Alexandre Amancio's blueprint for fixing AAA development costs and team bloat
Summary
Alexandre Amancio argues AAA studios must adopt modular, film-style teams to survive.
At DevGAMM Lisbon 2025, he diagnosed the crisis as structural, not cyclical.
His fix: lean permanent cores with co-dev crews assembled and dropped per project phase.
"The gaming industry has treated itself as being part of the software industry, but it is kind of a weird hybrid"
01
Why teams past 100 people break AAA development
Past ~100 people, the management-to-maker ratio explodes with no output gain.
"Adding people to a problem stagnates the people that were already being efficient"
Studios then hire coordinators for the coordinators, draining creative velocity.
Scope expands to match headcount, not vision, producing feature bloat by default.
02
The film-industry model as operational fix
Proposed structure: a stable "locomotive" core team of under 100 people.
Modular co-dev crews attach per production phase, then detach at phase end.
Co-dev works best on self-contained modules with tight specs and clear interfaces.
Black Flag's naval system is Amancio's example of a delegable, bounded module.
Over-freedom at kickoff is a failure mode: external teams waste budget without constraints.
Asset reuse (Like a Dragon / Kamurocho model) is viable if studios are transparent with audiences.
03
Pre-production discipline as the financial risk gate
Golden rule: never exit pre-production without a working prototype proving core experience.
"Just repeating that vertical slice doesn't guarantee the game will be good"
Systemic open-world games require critical mass of interacting systems before validation.
That raises pre-production cost but prevents far costlier mid-production restarts.
Feature filtering via design pillars replaces arbitrary creative director vetoes.
Constraints force teams past first-instinct ideas toward differentiated output.
04
Signals to watch for strategic positioning
If publishers credit named co-dev partners at module level, the modular model is scaling.
If a publisher ships an asset-reuse sequel transparently, monitor Day 1 sales vs. backlash ratio.
Co-dev service firms should reposition from asset execution to owning self-contained modules.
Studios scaling past 300-500 without modular separation are structural risks for investors.
Lean core-team setups with co-dev flexibility signal better cost control and IP longevity.
Events
Companies
—
Games
Locations
—
COMPILED BY GAMES ATLAS EDITORIAL
RELATED ARTICLES
EXPLORE MORE
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!