AAA Games’ Future “Lies In Smaller Teams,” Says AC Unity Director
Alexandre Amancio, the former Creative Director behind high-profile titles like *Assassin’s Creed Unity* and *Assassin’s Creed Revelations*, has long maintained that the traditional structure of AAA game development is inherently flawed. Despite having shifted roles—he is now serving as a Senior Vice President at FunPlus—Amancio recently offered his prescription for fixing the industry’s endemic inefficiencies.
In a candid discussion with GamesIndustry.biz, Amancio pinpointed the core issue: the tendency of large studios to “solve a problem by throwing people at it.” He contends that this approach of continually ballooning headcount is counterproductive, arguing that adding more individuals ultimately “stagnates the people that were already being efficient” and injects detrimental “variable noise” into the development process. In his professional opinion, massive team sizes often sacrifice streamlined creativity for sheer scale.
Amancio maintains that the future success of high-budget blockbusters lies in a fundamental structural shift. He believes the industry must adopt leaner operations, asserting that the future rests “in smaller teams.” To demonstrate how immense, complex projects could still be executed under this model, Amancio even used *Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag* as an example of how collaborative smaller units could successfully tackle a huge open-world experience.