Eidos-Montréal founder and Deus Ex: Human Revolution general manager Stéphane D’Astous explains that the AAA games industry has become “more Excel than passion-driven” this generation.

Speaking to Thunderpick, D’Astous explained that the money has largely shifted over the last 15 years. While there used to be a wide swathe of publishers, there are now just a handful that have all of the industry’s money, and that’s led to a consolidation of wealth that’s hard to work against.

“The people with the money and the decision power are much fewer, and their pockets are much deeper,” he told the outlet. “Plus, they don’t have the same DNA of the decision maker 15 years ago; it’s much more Excel than passion-driven.”

D’Astous explained that the game’s industry is still reeling from the investments of the COVID-era, and many publishers are asking for the impossible. “How many times have I been asked to do the Witcher 3-like game with a limited budget in less than four years with a new team?” he said. “This doesn’t coincide with sustainability.”

The Deux Ex lead, who also worked at Ubisoft on Prince and Persia and Splinter Cell explained that smaller teams focusing on creativity often led to better, innovative sequels. Prince of Persia, for example, led into Assassin’s Creed which has since become Ubisoft’s bread and butter for the past two generations.

“The teams were quite small back in 2005-06, and it gave birth to a bigger, ambitious game, which is a logical business creative process to follow,” he said. “Not having the discipline of saying ‘no’ to what we call ‘scope creep.’ Somebody must say if it’s not reasonable, to say no. All this is also to have proper stage-gating, because this will avoid digging the hole deeper if it’s in a bad way.”

With that said, D’Astous would jump at the bit to work on Deus Ex again, although he believes that developer Eidos is “cursed” under its current ownership. “That would be a perfect circle back to my early career,” he said. “I would definitely be able to gather former employees who worked on it and other people that would love to work on it.”

Right now, there are no plans for a new Deus Ex game, outside of a quite horrific-looking Deus Ex Remastered project by Aspyr Media.