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[iQuasarLV]

Venturebeat Interview with Nexon CEO

Just an overall great read for those wanting reference points from an outgoing someone commenting on the industry and things that are wrong with it. I recommend you read the entirety of it as this interview flows well on topics of the situational state of the gaming development industry.

A couple clips

“So go down the list. Start with customers because they’re most important. Are they happy? Clearly not. They’re very frustrated. We’re in murderer’s row, which is a lead up to Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s been the heaviest murderer’s row that I can recall in two decades. And we’ve had more disappointments, I think, than I’ve ever seen by a by a longshot,” he said.

“Okay, well, is it the developers fault? Oh, no. It’s their manager’s fault. Development directors are not having fun either. They’ve got to run these teams of 500 to 1,000. In a couple of cases, 2,000 people. That’s not a development job. That’s not meaning. It’s not a creative job. It’s an HR job. You’re spending your day trying to get people not to quit.”

 

[Wildebeest]

His vision of the future to "disrupt" the "AAA" industry.

1. Core teams of people who are able to iterate on designs and are actually in touch with what is fun. (goodbye HR, empire building "creative directors" who hate games and gamers, and so on.)
2. AI used to accelerate development.
3. Extra staff employed based on a sort of UBER model. (no meaningful contracts or worker rights)

 

[Clear]

The fix is a lot more complicated than simply making more, less expensive product.

There's no shortage of product, even with the inflated budgets and time-scales. Simply pumping more product into the ecosystem isn't going to help. I mean, this was the Embracer idea, and look at what a shit-show that's been.

As he points out, for a CEO or leader torching $100m on a failure is going to result in a queue of people at their door with pitchforks, but the exact same result happens with 2 $50m failures back to back, or 4 $25m failures on the bounce! And there's no risk mitigation inherent in the numbers when the market is already flooded both in terms of sales and mindshare.

I see people all the time complaining about AAA titles on forums, but I don't see them singing the praises of scrappy AA titles that have more smart ideas than production values. What I see most of the time is them bitching about them not looking like AAA and going "wait for sale at $10"!

The audience needs to adjust its attitude as much as the industry.

As for the dev experience. Yes, AAA is a treadmill. But going indie isn't a bed of roses either. Who's feeling good after sinking years into a thing that gets memory-holed literally days after release because it wasn't marketed up-the ass like AAA is? And that's pretty much standard for the overwhelming majority of indies.