When Josef Fares speaks, it rarely sounds like PR. And that's precisely why the industry should listen closely when the Hazelight CEO and It Takes Two-Maker says: “I wouldn’t be able to live without a AAA title.” This is not a nostalgic glorification of large budgets, but a clear warning against an industry that is currently becoming too reliant on supposedly safe, mid-range projects.
The trigger is the success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33An AA game that has generated attention, praise, and sales figures. For many publishers, this is apparently a sign to take fewer risks, allocate smaller budgets, and manage more manageable productions. Sounds reasonable at first, but that's only half the story.
AA Success vs. AAA Vision: Why Diversity Remains Important
Fares' point is both simple and uncomfortable, as he explains to TheGameBusiness As explained, diversity doesn't arise from avoidance, but from balance. AA games, indies, and blockbusters fulfill different roles. Anyone who believes that AAA titles can simply be replaced by cheaper alternatives misunderstands what major productions achieve.
You can't develop a GTA for 10 million dollars. You can't force Naughty Dog into an AA budget constraint without stifling its ambition. And you can't expect technological breakthroughs, new standards, or global pop culture moments to emerge from projects designed from the outset for cost control rather than ambition.
Interestingly, Fares is by no means blind to the problems of AAA studios. He knows that budgets exceeding $100 million generate anxiety and that the risk is greater. But he rejects the oft-repeated excuse that innovation is impossible under such conditions. Rockstar, Nintendo, Naughty Dog – they all regularly prove otherwise.
What Fares criticizes is not AA itself, but rather the trend-driven thinking and the industry's knee-jerk reaction of immediately deriving a new dogma from individual successes. Today it's service games, tomorrow AA, the day after tomorrow AI-generated content. In between, there's little room for long-term visions.
The danger of convenience
This warning comes from a developer who doesn't even work in the AAA segment. Hazelight builds focused games with a clear concept, a manageable team, and a conscious avoidance of trends. That's precisely why Fares' statement is so important. He's defending AAA not out of self-interest, but out of conviction.
The real danger isn't that AA games will become more successful. The danger is that publishers, out of convenience, believe they can forgo blockbuster titles. That wouldn't be progress, but a creative regression.
Or, to put it less diplomatically: An industry that fears big ideas shouldn't be surprised by stagnation.
It depends. Sometimes you have to lower expectations for AAA titles when no one can keep up. It's better to keep details and resolutions manageable in large projects to ensure production costs and feasibility on handhelds, etc., and so the alternative isn't anime or pixel games.
If you call that AA, then I'm fine with it. I find 90% of indie games awful, and I increasingly associate AAA titles with rip-offs and terrible "service." In fact, mid-budget single-player games have been the most fun for me in recent years. Not the Claire thing, though—more like Yakuza, Kingdom Come, various racers, and so on.