Saber Says North American Game Development Has Become Too Expensive, Pointing

After the negative fallout that came from Saber CEO Matthew Karch’s attacks aimed at a developer who called out the studio, in which Karch claimed he’d happily have replaced the former staffer with AI if he could have, the studio is looking to set the record straight. Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz at Gamescom, Chief Creative Officer Tim Willits made it clear that the controversial technology is not a part of the studio’s creative process, but that other uses of AI are.

“We’ve never replaced anybody with AI,” Willits said. “That’s crazy. And we don’t use generative AI in Space Marine, and Hellraiser, and Stuntman, and everything.”

“But we are experimenting with it, because we don’t know where in the industry it’s going to be effective, where people will like it, where it’s useful.”

The Price of North American Development Is Allegedly Putting Developers Like Saber Off

Another interesting topic that Willits touched on is development costs and what they can mean for the future of game development in the United States, where Willits says the price of development is a non-starter for Saber. He feels that the blockbuster model used by many major North American developers is not sustainable.

“Sometimes I play these games – I won’t mention the game – and I can just see the wasted money. I can see dollars falling out of the monitor,” Willits said. “The development cost for Space Marine 2 was a third of a major game that just released not too many months ago from a big North American studio. It was a third, and it sold 11 million more copies. You don’t need to spend $150 million to make a billion.

Instead, Willits points to their policy of investing in multiple smaller projects, with more focused plans and budgets, to find the gems gamers want, even if they didn’t know they wanted them until they existed.

“The problem is stuff like this: big North American development studios run about $2 million plus in burn rate a month. A month. SnowRunner, which has made hundreds of millions of dollars, cost us $6 million to make. That’s literally three months of development time in California.