"big budget games cant afford to take risks" - because of the increased financial risk that goes into making them, because of the larger number of jobs reliant on their success. wrong!
big budget games are directed by wealthier backers, who are more conservative, miserly, and scientific in their greed, less willing to take risks and more aware of what the safe bets are. theyre like this because its almost exclusively those characteristics that can lead to the concentration of wealth necessary for big budget games.
in contrast smaller games can be (but are not always) directed by less profit-obsessed backers (in the case of small indie/alt games, these are often the creators themselves, who are in effect paying for the game's production by volunteering their own uncompensated labor). this is because small fund windfalls are not infrequently achieved by those with aspirations other than wealth, through chance and/or more limited greed. often these are the children of relatively modest families, who could play videogames growing up, aspire to artistry, and have enough space in their lives to spend some of it working on their own dreams.
in reality, bigger budget games, with their wealthier and more comfortable investors, can better afford to take risks. a billionaire can lose many millions and still live in absolute comfort. instead, the class character of the directors (and/or the funders selecting and guiding the directors) leads to stingier, more cowardly decision making.
instead of 'affording risk', it is worth considering the conservative nature of larger projects as representative of the more conservative class ideologies of the wealtheir backers. the better off someone is, the less motivated they are to shake things up. the better someone has fitted themselves to the systems of today, the more likely they are to ascend the ladder and lead larger scale products.
while smaller games are more likely to be interesting or groundbreaking today, it is not due to their inherent virtue, but due to the social, economic forces that shape our entire society, including the production of games. there are of course many benefits to larger, better-resourced productions, but under capitalism it is mostly on the margins that countercurrents are able to emerge.
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ive been chewing on this thought for a while, but was spurred to finally put it into words by this piece analyzing statistical trends of different themes and settings against budgets.
January 18, 2023