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Why is the video game industry in crisis? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I keep hearing about layoffs, studios being closed and how the industry is troubled. Are companies losing money and sales are poor, or is it the same as Google and other companies laying off people just to pump their stock price and make money despite profitability?

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 6 months ago (3 children)

It appears to me that most of the layoffs are from publishers of AAA games. Perhaps it is too hard for AAA game development to be sustainable. Too high costs and not always good return on investments.

Starfield showed us that bigger is not better.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

I really like smaller, focused games. I don't need a game to be every genre, and I don't need to sink over 100 hours into it. I'd rather play something like Celeste than yet another open world collectathon with observation towers to climb, crafting, shitty combat, boring story, bad minigames, and running back and forth again and again on mindless escort treks that exist solely to pad the game runtime. I'd rather spend $5-20 on a 4-10 hour game than $70 on a game that overstays its welcome in order to justify the pricetag.

Quality > quantity.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

It isn't just AAA by a longshot. Indie devs are also going through hell.

Part of it is that a lot of companies overstaffed over the pandemic, finished up those projects they were behind on (there is a reason Winter 23/24 has been INSANE), and are now laying people off.

But mostly it is because of economic uncertainty and inflation. Investors are a lot less willing to throw dump trucks of cash at people. That leads to wary investors/shareholders for the large companies and a "need" to punish labor for management's mistakes. And for indie devs that means an inability to get funding.

Danny O'Dwyer and NoClip have been making a game for the past few years to better understand what development is. And they put up a REALLY good video where Danny talks about what goes into a pitch for a publisher and just how incredibly bleak it is. Lots of "Well, at least this one person told me they weren't interested rather than just ghosting us" vibes.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago

Yeah I feel like it's similar to movies in a way. You can only push so much money and development into something before you start seeing diminishing returns.