January 12, 2026 – According to a recent report by Eurogamer, Alexandre Amancio, the former director of the “Assassin’s Creed” series, has shared his insights on the future of AAA game development. He believes that the industry should lean towards “smaller teams” and that large-budget developers can’t simply “solve problems” by “adding more staff.”
Drawing from his experience at Ubisoft, Amancio argued that the trend of creating ever-larger games with increasingly massive teams is becoming “unsustainable.” He referenced a theory suggesting that once a project’s team exceeds 100 members, the entire dynamic shifts dramatically. Beyond this point, the ratio of management to actual workers skyrockets, leading to an overly management-heavy structure where more managers are needed just to coordinate the existing ones.
Many AAA studios have fallen into the trap of thinking that adding more people will resolve issues, Amancio noted. However, injecting more staff into a project often causes efficient teams to stall and introduces greater chaos instead.
“I think the future lies with smaller teams,” he stated.
The report also highlighted Amancio’s observations on how the film industry has gradually adopted a production model centered around small core teams, with each crew being a “temporary team assembled specifically for a project.” While the game industry differs from film—where projects evolve continuously compared to the more linear process of filming a scripted movie—Amancio sees potential in borrowing from cinema’s approach.
“From the beginning, the game industry has seen itself as part of the software sector, but it’s actually a unique hybrid,” he added. “I believe the trend moving forward will be to rely on core teams and supplement specific needs through outsourcing or co-development. You need to assemble the most suitable team for each project, ensuring the right work is done at the right time.”
