AAA Is Not Dead

The wave of studio layoffs shows no signs of slowing in 2026. Industry voices increasingly call for a pivot to indie and AA games, painting AAA development as the villain. Glen Schofield — creator of Dead Space and The Callisto Protocol — pushes back hard.

"Everyone is putting down AAA these days. But who do you think started every single new console or platform? It was AAA games," he says. "The PS5 didn't come with instructions."

The COVID Bubble and Its Aftermath

Schofield traces the roots of today's crisis directly to the pandemic era. Billions poured into gaming as a locked-down world turned to home entertainment. That influx, he argues, was the problem.

"During COVID, we couldn't make AAA games fast enough. When you have that much money coming in, you inevitably give it to the wrong people" — not bad people, he clarifies, but inexperienced ones. "Some of them I know personally. He's 10 years away, she's 5 years away from being able to do this. They're handed a studio and a game at the same time."

The Creativity Gap: A Structural Flaw

Schofield's prescription is straightforward: stop mixing creative and management roles. The film industry, he notes, generally gets this right — even new directors handed major franchises tend to have proven track records.

"The due diligence by the people who are investing is terrible. Think of Bungie — they were overpaying, and not paying the right people. All you have to do is find who the true creative person is, as opposed to the person who just says they're creative."

He describes his own approach: surround himself with the best business minds so he can focus purely on the creative side. "You need creative people and you need management people — clearly separated."

Outlook [Expert Analysis]

Schofield's diagnosis points to a structural problem that transcends any single studio. With the post-COVID bubble deflated, publishers are contracting — and the question of who leads development has become a matter of project survival, not just HR policy.

The Callisto Protocol launched in December 2022, missing the pandemic gaming boom, and fell short of Krafton's sales targets. Striking Distance Studios faced layoffs, and Schofield departed last year — an ironic embodiment of the very dynamics he now critiques.

The industry's path forward is likely to involve smaller, more deliberate team structures led by verified creative talent, with clearer separation of creative and operational roles. The narrative of AAA's death may give way to a more nuanced story: AAA's restructuring.