Alexandre Amancio Slams AAA Game Development Model: ‘The Future Lies in Smaller Teams’

A former Ubisoft director isn’t buying it—big budget games are broken, and he thinks smaller teams are the fix. Alexandre Amancio, ex-Assassin’s Creed director, claims AAA development is “not tenable” due to “management-heavy” structures that prioritize bloatware budgets over creative execution.

“As soon as you surpass 100 people, the ratio of management to people working on the game explodes,” Amancio said. He advocates for film industry-style project-based teams, where developers assemble for specific projects rather than being treated as “software companies” with endless grindy management overhead.

Amancio reflected on Assassin’s Creed: Unity’s abandoned co-op experiment: “We found a clever way of hiding a character creation system… but we made the decision to make the title people would most recognise.” This admission underscores industry-wide struggles with delays, cancellations, and ballooning budgets.