By Chris Kaleiki, a veteran developer with 13 years of experience at World of Warcraft, who is now leading Infamous Studios, has explained his motivation for departing the AAA industry to focus on creating smaller games.
Today, Kaleiki engaged in a detailed interview with GamesRadar+ regarding Infamous Studios’ inaugural game, Legacy: Metal & Sorcery, which he describes as a AA title that occupies a space between indie and AAA. The discussion frequently veered towards some of the key differences, in Kaleiki’s perspective, between indie, AAA, and the unclear area in between. These differences significantly influenced his decision to leave Blizzard back in 2020.
“When you’re a game developer in AAA, you’re engaged in all aspects of game development, such as designing, implementing features, and iterating on content. However, it’s vastly different from what we’re pursuing now, which involves creating our game from the ground up, establishing core foundations, and developing philosophies and principles regarding what we want to achieve with the game,” he stated.
It seems that a significant reason for Kaleiki’s departure from Blizzard stemmed from the intense compartmentalization of developers into specific teams, focusing solely on particular aspects of the game, which left them with a limited understanding of the overall product being developed.
“I observed that the studio’s structure and their objectives were evolving, alongside the types of games we aimed to create,” Kaleiki elaborated. “I realized that while I hadn’t personally changed much, the studio had, and that’s largely why I moved on.”
“As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t feel like a game developer in any meaningful way. I perceived myself more as a designer for World of Warcraft, yet I lacked a comprehensive understanding of the entire game development process, which I now possess.”
Kaleiki also concurred that “as these larger AAA studios expand, it becomes increasingly challenging for them to maintain a connection with players, turning it into an issue of scale.”
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