Assassin's Creed lead calls AAA push "cancerous growth"

Striving to make games bigger, better and more sales-friendly is poisoning the industry, Assassin's Creed creative director Alex Hutchinson has said.

"We think about [this push] as kind of cancerous growth. I think that will leave the AAA blockbusters as nothing more than the last of the dinosaurs," Hutchison said, speaking at a GDC 2012 presentation called Designing Games to Sell, as reported by Gamespot.

Hutchison described two possible "dystopian" avenues for continued growth in games - designing games based on analytics to make money, and relying on increased scale and better graphics in a "massive arms race".

"In my mind video games need to have the goal of educating people, entertaining people, or at least being artistic," he said, adding a warning:

"If you're not pushing any of these things…then I think we’re in for a rough patch."

Interestingly, Hutchison's own project, Assassin's Creed III, has been described as taking a huge leap in terms of scale and gameplay. It's due in October on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.