AAA game development can be 'soul-crushing,' says Warren Spector

The process of making big-budget, AAA games can be a challenging endeavor that breaks a person's spirits. That's according to Deus Ex and Epic Mickey designer Warren Spector, who told Games Industry International that developing such projects comes with many burdens.

"As cool as triple-A games are, the time and money that go into them now is just soul-crushing, at least for me," Spector said. "There are so many voices you have to listen to, so many legitimate stakeholders; it's just a lot less fun than making games should be."

Spector is recently jobless, after Disney shuttered Junction Point Studios at the end of January. The industry veteran does not know what he plans to do next.

According to Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios creative director Stefan Ljungqvist, big-budget games are here to stay, though they may decrease in number.

"I don't think big-budget games are going away," Ljungqvist said this week. "There's going to be less of them. But that's a good thing, because maybe we don't need 40 first-person shooters. I don't want to play them all [laughs], but maybe we need one, two or three."