Wedgwood: Go big "or go bust"

Splash Damage CEO Paul Wedgwood has said with Brink, as with all its titles, the developer has aimed for AAA status, and would rather go under than compromise on that.

"The fact is that the most successful games companies are generally the ones that make the highest quality AAA games," Wedgwood told CVG.

"Not the movie tie-ins, the quick cash-ins, the releases tied with sports events or whatever but we never really understand why people do that stuff."

The studio head, who also serves as game director, said he was yet to see a sustainable business model founded on licensed games, and would rather risk the company than go down that path.

"It's such a challenging industry to be in as an independent developer, it's even more challenging to make AAA games and it's more challenging still to only make one at a time and to do so while remaining independent and not selling your studio to a publisher," he said.

"Yet every conference I've been to I've said the same thing ... 'Look our philosophy's really easy, we just go AAA or we go bust.'

"We're totally happy with either outcome but we don't want to make movie tie-in games, we'd rather take a whole bunch of risks and just hope that it comes out OK."

Having said that, Wedgwood will be happy if the company just remains solvent, and doesn't aspire to run a major studio with hundreds of staff and multiple games

"It's ok to be a content game developer. You don't have to be the one with 500 staff, exploiting everyone and grinding people into the ground and ruining lives and all for what?" he said.

Brink releases on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 next week, ahead of schedule.