Ex-CoD and XDefiant producer thinks devs should be “be more like Larian, less like Activision” and stop trying to “make the most money possible”

As former producer for both Call of Duty and XDefiant, Mark Rubin has a good idea for the work, marketing and monetization practices that go into popular first-person-shooters and big-name games from powerhouse publishers.

Although it created a notable buzz upon its arrival and took different approaches to the genre, like excluding Skill-Based Matchmaking from non-ranked playlists, unfortunately Ubisoft’s XDefiant was shut down after six months. Despite this, Rubin still thinks that the video game industry and its monetization practices should veer away from the Call of Duty model and focus on making games that focus on quality and not trying to “make the most money possible out of the player base” as their primary motivation.

Screenshot from XDefiant/UbiSoft

“They [Call of Duty] rely on FOMO marketing and EOMM matches. But I feel like it used to be just more about the quality of the game which would drive players to play,” Rubin told an XDefiant fan on Twitter. “And that means making the game more player centric.”

He continued, “Your game should have a high player count because it’s good and people want to play it rather than people playing it because the game has a $250 million marketing budget. Everything just said is very simplified as it would take too long to get really into it.”

Rubin added that video game devs and publishers should follow in the footsteps of companies like Larian, makers of the wildly successful and popular Baldur’s Gate 3. “One last simple analogy: be more like Larian, less like Activision.”

Character customization in Baldur’s Gate 3/Larian Studios

BG3, which has earned $1 billion across all platforms, doesn’t feature any Battle Passes, paid cosmetics/items and other commonly utilized monetization practices in today’s big-name video games. Instead, BG3 was successful because, as Rubin put it, it was “good and people want to play it,” with an innovative real-time combat system (that can be paused and resumed after issuing commands), an expansive and interactive world with insanely developed characters and narration, moral complexity in the players’ choices and actions and a faithful adaptation of the Dungeons & Dragons rules.

What do you think of the fact that Mark Rubin, ex-CoD and XDefiant producer thinks devs should be “be more like Larian, less like Activision” and stop trying to “make the most money possible”? Let us know in the comments.