Reviving AAA Game Development: Insights from Former Assassins Creed Creative Director Alexandre Amancio

**Alex Amancio**, recognized for his contributions to **Assassin’s Creed Unity** and **Assassin’s Creed Revelations**, shared his insights on the future of AAA games in an interview with **GamesIndustry.biz**. He expressed that large studios are currently facing a crisis due to bloated teams, an aversion to taking risks, and an overwhelming focus on metrics rather than creativity.

According to **Amancio**, addressing the issues in AAA development starts with posing the right questions. He explained that game creation is a complex task, often illustrated by the so-called ‘wicked problem’: the process involves many variables, making it impossible to determine with certainty whether it has been optimized or has led to the best outcome. Thus, persistent challenges in development are a normative aspect of the industry.

He emphasized that the term «video game» is overly broad, encompassing everything from mobile card games to vast open-world experiences. Different scales and genres require tailored approaches.

The key, **Amancio** believes, is to identify bottlenecks where complicated processes can be simplified and to establish a control system that steers the workflow effectively, ensuring systematic and manageable project progression.

**Amancio** is of the opinion that large teams working on games like **Assassin’s Creed** are unnecessary and often create more issues than they resolve. He elaborated that when a project is handled by over a hundred people, the work structure drastically changes: there is a surge of managers overseeing other managers, leading to a cumbersome hierarchy that reduces efficiency.

Many AAA studios make the mistake of thinking that adding more personnel to a team can solve any problem. In reality, this often slows down those who were already working effectively and creates unnecessary noise.

According to **Amancio**, the future belongs to smaller teams. He sees the potential to adopt practices from the film industry, where a core group of specialists is supplemented by temporary personnel for specific projects. This approach facilitates the assembly of a team tailored to the unique needs of each game rather than maintaining a large permanent structure. Developers can rely on familiar, trusted individuals for various tasks over the long term.

He remarked that the gaming industry has traditionally viewed itself as software, but it is actually a peculiar hybrid, and there’s much to learn from film. In games, you can develop a core team and enhance it with outsourcing or collaborative efforts for specific tasks, ensuring that the right composition is in place when needed.

The distinct nature of game development, especially when seeking innovation, lies in the fact that many elements are created during the process, whereas films work from a ready script. **Amancio** likened the development process to a train.

He discussed how collaborative development and outsourcing in AAA projects should be organized, noting that the method depends on the specific title. Occasionally, a game contains distinct modules that can be nearly autonomous. He cited the naval system in **Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag** as an example that could be entirely entrusted to an external studio. If managed correctly, the studio has the liberty to make the module as engaging and high quality as possible while maintaining stable integration points with the main game.

It’s crucial to define clear boundaries at the outset. Once these limitations are understood, the team can operate freely within them, generating solutions and executing them effectively. Excessive freedom at the start often hinders both parties and turns the process into «throwing darts in the dark,» where nobody has a clear direction.

When the process is well-structured, collaboration between the main studio and auxiliary teams can function efficiently. Furthermore, with well-defined objectives, external studios can occasionally exceed initial expectations and contribute more to the project than planned.

Many games have faced the issue of production stalling after a rapid pre-production phase, as the team lacked clarity on their direction. **Amancio** noted that this is a common situation in the industry: with hundreds of people involved, the process can devolve into chaotic movement without a definitive goal.

He compared this to filmmaking: in films, a script is ready, allowing immediate filming to begin. In games, the equivalent of a script is a working prototype. **Amancio** believes the golden rule of pre-production is to produce something that at least conveys the essence of what you want to create, even if not all elements are finalized.

He highlighted that having a vertical slice demonstrating a sample gameplay experience does not guarantee project success. In larger AAA titles, it is often possible to amalgamate all elements, yet the overall picture still requires validation and refinement.

This is especially critical for systemic games that need simultaneous development of many interconnected systems. In such cases, a vertical slice usually necessitates creating a significant portion of the project to truly grasp the intended feel.

**Amancio** shared that while developing **Assassin’s Creed Unity**, the team was concurrently working on two concepts. The first followed a traditional narrative with a protagonist navigating events during the French Revolution, while the second focused on cooperative gameplay.

They devised an intriguing solution for the character creation system: instead of searching for a single ancestor in the Animus, players would look for an appropriate ancestor within a database of millions of individuals. The more accurately you described your ancestor, the quicker the system would find a match.

**Amancio** remarked that the French Revolution was so complex and multifaceted that **Unity** could have been more precise if each player experienced it from their own perspective instead of through the linear adventure of one character. Ultimately, the studio opted for a more recognizable option for the audience, though **Amancio** retained a personal interest in the alternative concept.

He also emphasized his attraction to systemic games—small but interconnected systems that generate unexpected situations. **Assassin’s Creed** has always been an open-world series; however, **Amancio** aimed to introduce more chaos and interactions. For instance, the bomb system in **Revelations** allowed players to manipulate crowds for their advantage. He believes such decisions would modernize and make the franchise more flexible.

**Amancio** acknowledged that compromises are always necessary. **Unity** was launched with numerous bugs, especially on new consoles, and adding more intricate gameplay would have significantly extended development time.

Moreover, the team was simultaneously developing the engine and first-time integrating multiplayer directly into the **Assassin’s Creed** world, as previously, the multiplayer component existed as a standalone game crafted by a different team.

**Amancio** addressed the issue of «feature creep,» where during development someone proposes a new idea casually, often after a weekend break: *»How about we add this?»* He believes such ideas need filtering, although he remains open to suggestions.

He enjoys demonstrating mechanics and decision-making processes to the team, enabling developers to dismiss 90% of concepts that truly don’t align with the game. He articulates the project’s foundation through key «pillars.» For **Assassin’s Creed**, these were assassinations, social stealth, and parkour—all intertwined, with interactions in one area impacting the others.

New features must intersect with these core elements: the greater the overlap, the higher the likelihood that the idea will make it into the game. The more it diverges, the lower its chances. By clarifying the rationale behind decisions to his team, **Amancio** empowers his colleagues to sort through ideas and then discuss only the truly significant ones, assessing them based on their impact, time, and risk.

In **Amancio**’s view, one of the principal challenges in large projects is time: such games take years to develop. While it’s theoretically possible to accelerate the process, this is only feasible if one avoids attempting anything radically new. For instance, a studio could create a meticulously designed city like New York or London complete with traffic, crowds of NPCs, and other systems and then reuse this world for multiple different projects—a detective game, a superhero story, and so on.

However, there’s a caveat: any significant alteration to a project necessitates reworking numerous dependent systems from scratch. For example, changing something in the traffic or NPC interactions could take months. Hence, the pursuit of innovation can slow down development.

The **GamesIndustry.biz** journalist cited the **Like a Dragon** series, where the reuse of locations and assets has been a plus: gamers enjoy revisiting familiar settings, and the studio **Ryu Ga Gotoku** has managed to release games at a high frequency. **Amancio** believes that such an approach could be experimented with in **Assassin’s Creed**, especially if audiences are honestly informed about the reuse.

**Alex Amancio**