> Indie developers have shown that the cost to make a game is much lower than large game publishers are spending ... Then, over-budgeting leads to under-perform

> Indie developers have shown that the cost to make a game is much lower than large game publishers are spending ... Then, over-budgeting leads to under-performing. I think this is a great insight. Rather than taking a big gamble on a $100M game, you'd think a better strategy would be taking 20 smaller gambles on smaller teams putting out $5M passion projects. The revenue profile for a successful $100M game vs. a successful $5M game just doesn't seem that different. Maybe by a factor of 2 or 4, but not 20. I suspect it's the standard principal agent problem where no one decision-maker individually benefits from instituting this change; rather, each individual manager is trying to optimize the total headcount underneath them, leading to bloat. Are any major studios currently pursuing the "smaller passion projects" strategy? Paradox, maybe?