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[dragonyeuw]

You are confusing Friendship with Understanding your audience. No one asks them to be friends, they just stopped understanding and, in principle, paying attention to the needs of the audience for which they make games. At some point in time, studios began to make products that promote the interests of the corporation and the studio itself, rather than trying to create a product for players.

In fairness, a company has never not promoted their own ( financial) interests. I think the difference is, so much money is in gaming now that creativity has been stifled. Years ago, the development teams were small, the budgets were small, and you could knock out multiple games in a generation. If you created 5 games, 3 were great, 1 was decent and 1 flopped that was pretty much a best case scenario. You also got the sense that games were being made for art's sake, and if good the money would follow. Nowadays if your single 250 million dollar,6 year project doesn't land, heads roll....and not the ones deciding what games are made. Everything now has to be a grand slam, a trend-setting record smashing money maker and not merely a good game that boosts a company's portfolio. And as far as mindsets go, the decision makers seem to be more in the 'you'll take what we make and like it!' mode, and when you don't you're gaslit to hell and back with every 'ism' in the book. Those chickens are now homing come to roost.

I also feel like at some point, the heads of companies went from creatives who were once developers, to Ivy league grads who in some cases have never touched a controller in their life and have no clue about gaming. They're just number crunchers looking at spreadsheets without a creative bone in their bodies. I think that's what allows Nintendo to endure, many of their core decision makers AFAIK were/are also developers so their industry knowledge is organic.

 

[JerryinSoCal]

so... only listen to the IGNs and industry "professionals and pundits"? How ironic is it that the one who raised the issue about the Vanguard review codes was a YouTuber...

the premise of her entire video is about the close relationship between devs/publisher and media/journalists

No I mean in general not just for gaming. The world was nowhere near as tribal before social media, people could have different political views and not look at people on the other side as enemies. You would never have these purple haired weirdos feeling empowered the way they do if it wasn't for the "support" they get from stranger on social media. Companies now pattern their HR practices on what social media says is important etc. It's ruining everything.

 

[Elios83]

Things are becoming more polarized.
There are games that can become huge successes selling 20-30m units and things that are totally rejected.

Probably it's because there are many options to play games nowadays and because having people that play online GaaS stuff for months instead of single player contents is making harder to convince them to try new stuff.
It's a poison the industry has chosen, trying to create a few super profitable long lasting titles at the expense of the rest.
Also its clear that having forced DEI stuff on games isn't working, people actually playing games are rejecting that stuff. The games we're seeing now are the results of trends and decisions made 4-5 years ago.
Back then most companies (see Disney) thought they would get a good image and public return with that stuff. They were wrong and they're probably now adjusting.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Won’t say I’ll miss the likes of Ubisoft, Activision and EA.

Japanese publishers are making record profits and churning out quality games. They’ll fill the “void”.

 

[Wildebeest]

Games media is no longer fit for purpose. If as a developer you get support from games media, it should mean nothing to you. If you get games media going to bat for you, defending you from consumers, you should be shitting your pants and looking for a new job.

 

[Team Andromeda]

We aren't going to see a crash IMO just a correction in how games take 6 to 7 years to make is just unstainable when you got to play hundreds of staff for that long on a single project with no income coming in, until the game ships

 

[yurinka]

Are we headed for an industry crash? Or is this just a temporary slump, and the market will right it self back.

It was something temporary partly caused to how the industry performed just after the cover, we're already recovering.

With the covid sales bump many investors and publisher invested in a lot of stuff, but later after 50 years of growth, after the covid the game revenue got flat, which scared some inverstors (or they went away due to finantial crisis or to invest in other things like AI).

So some of these investors and publishers later moved away at least part of their investment for money and became miore conservative and strict with quality or delays and invested less. So some games got cancelled, there were layoffs or closures. On top of this since the industry revenue was flat, they had to increase their profits, so made some cuts, closures and layoffs more to cut the fat. And since some couldn't grew their revenue themselves organically they acquired others, so there were a few redundancy layoffs more.

Most of the fired people get hired at other studios or create their own studio.

Once these adjustments have been made, the growth is back and the crisis is mostly over. There were more acquisitions, and as usual from time to time some layoff or closure as always there has been. But won't be as common as these handul recent years.

The gaming media nowadays is mostly irrrelevant since most players don't follow them, they follow instead content creators from Twitch, Twitter, Youtube, Tik Tok, Instagram or Kick, sometimes in podcast format. The gaming media will slowly get smaller and smaller and migrate from written digital media to a video format, less formal/traditional/mainstream (legacy media forma) and more informal/from home/'amateurish'/personal (streamer/youtuber/podcaster format).

The legacy gaming media always was primarly a PR and marketing tool for gaming companies and an information source and purchasing guide for players. Internet made players find other ways to get informed that they trust more, mostly streamers and youtubers plus directly from the companies via trailers and social media. Game companies also now get direct info from players via game metrics, social media, surveys, market data, alpha/beta/early access/softlaunches/AB tests, playtesting and focus testing. The 'companies aren't listening' thing is bullshit, they listen more than ever.

The thing is is that nobody has a crystall ball and big games nowadays take many years to be made, and something that looks great on paper one year, several years after the market may have changed a lot and that idea could be bad and outdated, and the companies have a limited amount of things to correct in the games. And well, games always get released with things that devs would have prefered to fix but had to ship the game because had to time/budget left.

P.S.: The 1983 supposed 'crash' only affected to a few big companies from USA, the rest of the industry -still not properly tracked- weren't affected. In fact 1983-1985 was a period where a ton of key companies and gaming platforms started worldwide.

 

[StereoVsn]

She's spot on about the industry having become a secluded bubble. And its at a point where its going to get detrimental if they persist down this road.

AAA developers need to circumvent the gaming press and start conversing directly with the community. Let me just emphasize I do not suggest that consumers should become part of the development team themselves, however they need to lend their ear to what they have to say. I'd even go so far as to say that western AAA is struggling right now exactly because they were too lax and started to invite non-creative people (consumers and journos) into their hierarchies.

They may do themselves a favour by returning to and embracing a little bit of that "underground" geeky culture they once nurtured across the industry.


Well put.

Which community though? If they listen to Reddit, Resetera and their own Discord, developers would have thought Veilguard is amazeballs.

I think the main thing that needs to happen is they need to start doing randomized focus groups and also inject a doze of common sense.

Execs in charge of Concord, Suicide Squad, Veilguard, Gotham Knights, Anthem, and so on should have known shit is flowing the wrong way long before release. And yet they pushed on. Something is seriously wrong in the oversight and assessment processes in these corporations.

 

[tylrdiablos]

I think there's several big publishers who stick $10 million+ into creating a game and don't make a profit, but I don't think that's proof of a bubble. You can't all be Rockstar Games or Activision-Blizzard.

There's plenty of games that have been made on shoe-string budgets, by both bedroom programmers and small indie teams in an office, that have made mega money.
(Super Meat Boy, G-Mod, Papers Please, Stardew Valley, Undertale, Stephen's Sausage Roll, Balatro, Lethal Company, Shovel Knight, Minecraft, the list goes on.)

 

[StereoVsn]

I think there's several big publishers who stick $10 million+ into creating a game and don't make a profit, but I don't think that's proof of a bubble. You can't all be Rockstar Games or Activision-Blizzard.

There's plenty of games that have been made on shoe-string budgets, by both bedroom programmers and small indie teams in an office, that have made mega money.
(Super Meat Boy, G-Mod, Papers Please, Stardew Valley, Undertale, Stephen's Sausage Roll, Balatro, Lethal Company, Shovel Knight, Minecraft, the list goes on.)

That’s indies which is a different topic altogether. The question was more about large Corpo produced titles.

 

[Hypereides]

Which community though? If they listen to Reddit, Resetera and their own Discord, developers would have thought Veilguard is amazeballs.

I think the main thing that needs to happen is they need to start doing randomized focus groups and also inject a doze of common sense.

Execs in charge of Concord, Suicide Squad, Veilguard, Gotham Knights, Anthem, and so on should have known shit is flowing the wrong way long before release. And yet they pushed on. Something is seriously wrong in the oversight and assessment processes in these corporations.

That's a good question. If I have to be blunt and simple; all of them. With an applied filter.

Different types of people/gamers roam different communities, some tilt towards being deeply fanatical (sycophants), some towards extremely resentful (haters) and some try to occupy a middle ground attempting to have a balanced approach. Western AAA developers need to learn to absorb all different sorts of views and information. Then dig for useful criticism and talking points in that information. They need to establish some internal processes and regular meetings discussing these contradicting views and then figure out how to weave them into what they doing. There appears to be a dire need to regain this transparency and open-mindedness within western AAA development studios.

I'd also claim they need to abstain from depending on focus group testing.

In the current situation, many things coming from the western AAA developers are very slanted. Its quite clear. That needs to be thoroughly amended completely.

 

[StereoVsn]

That's a good question. If I have to be blunt and simple; all of them. With an applied filter.

Different types of people/gamers roam different communities, some tilt towards being deeply fanatical (sycophants), some towards extremely resentful (haters) and some try occupy a middle ground attempting to have a balanced approach. AAA developers need to learn to absorbs all different sorts of views and information. Then dig for useful criticism and talking points in that information. They need to establish some internal processes and regular meetings discussing about these contradicting views and then figure out how to weave them into what they doing. There appears to be a dire need to regain this transparency and open-mindedness within AAA development studios.

I'd also claim they need to abstain from depending on focus group testing.

In the current situation, many things coming from the western AAA developers are very slanted. Its quite clear. That needs to be thoroughly amended completely.

Agree with most things but I still think you need focus groups. You just have to make sure you draw from different backgrounds for participants.

 

[BlitzerRadic]

No it's not. Look the word up. I don't understand how so many people don't know what that word means.

At least he's in the same ballpark. There are far more egregious word misuse these days. Like for example, the word "literally." This word is misused here on gaf every day.

 

[Hypereides]

Agree with most things but I still think you need focus groups. You just have to make sure you draw from different backgrounds for participants.

To a degree, I see where you're coming from. There needs to be some guardrails to ensure that the games have a certain appeal. But, there also has to be a limitation on how much you depend on it. Too much dependence on focus groups can result in western AAA developers veering too far from their original vision while sanitizing and compromising themselves in the process.

Western AAA as a whole needs to get its courage back and embrace some calculated "blind" creative risks some times. There needs to be allocated some availability for pursuits like that.