Paul Wedgwood, head of Brink developer Splash Damage, says it’s impossible to make triple-A games exclusively for the PC because the projects just can’t attract enough money from publishers.
Although Splash Damage’s roots are firmly in the PC gaming scene and Wedgwood himself says he was a “hardcore PC guy” who initially resisted the move to console gaming, he recently expressed the belief that developers who want to create top-tier, “triple-A” games can’t get the budget they need if they limit themselves exclusively to the PC market.
“About two or three years ago we realized that we really wouldn’t survive if we only made PC games, since purely making PC games was incompatible with our goal of making triple-A games,” he said yesterday at the 2009 EG Expo in Leeds.
“You just can’t get the publisher budget to ever [use] an orchestra in London, and then go and record at Abbey Road and get the best voice actors if you’re only going to release on the PC, where there isn’t the sales to justify that kind of work,” he added.
Even as a die-hard PC gamer I was almost with him on this, until he got to the part about orchestras in London and recording at Abbey Road. What the hell does that have to do with making a game? It might be great for some ego-stroking in pre-release interviews but does anyone really care (or even notice) whether the background music in their game of the week was recorded by the London Philharmonic or a local amateur orchestra? When he says “the best voice actors,” is he talking about flying in Jean-Luc Picard for a half-hour of work, a quick lunch and 18 holes? (Come on, I loved Oblivion, but does anyone really think that was money well spent?)
Or is he just clouding his otherwise-valid point by saying something really stupid in order to distract us all from the fact that Splash Damage has never actually made a triple-A game, or any game at all for that matter? Brink might turn out to be absolutely brilliant but if it does, it won’t be because Wedgwood hired Sheena Easton and Mitch Pileggi to do voice work.
Source: VG247
