The head of development of the platformer Astro Bot and the head of the Team Asobi studio, Nicolas Doucet, in an interview with Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier, explained the secret of the game’s success.
Image source: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Let us remind you that even before its release, Astro Bot managed to become the most highly rated game of 2024. According to Doucet, the main keys to the success of the project were three factors:
- The team size is modest by the standards of the AAA industry – 60 people. Thanks to the numbers, everyone in the team could make a tangible creative contribution;
- The developers quickly decided on the basics of the game design – this relieves the team of the most difficult task (making the gameplay fun);
- The team’s restraint regarding the scope of the game – 12-15 hours of concentrated fun Doucet considers 40 hours, spread thinly over content, to be more valuable.
Every two weeks, employees gathered to discuss the progress made and “feel” the current assembly (in modern industry, this is, oddly enough, rare). At the same time, everyone was allowed to speak out what element of the game they wanted to improve.
«When the team is very large, you can lose sight of the purpose of the work. If you’ve been painting backdrops for three years, you don’t really understand where certain trees will end up. This can result in extra work. The context (what I’m doing and why) is very important,” says Doucet.
Many Team Asobi employees have been working with each other for ten years, which also worked in the game’s favor
Development of Astro Bot took three years. The game may not bring in billions of dollars, but due to the small size of the team, its payback threshold is relatively low.
«This is a model for a more sustainable industry, in which publishers do not chase huge service games that no one needs, but are content with more modest and cheaper to develop games,” Schreier is sure.
Astro Bot was released on September 6th on PS5. On the same day, the servers of the hero shooter Concord, which debuted on August 23, were closed. The game cost Sony nine figures, was created by a team of several hundred people, and attempted to replicate the success of Fortnite.