Big-budget games here to stay, says Just Cause dev

Big-budget titles are here to stay, though they may decrease in number, Avalanche Studios creative director Stefan Ljungqvist told Gamasutra.

"I don't think big-budget games are going away," Ljungqvist said. "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."

Avalanche Studios is best known for its creation of the Just Cause franchise, one that many would consider to be AAA. The studio is also behind free-to-play game The Hunter and downloable title Renegade Ops.

For Avalanche Studios, the "AAA" qualifier is all about quality and not necessarily associated with the size of a development team or a game's budget.

"It seems that everyone has a different definition of what AAA is," cofounder Christofer Sundberg said. "I think if you're a big publisher, AAA is associated with big budgets and huge risks. But I see AAA as a stamp of quality."

"We don't have to develop bigger, more expensive games," he added. "We don't have to hire more people or have bigger teams. We just want to make better games."

Avalanche Studios is rumored to be working on a third entry in the Just Cause series, which could be unveiled at the 2013 Electronic Entertainment Expo this June.