dissatisfaction with the state of the industry, followed by developers from some studios making.
The strategy seems to have worked for Summerfall's first project, a musical take on RPGs called Stray Gods.