media from earlier in the 1990s had brought elements like cutscenes, and the advances in real-time 3D graphics in the mid-1990s further drove new ways to present stories; both elements were incorporated into Final Fantasy VII. With larger budgets, developers were able to find new innovative ways to present narrative as a direct part of gameplay rather than interspersed into pre-rendered cutscenes, with Half-Life one of the first of these new narrative games to nearly eliminate cutscenes in favor of interactive storytelling mechanisms. During the seventh generation, AAA (or "blockbuster") games had marketing at a similar level to high-profile films, with television, billboard and newspaper advertising; a corresponding increasing reliance on sequels, reboots, and similarly franchised IP was also seen, in order to minimize risk. Costs at the end of the generation had risen as high as the hundreds of millions of dollars – the estimated cost of Grand Theft Auto V was approximately $265m. The same conditions also drove the growth of the indie game scene at the other end of the development spectrum, where lower costs enabled innovation and risk-taking. At around the period of transition from seventh to eighth generation of consoles, the cost of AAA development was considered by some to be a threat to the stability of the industry. Staffing and costs for eighth generation games increased; at Ubisoft, AAA game development involved 400 to 600 persons for open world games, split across multiple locations and countries. The failure of a single game to meet production costs could lead to the failure of a studio – Radical Entertainment was closed by parent Activision despite selling an estimated one million units on console in a short period after release. Triple-A games also began to lose uniqueness and novelty; a common trend were a range of "grey brown" first-person shooters that drew on the popularity of the Medal of Honor and Call of Duty series but did little to advance gameplay improvements. Ubisoft game director Alex Hutchinson described the AAA franchise model as potentially harmful, stating he thought it led to either focus group-tested products aimed at maximizing profit, and/or a push towards ever higher graphics fidelity and impact at a cost of depth or gameplay. The limited risk-taking in the AAA arena and stagnation of new gameplay concepts led to the rise of indie games in the early 2010s, which were seen as more experimental. This