> It doesn't take 800 people to make a mediocre game. You can make a great one with 8, but many big orgs aren't structured in a way to take advantage of that.
There is no sure path to making a great game (or a great anything), so corporate entities cannot depend on it - investors demand predictability. What they CAN depend on though is throwing hundreds of people into making a game of unknown quality (probably mediocre) but with amazing assets, and possibly with an outside IP (a Batman game etc.). So far, this strategy seems to be a valid one.
I don't know, some studios seem to have found a formula for consistently producing above average games. Look at From, Bethesda (the developers not the publishers) or Valve. I think it may have a lot to do with giving a medium sized team a long time, rather than a long one a short time.
Bethesda games are uniformly buggy piles of crap that are only fixed after 100s of hours of modded in fixes. Bethesda is only saved as an entity because they embrace modding.
Valve is a very bad example, yes they consistently make above average games, however they don't make many and as a dev studio i'm sure valve is deep in the red, they don't make money on their games, they make money on steam.
There is no sure path to making a great game (or a great anything), so corporate entities cannot depend on it - investors demand predictability. What they CAN depend on though is throwing hundreds of people into making a game of unknown quality (probably mediocre) but with amazing assets, and possibly with an outside IP (a Batman game etc.). So far, this strategy seems to be a valid one.