It both was and wasn't surprising to see Team Asobi's Astro Bot scoop up another game of the year win at the 2025 DICE Awards. As Game Developer news editor Chris Kerr put it, "there is catharsis to be found in the silly and absurd," and Astro Bot delivers that catharsis in spades. It's as equal a contendor as every other game of the year award nominee from 2024, no doubt about that.That said, plenty of small, cathartic games have been up for top end-of-year prizes for many years nowbut few break past longer, more bombastic titles. You'll either see narrative behemoths like The Last of Us Part 2 sweep ceremonies, or watch developers get knocked out of the way as the ambitious design of games like Elden Ring barrel through the competition. To see the little blue-and-white bot tap-dancing past huge games like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Helldivers 2, while also skating by surprise 2024 hit Balatro (offering each of them a little kiss on the cheek as it passes), represents a break from the last decade's trend.Is it a fluke? Luck? A consequence of split tickets derived from first-past-the-post voting systems? Maybe! Or maybe not? At the ceremony, Team Asobi studio director Nicolas Doucet told Game Developer there might be something bigger going on behind the wins, a "deeper message" that indicates game developers and players are ready to embrace "more compact" games."Fun doesn't have to come in a large size"When we flagged down Doucet, he'd already passed by several times, accepting the studio's awards for technical, animation, and design achievement, as well as 'family game of the year.' He said he wished more of the studio could have been present in Las Vegas for the show, since the wins are a huge collective achievement for Team Asobi.But give Doucet credithe has frequently devoted time at award shows to praise not only his collaborators, but his peers in game development. At The Game Awards in December 2024, he thanked a certain developer in Kyoto for being such a huge inspiration and for "showing there's innovation and quality consistently" in platformers, acting as a huge inspiration for him and Asobi."I've managed not to mention them, have you noticed?" he asked, eyes flickering across the crowdpossibly towards where Sony management was sitting. Risking heat for showing that kind of gratitude signals he's a leader aware of how the game industry is a shared ecosystem, even when companies are direct competitors.Image via Team Asobi/Sony Interactive Entertainment.Image via Team Asobi/Sony Interactive Entertainment.That canniness was on display at DICE too. He noted that while Astro Bot had already picked up many Game of the Year awards, the DICE award was one awarded by his peers in game developmentan honor handed down with understanding of the kind of work it took to produce a bitesized video game bursting with joy. "It's important that we made a game that's quite compact, that is not trying to be too big," he said. "I recognize the fact that it means it's a deeper message than we thought we had sent."What message was that? "Fun doesn't have to come in a large size," he said. "It's not about volume. I think we believed [that] early on, and now after this, even more so.""It's going to be a drive for us to keep things simple and really focus on quality over quantity.""Quality over quantity" is a major struggle for the video game industryDon't take Doucet's words as some knock on the bigger-budget hits Astro Bot has soared past. Again, a director who goes out of his way to thank his direct competitors is someone making clear he doesn't view the business as a knock-down-drag-out brawl, and many of Sony's titanic games are honored in Astro Bot as collectible pals with cute outfits players can encounter on their adventure.But it certainly is a gentle nudge against the game industry's direction since the heyday of the 3D platformers that inspired Astro Bot. As Game Developer's resident Star Wars freak, the history of Star Wars games is a useful measuring stick here. Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast took about a year-and-a-half to make. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor took about three years, not counting the foundation it benefitted from in its predecessor Jedi: Fallen Order. Star Wars Outlaws took around four years. Each game is stuffed to the brim with content and technical work that required larger and larger teamsbut how much of that work is being appreciated by players?Outlaws' huge budget made it all the more painful when it debuted to relatively soft sales. When large games made by large teams don't hit, that's a massive amount of money spent for little return.Astro Bot wasn't at risk of falling into that trap. Former Gamesindustry.biz editor Christopher Dring reported in 2024 that it was developed in around three years by a team of roughly 60 people. That makes its 1.5 million copies sold in two months a very efficient return on investment for Sony. That's comparable to the reach of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, a game made by a much larger team in development for seven to 10 years depending on how you measure it.(An obligatory asidethe oversized budgets and development cycles for big-budget games are rarely the responsibility of the people working on them, and these comparisons are not an assessment of quality. That's something I have to write now because even some game industry professionals are being unbelievably weird about The Veilguard, a game that was well-received by the 1.5 million-plus players who did pick it up).Doucet has it right. The industry excitement for Astro Bot is a message with great meaning. The cynical and cash-minded will look at its wins and think they should pivot to cute 3D platformers that appeal to players of all-ages. The savvy and creative will see the same result and recognize there are a thousand great games you could make with the same budget and team sizeand they just need those who control of the purse strings to make it happen.