Let's assume that you are a game producer with some money burning a hole in your pocket and you want to produce a AAA game that is a collaboration of three different indie developers.

Which three developers would you try to recruit ?

What kind of game would you have them make?

And how much money would you throw into the project to get it done right (keeping in mind that you would like to make profit)?

how it would work i dont know.

The freedom of minecraft
the lore of CDPR (i consider them indie still) and the Witcher franchise
with the humor of instant kingdoms

as i said no idea how it would work but could be interesting

Sell Elder Scrolls franchise to... I don't know, Running with scissors?

So that they in turn outsource the design to a crappy Russian developer, and ultimately bring us adventures with the magic schools of TitBouncing, PissWeaving and AIDSJokes.

The ultimate sequel they deserve. ;)

EDIT: Never mind, misread the 'indie' part.


World of Warcraft world design team.
StarCraft 2 balance team.
And writers from Troika / White Wolf / whoever these days is in charge of writing for World of Darkness.

The goal: balanced (classes and abilities), first person WoD MMO of epic proportions and storylines.

I'd hire everybody who worked on Sacrifice, and give them money to make a sequel. I'd give them a budged of at least 100.000.000 $

I'd opt to tell the involved story of a peaceful yet capable monk who retrieves a set of holy writings from India. His moves are impossibly precise, and the combat satisfying. The dialog choices far-reaching, and the adventure colorfully narrated in verse. Simply pausing to enjoy the scenery will take any player's breath away.

The Spiderweb folks for aesthetics.
The Torchlight people for narrative.
And the Big Rigs gang for mechanics.

Jane Jensen is pretty much indie these days so i'd pick her to make something awesome along with the dudes that get published by wadjet games.

I'd get guys from Obsidian / Troika and get them to make a cRPG set in Warhammer universe.

If I were a billionaire, I'd pump tons of money into it (lets say, 100-200 mln) in order to get the RPG game I've always dreamed about:
- huge world, which would be a replication of the WH world (not the whole though, as it would cost even more money)
- complete non linearity, the world would be populated with loads of characters, and you could become anyone - from a thief hanging out with some scumbags, a dwarf engineer building some crazy machines, build up an army and conquer a whole province, join the chaos forces, etc etc

Rather than having one main storyline, it would be comprised of 'side quests' (some of which would be big enough to be called a main storyline in some other game).

To summarise it, it would be a huge living world offering countless opportunities to the player, in a quantity so big, that it would be nearly impossible to complete everything in the game, as the quantity of weapons, quests, characters would be huge.

It would be fairly realistic, meaning if you do some bad sht, you're gonna become a wanted man - propably having to avoid the city, or be really carefull (defeating hordes of guards by yourself would be impossible).

The point of realism would be forcing the players to roleplay - depending on your race, gender, your reputation, your social position everybody would react to you differently. You'd have to eat, sleep (if you're out of the city, you'd have to set up a camp, and before going out of the city, buy some provisions, or hunt if you know how to do it).

You could have a limitless group of companions, but getting them wouldn't be so easy - this element would also have to be realistic.

It would be a game that people could be playing for years. The Elder Scrolls franchise would fail miserably - who would buy any of their games if you could get one that is better in every aspect?

On top of that, multiplayer which would be seamless to the single player experience (other players also can talk to others).

The death in the game would be permanent, unless you found a way to defy it (by becoming a very powerfull mage like Nagash, or by pacting with the chaos forces).

Basically, the whole point of it, would be to make a game that tries to give the player as much freedom as one would get during a PnP RPG session.

Another idea - get CD Projekt to make a game in Neuroshima universe (it's a polish PnP RPG set in postapocaliptic USA, the setting imo is more interesting than that of Fallout).

I would love to see what double fine, Subset Games and paradox come up with as some sort of massive strategy roguelike with the vision of double fine behind it .

Really as long as it was an amazingly fun game and people enjoyed it i would put everything i had into it to the point of broke or breaking even.

1. Which three developers would you try to recruit ?
– Ron Gilbert
– Tim Schafer
– Telltale Games

2. What kind of game would you have them make?
– Monkey Island - The Return

And how much money would you throw into the project to get it done right (keeping in mind that you would like to make profit)?
– Whatever it takes to make the definitive sequel to the two most awesome adventures ever. Which isn't all that much compared to AAA development in other genres, or so I've heard. Acquiring the rights from Disney might be a bit pricey but the turnover on the other hand would be, as financial experts call it, "fucking gigantomagnormous".