Every novel is written by very few, usually one, person much like a small indie game. Games especially AAA are written by "committee" which makes it harder IMHO to maintain a cohesive plot and vision...

And that is a very important point. If you see an AAA game with a very cohesive plot and focused vision, there is often a big name "Alpha Dev" at the head of the team, like Kojima for the MGS Series. Even then, you can see the places where the cohesion breaks down due to budget constraints ("no, kojima my man, we cannot double the budget so you can make deer hunting sidequests in every bloody level!"), management and marketing demands ("We need monetization... you don't like pay to win? Then add hats. Everybody loves hats!"), or time constraints....

All novels have the "Alpha writer".... and as long as the series isn't that big yet, they don't suffer from the other points (I'd say budget is seldom a problem, the other points can become a problem as soon as a publisher and a large fanbase is involved)

I may have missed explaining my idea as well. When I think of the game form of Hunger Games or Divergent or The Host or The Giver of even Maze Runner or Harry Potter, I don't think about the enemies, or their AI. There are explicit enemies in those games, to be sure because there is always a war, but the opposing soldiers are largely generic, and that's an important theming point. The Evil Mastermind gets developed, and certainly the rival, the same-side characters who conflict with our heroes. There may be several rivals at different times, but all the tension comes from the conflicts that happen before the fists start flying.

So to do a 'budget AAA' YA-styled game, I'd start by making the bad guys generic, like the Formics, or the Peacekeepers or zombie-fied Dauntless or whatever. The combat system would be about as deep as the conversation system is in other games, and as much time would be spent developing it, and because combat is so repeatable, much less time would be spent writing unique engaging lines for it. A simple combat system also means vastly reduced time working on weapons, enemy AI and the like. That's a lot of extra development time, and I think, with a little luck, the right group of people could make $60 worth of magic out of what is essentially post apocalyptic high school clique drama.

That sounds pretty manageable. Building up a character is as much about giving it enough room in the game (> more $$$ needed) as it is about being smart about it (> make sure to emphasize the character and the social intereactions at the loss of something less important).

We have seen more than enough AAA games doing pretty well with dumbed down / reduced to the max systems (some like that, some do not). Its not like having a ton of the most complex systems, a 100% accurate physics simulation and all that defines a game as AAA or not.

See XCOM... a Turnbased system in a 2016 AAA game (Not trying to judge here, as I hear the system is actually pretty complex and deep)? Now, I am not sure if XCOM really qualifies for AAA from a budget side, but it looks quite AAA, and it attracts a rather large amount of fans, so I will keep calling it AAA (which kind of proves the point should the budget really be on the lower end of the AAA spectrum).

If you happen to nail the most important aspect of your game (in this case social interaction and story), while making secondary aspects at least fun (your simplified combat system), everything added is just a bonus and not really needed.

That's also a really salient point. The blockbuster engine would not be interested in delivering the feel of a YA novel, and would demand changes to cater to the largest audience possible. Now, I still got a similar feel from the YA movies as the books, but I would agree that such a thing would probably be diluted further in a game. Such is the way of most adaptations, I think.

That said, I'd still want a AAA YA Game. If a major studio was gonna sink 20-50 million on The Host as a third person shooter, I'd be there. Fill the maze from The Maze Runner with tons of enemies and leave the gladers as more static guys who sell you equipment and upgrades, and I'll still be there. Some of these ideas and themes stand up even when turned on their head a bit. Some don't, but even those who don't, their combat sections could be expanded by a passionate team with a bankroll, like I said before, Hunger Games: Gods of the Arena, Ender's Game: Battle School (why hasn't this happened again?), Erudite Takeover following an alternate character during those conflicts, all that works, and I'd so be there. I think a lot of other people would too, unfavorable comparisons to the books and all.

I doubt it will happen. Licensed properties are hard to get done in a smart way. How we ever got Arkham Asylum to get greenlighted but not rushed, the world will never know (I'm sure it does know, I just don't).

I wish you good luck on that. I must have seen more trash in my life than good games that came out of a license.

That being said, in the last decade or so the quality of licensed games seemed to have risen. Most probably because they are no longer treated as throw-away merchandise products to make some quick bucks from... maybe because the studio bosses got wind of the fact that players are not as gullible as they thought them to be until the end of the 90's.

So if somebody invests AAA like amounts of money into a product, it most probably not turn into the licensed trash from the last century. If it will end up as good as some of the Batman games IDK.

I still would be afraid a little that you end up with a generic shooter reskin. Or that somebody asks Micheal Bay for his opinion (and we all know what his opinion is on how to make anything better).

The movie industry is a bit different, in that AAA products for big audiences are still what's in. There are plenty of AA movies and tv shows in the market too, but single-A projects haven't figured out how to make money yet; aside from film festivals, they currently seem to live on youtube as portfolio pieces form people and whole companies trying to get hired to do AA or AAA work.

Problem here is the sheer amount of movies coming out, compared to the comparable low amount of cinema seats in each city of the world... Even people that love going to the cinema to that once a week max, maybe once a month.

They will be VERY picky which movie to watch. Your movie has a very short window to make most of their views... after that, its off to a very long, but very narrow tail. DVD / Blueray sales are not what they used to be.

Then there is the problem of scale. I see a very large crowd of teenagers going into every Hollywood Blockbuster. They have the time, not much other commitments, and start to have the disposable income.

When I look at movies clearly targeted at an older crowd, I see a much smaller bunch of movie freaks gathering in much smaller cinemas. They will frequent the cinemas less often most probably (other commitments and all), they have very different tastes not only in movies but also cinemas (the teenage blockbuster crowd would be appalled by the old as hell vintage cinema with small screens, uncomfortable seats, no DTX Super Atmos 222.50 Sound system, and only overpriced organic hipster snacks being offered... the cinema hipsters on the other hand....)