Industry veteran explained why AAA games are afraid to take risks, and projects like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 are replacing them

Industry Veteran Explained Why AAA Games Are Afraid to Take Risks, and Projects Like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Are Taking Their Place

Don Daglow, long a presence in game-making, warns that the industry has grown cautious — not because people lack ideas but because the math behind big budgets squeezes out experimentation. When hundreds of millions are on the line, publishers tend to favor templates that have already sold, i.e., safer bets over adventurous design.

Daglow (credits include Dungeon, Utopia, Neverwinter Nights) points out that this shift changes incentives: massive funding brings corporate logic, and corporate logic often means less tolerance for failure. The result, he says, is that the AAA tag can feel like a constraint rather than a badge — one wrong move might mean bankruptcy, layoffs, PR disasters, etc.

Still, odd and original projects keep surfacing. Daglow mentioned Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as an example of a small team that managed to break through by doing something different; not every success needs a blockbuster budget to matter.

His takeaway: indie teams are the experimental lab these days. Big studios play it safe while smaller groups probe the edges — sometimes those experiments ripple outward and change what players expect. I don’t think it’s a neat, permanent switch; rather, it feels like an uneven, ongoing tug-of-war between caution and curiosity.