With Hideo Kojima soon to release his big Kojima production, what other devs would you like to see get a blank check to make exactly the game they want?
For me it would be the what feels like a safe choice of Tim Schafer. Don’t know what that game would be and it might actually be Broken Age but he’s a veteran developer with an interesting track record and again a safe choice.
Tarn and Zach Adams
me
the answer is me
I was going to say “in all seriousness”, but the truth is I have some great ideas that people should let me slap together. No, I am not egotistical. BUT: in more spirit with the question, I will always end up pointing to independent developers with ambitious ideas here.
I think currently I would go for Brendon Chung. He seems to prefer to work solo, but I would love to see him get more resources. Skin Deep is probably my most anticipated game at this point.
Another big one that come to mind Bennett Foddy, mainly because I think he’s lowkey one of the most important game designers of our time. I’ll also second Tarn & Zach Adams. He’s not an indie, but most of the games Warren Spector works on always are too ambitious for their budget, and I’d love to see them get enough polish to be fully realized. There are also plenty of designers who I think have great narrative design, but don’t really have the resources to make larger games. (I’m thinking of folks like Aevee Bee)
Additionally, I’d love to see someone like Nathalie Lawhead or Jack King-Spooner get that blank check just because I have no idea what on earth they would make with all that budget.
Honestly, there have been so many incredible games that are just deeply compromised by their budget and resources. Since games have a higher functional bar than something like books or music, there are a lot of incredible ideas that just don’t have enough behind them to really shine. Grrr, capitalism!
Yoko Taro. Would love to see him unhinged and being able to do the wildest of his ideas with the budget to polish and make a very depressing game.
Square give Final Fantasy 16 to Yoko Taro, you cowards!
And Swery and Mike Bithell
I also choose this girl’s indie studio
But yeah, there’s just so many indie devs who would could make something weirder and more wonderful than Kojima or any of the other big names ever could. Like, I could say Keita Takahashi, but there are so many smaller devs struggling to get their ideas out there who’d benefit even more, it makes it hard to pin down.
That said, give Aevee Bee the Persona license thank you very much
Give Kitty Horrorshow a blank cheque and you would get a game so terrifying I genuinely believe that no one could complete it.
Give it to me so that I can then redistribute the ressources to about 100 smaller developers so that each of them can make one cool, small game without having to worry about money.
Also give it to Kitty Horrorshow.
I think a lot of good could be done with a fund for small indie devs that gave them a living wage without the worry of needing to pay it back. Seeing the budget of AAA games and thinking if just part of that went on a smaller game it would mean the world for that dev.
Give me your money and I will make your 3D open world dinosaur photography sim.
Honestly I could think of a bunch of studios that made great games that seemed to have suffered from budget/time constraints which I wish could just get as much money/dev time as they needed. All of those are studios that make RPG or RPG-esque games, so I guess add Bioware, Irrational, Obsidian and Arkane to that pile. A new Mass Effect/Bioshock/Dishonored/Fallout with unrestricted resources sounds freaking incredible
I’m going to be lame and corporate for a second and say Treyarch. Black Ops 2 and 3 (2 in particular) was weird and ambitious in ways that make me think that folks at Treyarch are ready to do something beyond Call of Duty, and I’d really like to see what that is.
I had a couple of half cooked Chris Roberts jokes that wouldn’t come together so I’m just gonna leave this here instead.
Give Austin Walker a billion dollars to make his socialist mech game masterpiece. It will change the world.
Both of Lucas Pope’s games have been brilliant and utterly unique
SkateBird dev Megan Fox. Imagine the skateboarding bird game we could have with an unlimited budget.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Kitfox Games, even though nothing they’ve done so far has quite held together as tightly as I wanted it to. So, yeah, shower them with money and see what happens.
Give Austin Walker a billion dollars to make his socialist mech game masterpiece. It will change the world.
That’s Friends at The Table Season 6!
Scott Benson springs to mind, if only because I know the money would be spread fairly between everyone working on the thing.
Give all of Friends at the Table a blank cheque to make the COUNTER/Weight 12 episode OVA series we all deserve, tbh
Both of No Goblin’s games to date felt like they were straining against limited resources. Putting a Death Stranding budget towards filling a game with as many goofy jokes as possible would be a noble pursuit.
Secondary answer: Remedy, Alan Wake 2.
