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Alanah Pearce - It's going to get worse

Madflavor

Madflavor

Member
Alanah posted a video talking about the recent Xbox news and how she believes things will get a lot worse in the industry. I think it's pretty informative and sheds a light on the state of the industry right now, and where it's headed:



Key Points
  • She addresses that no studio is safe from being shut down, and that the quality of the games they produce is irrelevant.
  • AAA Singleplayer and Live Services games are both incredibly risky, but taking the risk with Live Service games is preferable because they produce a tremendously larger and continuous monetary gain over Singleplayer games, which is why publishers have continued, and will continue, to make Live Service games, despite recent failures.
  • We have entered a "Time War" where everything is now competing for your time. Social Media, mobile gaming, streaming, movies, shows, etc etc. Many AAA games are being developed with the mindset of keeping you engaged day after day, spending more money, to keep you away from other things that can take your money and attention.
  • Indie Games are not the answer to this problem. Indie game studios shut down all the time, you just don't hear about it like you would a Tango Gameworks or Arkane Studios. It is very difficult for Indie Games to get funded and find a publisher.
  • Great Singleplayer games like BG3, ER, and TotK are not going away. We'll always get them. But they will become more and more the exception to the rule as time goes on.

So where do you sit with this? Do you agree or disagree? This probably comes across as pretty doom and gloom, but I think we'll always have new games come out from a variety of studios that we'll enjoy. But on a whole it does seem like things will continue to get worse and worse. We'll probably see more game studios and beloved IPs get buried, while publishers will continue to produce live service games and push the boundaries on how many ways they can nickel and dime the consumers.
 
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Barakov

Barakov

Member
Old Man No GIF by RJ Tolson
 
Lokaum D+

Lokaum D+

Member
Thats the result of doing shit games, gaas games and woke shit for the last decade, stop this trend and companies ll start to profit again, its really not that hard.

1. Make a Fun game.
2. Gameplay is King.
3. Art direction is more important then graphics.
4. Dont make woke shit.
5. Stop making gaas.
6. Stop seasson passes everywhere.
7. Respect your custumer.
8. Be fair with your mtx prices.

Its not captalism fault, dont make a shit product and expect ppl to buy it, sadly in some case, good developers pay the price for stupid ideias of "shareholders".
 
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AmuroChan

AmuroChan

Member
I mean, she's not really presenting any novel thoughts here. I think most people here are already aware that games with the highest budgets are inherently risky, that indie studios close down all the time and we don't hear about them, that big tentpole games will still exist in the future, etc.
 
feynoob

feynoob

Banned
Lokaum D+ said:
Thats the result of doing shit games, gaas games and woke shit for the last decade, stop this trend and companies ll start to profit again, its really not that hard.

1. Make a Fun game.
2. Gameplay is King.
3. Art direction is more important then graphics.
4. Dont make woke shit.
5. Stop making gaas.
6. Stop seasson passes everywhere.
7. Respect your custumer.
8. Be fair with your mtx prices.

Its not captalism fault, dont make a shit product and expect ppl to buy it, sadly in some case, good developers pay the price for stupid ideias of "shareholders".
Click to expand...
That is just your preference, which is just dog shit.

This is the result of people voting with their wallets. If dumb gamers are spending money on their games, they wont stop. Until people stop spending money on shit games, these stuff would exist.

Rich spoiled brats are spending insane amount of money on these games, because they are simply working on high paying jobs.
 
Perrott

Perrott

Member
tmlDan said:
I agree with most of what she said but i also don't like how she, on many occasions, says its capitalisms fault.
Click to expand...
Because most of the industry's problems are indeed capitalisms fault. From publishers having to layoff hundreds or thousands of people (sometimes extremely talented teams like Roll7 or Tango) in order to reduce operating costs and boost profit margins, to them cancelling promising projects (Respawn's Star Wars game) that just weren't expected to be profitable enough, to rushing games out of the door within arbitrary windows - mostly the fiscal year's end - in order to meet arbitrary deadlines at the expense of quality, critical and consumer reception and long-term sales performance.

The stock market and shareholders constitute the single largest cancer infecting the industry.
 
StereoVsn

StereoVsn

Gold Member
I do agree with her about the following:

“We have entered a "Time War" where everything is now competing for your time. Social Media, mobile gaming, streaming, movies, shows, etc etc. Many AAA games are being developed with the mindset of keeping you engaged day after day, spending more money, to keep you away from other things that can take your money and attention.”

There is so much entertainment content being produced now days, especially with folks doing this globally , it’s insane.

From books to movies to TV to games to pretty much any hobby, there is more then can be used on multiple lifetimes. AI is going to make this worse.

Unfortunately I don’t see any sort of a solution, it is what it is I guess.
 
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{insert code here}

{insert code here}

Member
Lokaum D+ said:
Thats the result of doing shit games, gaas games and woke shit for the last decade, stop this trend and companies ll start to profit again, its really not that hard.

1. Make a Fun game.
2. Gameplay is King.
3. Art direction is more important then graphics.
4. Dont make woke shit.
5. Stop making gaas.
6. Stop seasson passes everywhere.
7. Respect your custumer.
8. Be fair with your mtx prices.

Its not captalism fault, dont make a shit product and expect ppl to buy it, sadly in some case, good developers pay the price for stupid ideias of "shareholders".
Click to expand...
Nope it is not but folks will, as usual and expected, line up and shout 'muh capitalism killed muh games'.

A bunch GAF'ers have been talking about this 'impending crash' for a couple years because the trajectory of the AAA space is just not sustainable. There's not enough disposable income going around to support a market where every game has got to sell 10M copies just to break even. It's overdue in my opinion and I've got a decent backlog ready to go for when SHTF. It happened in the 80's and, coincidentally or not, a good chunk of our modern franchises were created in the 80's/90's not too long after the cleansing. A cleansing is coming and it's needed. We need the suits removed from the studio so the engineers and artists can do their thing.
 
feynoob

feynoob

Banned
{insert code here} said:
Nope it is not but folks will, as usual and expected, line up and shout 'muh capitalism killed muh games'.

A bunch GAF'ers have been talking about this 'impending crash' for a couple years because the trajectory of the AAA space is just not sustainable. There's not enough disposable income going around to support a market where every game has got to sell 10M copies just to break even. It's overdue in my opinion and I've got a decent backlog ready to go for when SHTF. It happened in the 80's and, coincidentally or not, a good chunk of our modern franchises were created in the 80's/90's not too long after the cleansing. A cleansing is coming and it's needed. We need the suits removed from the studio so the engineers and artists can do their thing.
Click to expand...
Marketing is like half of the budget these days. Shit gone south.
 
Loomy

Loomy

Banned
tmlDan said:
I agree with most of what she said but i also don't like how she, on many occasions, says its capitalisms fault.
Click to expand...
That is an objective truth. Those businesses exist in a world where capitalism is the leading economic/political system. Their success and failure is the result of the benefits and downfalls of capitalism. The end goal of capitalism is profit for whoever owns the product or service.

Although not stated explicitly, the Publishing Director of Larian followed a similar thread last month when talking about layoffs. This is also not just a games industry, but in tech as a whole right now.

Microsoft, Take-Two, Google, etc are posting record profits, approving higher and higher compensation packages for their CEOs, yet they're laying off hundreds, or thousands of employees.

The reason is they're prioritizing profits over the people who are working to generate those profits for them or the products that generate those profits. I personally know of 2 companies that laid off hundreds of workers in Q2 FY24 so they could bring their operating costs below amount that would make the overall end of year numbers look better for investors. Both those companies have not only hired back the number of people they laid off, but one of them has actually hired more than they laid off.
 
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