Getting More Out Of Your AAA Teams: A Response for Jade Raymond

The head of Ubisoft Toronto, Jade Raymond, was quoted recently on the topic of rising costs of AAA development. Her concern is that innovation is threatened because of the huge investment required to produce top-tier games. When given the floor to talk about keeping costs down, her first approach was, "make people more efficient."

While the notion of giving your team better tools to create "10 times the amount of content" for the same effort is laudable from an efficiency standpoint, here are a few more suggestions:

I'm waiting for any of the AAA studios -- and maybe Ms. Raymond's will be the first -- to recognize that one of the most cost-effective ways to get more out of your teams is to give them better leaders.

Or are your developers not worth it?

Of the major studios willing to invest $100 million to make the next blockbuster game, which will be the first to invest a fraction of that to make sure their developers have the best possible leaders?