Working in the AAA video game industry is tricky (not to mention stressful). The need to provide a strong play experience combined with immeasurable has seen several game stick to a tried true formula all throughout.
And even then, as Ubisoft’s Jade Raymond (currently working on Splinter Cell: Blacklist) says, even perfection is an understatement.
“One of the things I see that’s different [about the industry today] is that our audience expects perfection. Before, there were only, say, two million people playing games – they were real fans and they were playing every game. They were willing to forgive bugs, and try things that weren’t as much fun because they were different.
“Now, there are 30 million people buying and they only buy the top five. They expect perfection. I think that growing up with everything being so good, so easy to use, there are certain expectations.”
Perfect is fleeting, for sure, but as long as the developers keep changing our definitions of it, we won’t be attaining it any time soon.