The End of AAA Titles?

It seems the games industry community is up in a tizzy about the future of boxed retail products. I can understand, they have been doing it for FOREVER. These just seem so bleak, if not also a little pouty:

-Gamings-Future-Looks-Uncertain-Says-Epic-Boss (also here at gamesindustry)
-The Necessity Of Making Free-to-Play Moves 
-Industry Vet to Young Devs: You Might Never Be AAA
-Edery_Nintendo_Had_Better_Watch_Out_For_Apple_Google

Talk about depressing; this is just four of them. Why is everyone so afraid of change? This is not the apocalypse everyone is making it out to be, which brings me to this blogs focus point:

This Is Not the End of AAA Titles
I will never stop playing or consuming them. My friends will never stop playing or consuming them. I doubt we are the ONLY people that feel the same. Look at it the way many developers view their fan base: if you can create a product for a very specific group of people, it actually makes it easier to develop that product because you have precedential releases that define what to do.

KOEI's Dynasty Warriors (DW) series is (in)famous for this. Those games have to be pretty cheap to make by now. There are very few new assets per release, but people buy them up (myself included). Now if our little DW community is large enough to justify new DW releases every so often, how does this NOT apply to any other title? MMOs are pretty much the prime example of this idea. They establish a community after the rush dies out, then they build for that community only. People who do not play Age of Conan do not care nor consume patches made for it: it is content created without the intention of expanding the consumer base.

So what does this mean for AAA titles? Do people REALLY think the next Call of Duty is not going to sell? Those games were large multi-bajillion dollar titles, and they sold just fine because of the precedential consumer base. Now not every game is Call of Duty (although many try to be). I think DLC is a great route for developers to squeeze out extra profits from the assets used in big AAA titles. It worked for Fallout 3, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, etc. What about treating a AAA title as a base for something that builds a ton of profit over time? It would allow them to stay competitive with F2P games.

F2P games generate very little revenue for each transaction, but they have multiple transactions over time. I have been playing League of Legends for about 7 months and have spent around 100 bucks on it. Thats a whole lot more than 60 (standard retail price), and will just grow over time. Now look at Fallout 3. It has five DLCs and one (amazing) sequel. Thats 6 new opportunities for revenue using old assets. When I say "old assets" it is not obviously true: there are many new assets in each game, but the MEANS by which those assets are created is already in place. It does not take a whole lot of people to utilize the same pipeline to create new stuff. A good modeler can poop out a mesh in a couple hours, it can be textured, rigged, animated, etc. by a small team in not that much time. The licenses are already owned, or better yet the in-house engines are already built.

So here's a list of what AAA titles of the future need to do to stay competitive. The strategy of a AAA title and developer is to spend a whole TON of money initially, but eventually reach a spot where future products that are of the same quality if not better than the old ones and can be created for the same consumer base for fractions of the cost.

• Establish a pipeline
• Build an in house engine like iD or Crytek did. Its expensive, but it cuts costs down the looooooong road. Plus you can sell the license to other devs. If not, buy an extended license. 
• Build an initial development team to build the pipeline; eventually lay off everyone for a tiny core team to produce future assets. Also, find everyone you laid off jobs because you are not a grinch.
• The goal of this part is to have something set up that will let you continue making future products on the same level as the initial release.
• Utilize intelligent game design to drive sales, not more money
• Ideas are cheap. Using various development methods to beta test ideas before financial commitment like iterative development, cheap ideas can be profitable ideas with low(er) risk.
• The industry is becoming less and less a gimmick or toy based industry. Longer console cycles, "fad-ness" of zany peripheral based games like Rock Band, and overall "meh-ness" of the Kinect means people want engaging experiences, not mere distractions. This applies to Facebook "games" as well: devs have to continually build new experiences to keep the core engaged.
• Use the establish pipeline to churn out great DLC. Its like writing a novel series: there is always the hardcore fan base that will buy everything you make. The goal is to get the fan base large enough to support every subsequent DLC release.
• Split studio into pieces.
• Schafer did this, sort of. The idea is to split your studio into separate teams that each work on different types of games. Apps are big right now, so have a steady revenue stream with your app side, while bigger more rewarding risks can be taken with a AAA side. I would argue that in the long run of a studio if you could flop 3 times on the AAA side for every Call of Duty-esque franchise to be established, thats a win.
• The goal (or point) to this is to keep able to afford the same team working together for more than one project. I have found through school that working with the same team over multiple projects leads to better results than having all new members every project.
• There is no game that can appeal to EVERYONE, but who says you cannot create a studio capable of appealing to everyone? 
• What we are seeing now in the games industry is what happened to every other media industry at some point. Specific types of games for specific types of people are emerging (not talking about Genres). There was a point when going to see a "movie" turned into going to see a "comedy" or "western" or whatever. People who play apps exclusively will generally shy away from picking up Dead Space 2, and vice versa. Most of my "hardcore" gamer friends shy away from Facebook games because they "are not games" and "are a waste of time." 
• Monetize multiplayer
• I do not mean charge for access; that will just turn away players. Monetize similarly to how Team Fortress 2 monetizes, micro-transactions. Imagine the multi-player side of a product being able to bring in more revenue than selling the box/download itself! Two streams is greater than one.
• The key is BALANCE. If any monetized aspect of the game will give one individual more power than another, it is imbalanced. World of Warcraft private servers are notorious for this. In fact, WoW private servers are great testing grounds for new monetization ideas (they're freeish).
• Great monetization balancing can be found in League of Legends, Vindictus, Team Fortress 2, and most korean F2P MMOGs.

These are just some ideas of mine, pure speculation from an observer. I do not want devs to give up hope for AAAs. There is still a large enough chunk of gamers who will pay to play them, and then some. The next billion dollar idea is to expand the consumer base for AAA titles. I have a couple that might work, but those aren't free!