Call of Duty dev: “games are becoming harder to make and more expensive to make”

By Phil Owen

Infinity Ward’s Mark Rubin, currently working on the upcoming megablockbuster Call of Duty: Ghosts, is disturbed by what he perceives as the high cost of entry into the AAA gaming space.

“It’s a scary thing, and I’ll take my Call of Duty hat off for a second here, but games are becoming harder to make and more expensive to make,” Rubin told Game Informer. “And I feel like smaller studios are having trouble. I can’t speak for them, but I would think they are having trouble making big games that hit the big AAA market because they’re harder to do.

“People want better and better graphics, they want more realistic looking art assets, and that comes at a cost and that’s a hard thing to have to deal with.”

On the other hand, of course, you have Devolver Digital, which publishes what they describe as “aaa” games like Shadow Warrior and Serious Sam, which could easily be passed off as $60 major publisher products despite being PC games that don’t come at the standard full price (you can pre-order Shadow Warrior on PC for $34).

Where do you think the line is between AAA and not-AAA? Does it even matter?