Borderlands 3 and The Elder Scrolls Online director says AAA game studios are playing it safe since 'you have people who get nervous because big money is involved'

Former Borderlands 3 and The Elder Scrolls Online director Paul Sage criticizes AAA studios for prioritizing franchise safety over creative risks, hindering innovation and resulting in repetitive game mechanics due to fear of harming established brands and unnecessary early feedback.

Borderlands 3 and The Elder Scrolls Online's former director Paul Sage reckons that some AAA studios are playing it safe because they're too worried about potentially harming big franchises. 

After leading some of the biggest games from Bethesda and Gearbox Software, Paul Sage has now left both to spearhead his own unnamed co-op shooter at his very own studio Ruckus Games, which is full of industry veterans like himself. But while speaking to GamesRadar+ about his new project - and how Borderlands' art is inspiring the game - Sage had some insight into the current AAA landscape.

Sage essentially argues that when studios become too caught up in the expectations people already have of a huge franchise, "we can't move in a direction that the creative people who are working on it want" and "you start to go back to the mechanics that you've had before, before introducing new mechanics." 

"And this happens all the time in franchise development," he continues. "I can't mention the specific mechanic [but] it's something that gets really frustrating. Again, when you walk about the way some of these huge franchises work, you're getting people who don't need to be a part of the creative process explaining how the creative process works."

Sage says that higher-ups sometimes worriedly interrupt in-development features, put them in front of focus groups, and then kill the exciting new feature that wasn't even ready to be shown. "And the best of intentions are there. But there's a point in time where, if you're halfway through a feature, you don't want people to look at it, because what they're seeing is not going to be the full picture," he explains. "I remember when I was a kid, my mom used to paint, and if you ever look at a painting halfway through, it looks terrible. And she'd say 'just wait for that painting to come out'. And so you want to get those evaluations done at the right time, but you have people who get nervous because big money is involved. And so they say 'let's put this in front of a user group right now,' and you're like 'this is not ready for it to be seen. At this point, they'll be getting half the picture'."

For more games like Borderlands and TES Online, check out our lists of the best MMOs and the best co-op games to play now.