The legendary creator behind the Bioshock games, Ken Levine is set to launch his much-anticipated game, Judas this year. Ahead of the launch, he has stated that AAA will slowly start to lose attention if there’s no innovation going forward. 

In recent years, we’ve seen studios playing it very safe with AAA games. This is primarily because the budgets have gone sky high, which leads to massive losses if the game fails.

Why it matters: Because they mostly play it safe, AAA games have kind of become boring. The lack of innovation is so prominent, that many gamers have turned towards Indie games.
Judas is the next game of the Bioshock creator
Speaking to Gamesindustry.biz, Levine talked about his experience ever since Take-Two shut down Irrational Games in 2017, the studio behind the Bioshock games. Ghost Story Games is the studio behind Judas, which is very reminiscent of Bioshock. 

He further talked about the hurdles in game development, stating that the process was very simple back in the day, but now it’s very complex as they have to deal with maps, shaders, higher polygon counts, and much more.
Levine says developing a game other than Bioshock was risky

The problem with AAA is if you don’t innovate, especially in games, you start losing people because they’ve seen it before.

– Ken Levine

He highlighted that the problem with AAA games is that if you don’t innovate, the attention dies out. Players start to lose their focus quickly which leads to many studios sticking to major franchises to stay on the safe side.

Levine said that the Marvel Universe is a great example of people losing interest in something when innovation is lost. With Judas, he is moving away from the successful Bioshock franchise, which is a risk, but he hopes it pays off.