Given everything happening lately with the gaming industry, it feels like as good a time as any to weigh in on it with my thoughts. I mean, to put it bluntly, it's not good no matter how you slice it. Record profits followed by an eye-watering amount of lay-offs give the impression the executives care only for profit and not the people who helped them make it. So, I just figured I'd share my thoughts on it as it's been rattling around in my brain for a few weeks now.
First off to me it seems like the executives and those at the top of the pile either don't understand gamers or their product if not both. Making a game to sell DLC and cosmetics rather than making it a game that is fun seems to be the biggest issue in my mind. Just looking at Diablo IV as a recent example given it is a £60 AAA release with a cosmetics store in the game. A lot of the mounts seem to cost almost as much as the game which is completely bonkers to me.
If you make your game fun and it isn't crammed full of issues or ads telling you to buy stuff all the time you'll likely be onto a winner (see the recent success of Palworld and Helldivers 2.) I get the feeling a lot of the executives care only for monetization, seeing how much they can squeeze out of players for a new hat or which parts of the game can be cut out and sold later as DLC. I am hoping the success of fun indie games will shake up the big studios enough that they realise they can't sit there playing it safe all the time, though I do understand the aversion to risk (more on that later.)
I don't see a dramatic collapse of AAA happening despite their best efforts to tempt fate, but it is still possible. What I hope would happen is all the devs getting cut loose to maintain profit margins for shareholders to make their own studios and release some awesome games of their own. I mean with how Vampire Survivors exploded it feels more possible than it has ever been... Not every game needs a massive budget to be good if you ask me which brings us back to the risk aversion.
Most AAA games have huge budgets and lots of devs working on them so getting a return on that £100 Million investment is going to be high up on the list and is also likely why they aggressively monetise things. Which I think is a big reason there have been so many attempts at chasing the golden goose of live service games. Now, the idea of a live service game isn't a bad one, I like quite a few of them but doing one well is quite rare. I think live service games are a separate issue I may dive into another time though.
So, some things I'd like to see or hope will change:
Fewer devs getting fired to maintain profits, it's going to be hard to keep talent around if they think they are going to be discarded the moment the game is released. I mean you never see the executives getting fired do you?
More focus on just good solid and fun games being released, not £60 titles with a cash shop, season pass, battle pass and a truckload of DLCs.
Not so much focus on live-service games, I mean short of having an amazing idea there are just so many out there and they are designed to eat all your time so... How many can you even play?
Probably wishful thinking but we can hope right? ... Right?
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