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[Men_in_Boxes]

The big issue plaguing the games industry right now is rising costs + plateaued sales = lower margins.

NeoGAF has produced a number of threads where members suggest their preferred solution to the above problem. This is not that thread.

What games produced today have exceptional ROI (return on investment)? If we compile a list of these types of games, something the big publishers are no doubt doing, then we'll likely see some patterns that will grow in the next few years.

Breath of the Wild supposedly needed to sell 2 million copies to break even. It sold 30+ million...

'Zelda: Breath Of The Wild' Needs To Sell 2 Million Copies To Break Even On Its Development Costs

In a recent Nintendo shareholder’s meeting, Shigeru Miyamoto clarified the size of the development team on Zelda: Breath of the Wild but that it will also need to sell around 2 million copies to break even on its development costs.

www.google.com

Indie farming game Stardew Velley, which was made by one person, just sold north of 30 million copies...

Stardew Valley Achieves 30 Million Sales; New Update Launches March 19th | RPGFan

Stardew Valley's developer ConcernedApe (Eric Barone) has announced a March 19th release date for version 1.6 on PC, macOS, and Linux via Steam. Console and

www.rpgfan.com

No Mans Sky was developed by a team of ~25 people and has gone on to generate a healthy pile of cash...

Business - Game Dev - No Man's Sky has brought in £40 million in revenue in 2022 for Hello Games (up from £27 million a year before)

Quite possibly the greatest redemption arc in gaming history, that charismatic Irishman put in serious work to make the game live up to his initial, overzealous promises, well done Sean 👍

www.neogaf.com

What other single player focused games are performing exceptionally well in terms of RoI?

 

[BennyBlanco]

Palworld might’ve cleared all of these games in terms of ROI

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

put Men_in_Boxes in charge of Xbox, Play Station and Nintendo.

 

[Klosshufvud]

We need to get back to medium budget sized games in which the development team wasn't forced to "streamline" every single aspect of the game so it had to sell a minimum 10 million copies to break even. The irony is that in the digital age with all those third party engines readily available, being a AA dev is easier than has ever been. Publishers will always seek popular trends and attempt to cash in on the craze though. These publishers got way too big and shareholders too greedy. That's the origin of the problem.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Palworld might’ve cleared all of these games in terms of ROI

Everyone is a Palworld

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

We need to get back to medium budget sized games in which the development team wasn't forced to "streamline" every single aspect of the game so it had to sell a minimum 10 million copies to break even. The irony is that in the digital age with all those third party engines readily available, being a AA dev is easier than has ever been. Publishers will always seek popular trends and attempt to cash in on the craze though. These publishers got way too big and shareholders too greedy. That's the origin of the problem.

It's not enough to just say "Get back to AA". Embracer sucked up nothing but AA studios and they've been consistently bombing over the last 5 years.

We have to identify which types of games (not budgets) are performing well.

 

[fart town usa]

Stop following the Hollywood/Netflix model.

They want to have everything riding on insane production values and then expect to also make money on subscription services and GaaS stuff. If a game or service fails, it can be lights out with a quickness.

Smaller games with smaller budgets. Let teams get creative again. Cut out the DEI cancer, etc.

So many obvious solutions and we know they work cause there's countless examples of it but somehow people act like cutting back will make everything worse. Yea, cause things are going so great right now. Lol.

 

[jshackles]

We don't have actual numbers, but Robocop Rogue City looks to have sold about a million copies (and cleared $1m in revenue in the first three days of its launch last year).

Not as much of a breakaway hit as the ones in the OP, but the game is a solid single player story focused game with a 15-hour playtime that's solidly AA and cost $50.

 

[Arsic]

Players are more willing than ever to pay $30-$40 for a mid sized scope game, that focuses on gameplay first.

Nintendo makes these games and just charges $60 is the difference. Exception would maybe be Zelda in terms of game scope.

 

[Big Baller]

 

[Elysium44]

Looks like a rehash of this thread, all the arguments have been made in there already.

I think it's time we paid more for our hobby, this feels unsustainable.

Basically, seeing all these layoffs and hearing part of the reason is the risk and small margins...well, there's one simple solution: games need to cost more. Over here in New Zealand, we currently pay $90-$120.00 or thereabouts a game, games have nearly always cost this much...going way, way...

www.neogaf.com

 

[SonicJams]

Not directly related to your solution, but i always thought the industry needs to start incorporating a rating system (B, A, AA, AAA) to allow for games that want to be a step above indy developmenent and below the big scaled monsters.

Encourage companies to make mid budget games, and have it labelled as so on the cover and priced accordingly. Establish its OK to have re-used assets, low animations and graphics, linear or 8 hour campaigns etc and setting customer expectations is a good way to do it.

Personally, id like to play many more A & AA games, akin to the dreamcast era (darksiders, pennys big breakaway). Fun and stylised games at their core, that dont rely on big ticket showcasings.

 

[Danjin44]

Its fantastic game without going crazy with budget and sold damn well.....we need more games like this.

 

[jshackles]

Not directly related to your solution, but i always thought the industry needs to start incorporating a rating system (B, A, AA, AAA). Encourage companies to make smaller budget games, and have it labelled as so on the cover and priced accordingly.

We need to establish that its OK to make smaller budget games, with re-used assets, low animations and graphics, etc and setting customer expectations is a good way to do it.

Personally, id like to play many more A & AA games, akin to the dreamcast era.

I mean, they kind of already do that when selecting an MSRP price for a game. But then like always (and even with your proposed system), you're hoping that corporations will openly admit when a game's budget was low and that it's priced accordingly. Instead, we get a lot of A and AA games masquerading as AAA titles. Like this one

 

[Guilty_AI]

Baldurs Gate 3 and Elden Ring come to mind, also many From games as well as Monster Hunter ones.

Since you mentioned Stardew Valley, among indies and AA there's also Terraria, Factorio, Satisfactory, Grim Dawn, Deep Rock Galactic, Lethal Company, ETS2, Beamng, Valheim, Palworld, Hollow Knight, Subnautica, Hades, Undertale, Bannerlord, Vampire Survivors, Darkest Dungeon, Risk of Rain 2, Rimworld, Kerbal Space Program...

Well i'm roughly estimating with the amount of steam reviews since there's not always official data available. And i'm just taking from the best of the best too, you can still find plenty of successful stuff if you don't want to be all that demanding with the ROI (as seem from the post below).

Generally the trend seems to be having solid gameplay loops with plenty of replayability, a touch of coop also helps. As always, gameplay is king.

 

[touchfuzzy]

Sea of Stars sells 250,000 copies, exceeds the team's first year projections in the first week:

Sea Of Stars Exceeds First Year Sales Projections In Launch Week

More than 250,000 copies have been sold

www.nintendolife.com

Balatro sold 250,000 copies in three days, was profitable for it's single dev after just one hour of release

LocalThunk's Balatro sells 250,000 copies in first three days

The new roguelike deckbuilder has already exceeded LocalThunk's initial expectations.

www.gamedeveloper.com

 

[Complistic]

Make good games people want to play instead of whatever they're doing right now.

 

[GymWolf]

Finally a topic that is not about helldivers 2 from out boxed man.

 

[Guilty_AI]

Its fantastic game without going crazy with budget and sold damn well.....we need more games like this.

What is this false advertisement? Where is my anime waifu, all i got were voices in my head and Iguazu.

Also, you should play this Men_in_Boxes

 

[Wildebeest]

1. This is probably an investment cycle, so maybe things will just sort of creep back to be being "normal" growth. But the economy in a lot of western countries that consume games has just sucked and got worse for so many years now. Talk about returning to the golden years of the 90s or 00s is currently a delusion. Targetting "growth" markets like China has been a busted flush because of how they edge out foreign games.
2. There are too many people working on doing the same thing in genres where there is already a "king", the genre is in long term decline, and standards of users are raised sky high. You dream of quitting your job and making the hit indie metroid game or hybrid magic the gathering inspired game that would have been your dream game of when you were 14? Dream on, don't take that loan, don't quit your day job. But the same is true as you go up the scale with people dog piling on genres like survival games or looter shooters.
3. Games are no longer new, and it is incredibly easy to make something that looks stale, unimpressive and tired even with a megabudget and sky-high production values. The flip side of that is that games have been going on so long that the palette of what is known to work or be compelling is bigger than ever, and that people who feel tired do not need sky-high production values if offered something that seems refreshing.

Putting it together, make games that do at least 2 of delivering on novelty, filling a gap in the market, or delivering insane value to players.

 

[Danjin44]

What is this false advertisement? Where is my anime waifu, all i got were voices in my head and Iguazu.

Its there.....it just your mind can"t process it, put more Coral in your body.

 

[Guilty_AI]

Its there.....it just your mind can"t process it, put more Coral in your body.

I ain't fucking a mech, got too much fetishes already

 

[Draugoth]

Most of AAA Game development is marketing, believe it or not. If you cut marketing and management bonuses AAA games would hardly cost more than $100m

 

[Danjin44]

I ain't fucking a mech, got too much fetishes already

 

[Trogdor1123]

How much did Elden ring cost? There is no reason any game should cost more than that ever.

 

[fart town usa]

How much did Elden ring cost? There is no reason any game should cost more than that ever.

My thoughts too.

 

[Salty Popsicle]

R* in 2025 will show the entire industry how a game of the highest quality can deliver both an amazing single-player experience and fully fledged-out game world on top of monetizing the online component in a way that make sense and deliver record profits.

 

[ProtoByte]

We need to get back to medium budget sized games in which the development team wasn't forced to "streamline" every single aspect of the game so it had to sell a minimum 10 million copies to break even. The irony is that in the digital age with all those third party engines readily available, being a AA dev is easier than has ever been. Publishers will always seek popular trends and attempt to cash in on the craze though. These publishers got way too big and shareholders too greedy. That's the origin of the problem.

All of this relies on a set of repeated and widespread fallacies that are really annoying to have to point out.

1. There is no time of "medium budget game domination" or something to go back to. All of the games from the 90s through the 2000s that were revered and are remembered were at the top end of what the industry could produce at the time.

2. Mid budget games today take more time and money than some high budget stuff did back then. Mighty No.9, a low fidelity 2D platformer couldn't cross the finish line with a 4 million dollar Kickstarter. I hate to bring up anything from reee, let alone from Imran Khan, but:

Even chief of the game press proletariat Jason Schreier has gone out of his way to explain that even indie studios are having to spend more time and money into games, to the point that starting a new indie project in 2023 may well mean the game wouldn't come out before the beginning of the new gen.

3. One what planet do only the big publishers follow trends? This is business. The indie scene is rife with pretenders and ripoffs. Nostalgia bait copies of 90s platformers, bandwagonning farming simulators, projects doing everything they can to be the next PUBG, Escape from Tarkov or Minecraft, etcetera.

4. B-tier studios and indie houses are having just as much trouble as the big publishers right now. Just yesterday Deck Nine laid off a fifth of their staff. The Disco Elysium devs have cancelled 3 projects in as many years and had layoffs as well. Embracer is stock full with mid-low tier studios and IP that are getting gutted or canned as we speak. One of them is a German dev that was working on a TMNT game for crying out loud. There are a whole bunch of other examples that I can't call to name either because I can't remember them all, or you and I don't know - as a result of media bias towards report and talk over the big studios, and a no information being released as smaller operations have less obligation to do so. Again, purple forum, but worth seeing:

5. The idealized view of the game industry in the 90s all the way up to the late 2000s in the wake of these layoffs and corrections (ie the correction of the global economy) really comes down to a lack of knowledge. Even with all the layoffs from last year to now, and the waves to come, this industry is more stable than it was back then. Major publishers and dev studios would get gutted or close down routinely. For similar reasons to what's happening now. How many studios and games do we forget or never knew because they were trying to be th next big MMO post-WoW? Do people know the history of Ion Storm and how 2 different proposed Deus Ex games got cancelled before Squaresoft bought Eidos and set up Eidos Montreal? No. They didn't have a social media environment gull of armchair businessmen to eulogize them.

6. Gaming is a luxury medium. It is not necessary, and risks are large. The only reason it's around is becayse of the profit incentive. The only reason it's as big is as it is now is because investments were made to enhance the medium and attract more people. The boom in customer growth sufficed for a time, but that growth has slowed to a crawl, and prices have not increased enough. It's nothing to do with "too much greed". The more you invest and put at risk, the higher you want the reward to be. And the incentive is to take the big swing.

If the mid level project is going to cost 90-100 million dollars over the course of 4 years (see Callisto Protocol or Immortals of Aveum), with the most optimistic of optimistic profits totalling to 10-20 million dollars lifetime - and more likely a slight loss as displayed with the aforementioned titles - why would you take that over the 5-6 year 200 million dollar project that has the potential to take away anywhere from 60-90 up to maybe 150 million dollars? Time and money is finite, and the cost of spending them on one prospect as opposed to another is higher than ever.

 

[Danjin44]

Most of AAA Game development is marketing, believe it or not. If you cut marketing and management bonuses AAA games would hardly cost more than $100m

This also true, do we really need high profile celebrity to advertise games, it feels like such waste of money.

 

[SHA]

put Men_in_Boxes in charge of Xbox, Play Station and Nintendo.

Men in boxes can't think outside of boxes

We need to get back to medium budget sized games in which the development team wasn't forced to "streamline" every single aspect of the game so it had to sell a minimum 10 million copies to break even. The irony is that in the digital age with all those third party engines readily available, being a AA dev is easier than has ever been. Publishers will always seek popular trends and attempt to cash in on the craze though. These publishers got way too big and shareholders too greedy. That's the origin of the problem.

AI will make bigger worlds, I believe that's not the real issue here, AI is a tool, think of all the tools that helped making games in the last decade, AI may literally be the only choice at the moment, especially when everything gonna cost a lot more with time, to make games without thinking about cutting costs, the only real asset with AI is your talent, intellect and knowledge, this will literally kill experience and other client constraints that held valuable before AI. AI will kill clients, that's for sure, and no one need their permission anymore, they won't have integrity either, think of pal world.

 

[hemo memo]

Gameplay is king?

 

[DosGamer]

My 2 cents.
The console market is flooded with inconsistency and vague representation of the actual public. If you take a look at Sony, you will see that there are still a lot of PS4 users. This player base along with the PS3 player base essentially give Sony several varieties for the public to spend their money on. With those 3 consoles named, the PS3, 4 and 5 you will see multiple versions of the console.
Now magnify that with what MS is doing.
Nintendo is a bit better as they tend to get more out of a consoles life cycle. Even they have WiiU and Wii users that still buy and play games.

My point is the market has been flooded with too many options.
If you take a street in New York and open only 1 restaurant that restaurant will do a really good business. However, if I put 5-7 more restaurants on that street, you can bet that the originals volume will drop as well as their profit.

I think making games for older consoles is a waste of time and money.
Back in the big videogame crash.. I remember seeing cans and cans full of Atari games on sale because the market was flooded. When the NES launched later on, it took off because there was no real competition. Sega came along and made things interesting just like MS did with Sony, but the truth is... too much is just too much.

My solution would be to cut out support for older consoles. They have a place in history but its not the modern game market. Develop only for the new consoles.
Give more profits back to indie developers so as to encourage them to continue their craft.
Another thing to look into is more episodic content. This give the devs time to work on games without all of the pressure of final releases. Trickling out content is not a bad thing when done correctly.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

Crunch

Back to Office

8 day work weeks

Congrats i've fixed the industry

 

[Guilty_AI]

All of this relies on a set of repeated and widespread fallacies that are really annoying to have to point out.

1. There is no time of "medium budget game domination" or something to go back to. All of the games from the 90s through the 2000s that were revered and are remembered were at the top end of what the industry could produce at the time.

2. Mid budget games today take more time and money than some high budget stuff did back then. Mighty No.9, a low fidelity 2D platformer couldn't cross the finish line with a 4 million dollar Kickstarter. I hate to bring up anything from reee, let alone from Imran Khan, but:

Even chief of the game press proletariat Jason Schreier has gone out of his way to explain that even indie studios are having to spend more time and money into games, to the point that starting a new indie project in 2023 may well mean the game wouldn't come out before the beginning of the new gen.

3. One what planet do only the big publishers follow trends? This is business. The indie scene is rife with pretenders and ripoffs. Nostalgia bait copies of 90s platformers, bandwagonning farming simulators, projects doing everything they can to be the next PUBG, Escape from Tarkov or Minecraft, etcetera.

4. B-tier studios and indie houses are having just as much trouble as the big publishers right now. Just yesterday Deck Nine laid off a fifth of their staff. The Disco Elysium devs have cancelled 3 projects in as many years and had layoffs as well. Embracer is stock full with mid-low tier studios and IP that are getting gutted or canned as we speak. One of them is a German dev that was working on a TMNT game for crying out loud. There are a whole bunch of other examples that I can't call to name either because I can't remember them all, or you and I don't know - as a result of media bias towards report and talk over the big studios, and a no information being released as smaller operations have less obligation to do so. Again, purple forum, but worth seeing:

5. Gaming is a luxury medium. It is not necessary, and risks are large. The only reason it's around is becayse of the profit incentive. The only reason it's as big is as it is now is because investments were made to enhance the medium and attract more people. The boom in customer growth sufficed for a time, but that growth has slowed to a crawl, and prices have not increased enough. It's nothing to do with "too much greed". The more you invest and put at risk, the higher you want the reward to be. And the incentive is to take the big swing.

If the mid level project is going to cost 90-100 million dollars over the course of 4 years (see Callisto Protocol or Immortals of Aveum), with the most optimistic of optimistic profits totalling to 10-20 million dollars lifetime - and more likely a slight loss as displayed with the aforementioned titles - why would you take that over the 5-6 year 200 million dollar project that has the potential to take away anywhere from 60-90 up to maybe 150 million dollars? Time and money is finite, and the cost of spending them on one prospect as opposed to another is higher than ever.

You're just describing the problems of any creative medium. Many many games in the 90s and 2000s also couldn't even break even despite the narrative that things were more sustainable back then. You'll see plenty of similar problems in novel writing, movies, animation, music, etc.

Like in any creative industry you'll also get plenty of egomaniacs who can't measure up a project scope, mismanagement, people who enter it half-assedly thinking they'll make big bucks and get famous, vultures who take advantage of others passion, cartels in certain segments, poor work culture, and so on. A lot of these don't even apply just to entertainment either, just go try opening a restaurant.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

2. There are too many people working on doing the same thing in genres where there is already a "king", the genre is in long term decline, and standards of users are raised sky high.

You should only avoid a King when he has bested numerous adversaries over a length of time.

When a new King pops up in a new genre, they should be tested as their dominance may be due to a lack of competition.

What is this false advertisement? Where is my anime waifu, all i got were voices in my head and Iguazu.

Also, you should play this Men_in_Boxes

I bought it at launch. Vomited everywhere when I realized I was playing a B grade PS2 game, lol.

 

[Guilty_AI]

I bought it at launch. Vomited everywhere when I realized I was playing a B grade PS2 game, lol.

Just say you couldn't beat the Helicopter first boss, it's okay, we won't judge you.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Just say you couldn't beat the Helicopter first boss, it's okay, we won't judge you.

I beat him on my 62nd try. Piece of cake.

 

[Wildebeest]

You should only avoid a King when he has bested numerous adversaries over a length of time.

When a new King pops up in a new genre, they should be tested as their dominance may be due to a lack of competition.

By my rule of 2 out of 3 it is fine to take on the king if you know you can deliver both on value to users (including overcoming their sunk cost on skins and so on), and deliver some additional fresh feeling elements that wash away their "genre fatigue".

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Games just need to focus on stuff that matters and cut out all the superfluous bullshit that adds bloat, more bugs, QA time, etc

I do think AI will have a hugely positive impact on development though

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Damn it, this thread is getting overrun by the bugs who spit green generic platitudes from their mouths.

I feel like a Helldiver on Helldive difficulty lol.

People! "Just make it good!" is not a valid response in this thread. I feel like a teacher who tells their students to go back to their desk and put their name on top of their paper. I'm looking for examples, not platitudes lol

 

[Danjin44]

I'm looking for examples, not platitude lol

I just gave you example.....you just chose to ignore it.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I just gave you example.....you just chose to ignore it.

You did good. It's tough to say what the RoI on Armored Core was because the budget is unknown. What was the "break even" point?

 

[Little Chicken]

Moving to a more sustainable "AA" development environment is fine from the neogaf/gaming bubble, but casuals like to buy their Xbox, and to a lesser extent PlayStations, for AAA spectacles. The gaming media eats up AAA as well, especially when galvanized by advertiser coins.

 

[StueyDuck]

Create Lower price games made by smaller and actually passionate teams with no external forces or political forces intervening made in a shorter time.

Put fun over everything else. Story can be literally, man bad, shoot the bad man. If it's fun then it's worth it.

Fixed

 

[jshackles]

My 2 cents.
The console market is flooded with inconsistency and vague representation of the actual public. If you take a look at Sony, you will see that there are still a lot of PS4 users. This player base along with the PS3 player base essentially give Sony several varieties for the public to spend their money on. With those 3 consoles named, the PS3, 4 and 5 you will see multiple versions of the console.
Now magnify that with what MS is doing.
Nintendo is a bit better as they tend to get more out of a consoles life cycle. Even they have WiiU and Wii users that still buy and play games.

My point is the market has been flooded with too many options.
If you take a street in New York and open only 1 restaurant that restaurant will do a really good business. However, if I put 5-7 more restaurants on that street, you can bet that the originals volume will drop as well as their profit.

I think making games for older consoles is a waste of time and money.
Back in the big videogame crash.. I remember seeing cans and cans full of Atari games on sale because the market was flooded. When the NES launched later on, it took off because there was no real competition. Sega came along and made things interesting just like MS did with Sony, but the truth is... too much is just too much.

My solution would be to cut out support for older consoles. They have a place in history but its not the modern game market. Develop only for the new consoles.
Give more profits back to indie developers so as to encourage them to continue their craft.
Another thing to look into is more episodic content. This give the devs time to work on games without all of the pressure of final releases. Trickling out content is not a bad thing when done correctly.

Consoles and generations aren't really a problem though. Look at PC (and Steam specifically) where generations don't exist and hundreds of new games get released every day: the storefront itself is still insanely profitable, and games like Stardew Valley, Baldur's Gate 3, Palword, etc. are still massive hits. Even multiplatform games like Elden Ring, Call of Duty, Helldivers 2, and Disney Dreamlight Valley are still among the platforms top sellers list.

Hell, even generation-old games like Rainbow Six Siege, Eurotruck Simulator, Horizon Zero Dawn, and GTA 5 are in the top 25.

 

[Danjin44]

You did good. It's tough to say what the RoI on Armored Core was because the budget is unknown. What was the "break even" point?

I would bet games like Suicide Squad and Redfall had twice the budget as Armored Core VI, while those game failed miserably ACVI in other hand was highly successful.

Again same story with movie industry.....

$13 million

$225 milion

 

[Aion002]

What other games?

Honkai Star Rail and Genshin Impact (which does does have coop mp, but it's just a minor part of it) are probably some of the most successful games made so far and are single player focused.


Soooo....

Gacha ftw.

 

[KimDongHwan]

All of this relies on a set of repeated and widespread fallacies that are really annoying to have to point out.

1. There is no time of "medium budget game domination" or something to go back to. All of the games from the 90s through the 2000s that were revered and are remembered were at the top end of what the industry could produce at the time.

2. Mid budget games today take more time and money than some high budget stuff did back then. Mighty No.9, a low fidelity 2D platformer couldn't cross the finish line with a 4 million dollar Kickstarter. I hate to bring up anything from reee, let alone from Imran Khan, but:

Even chief of the game press proletariat Jason Schreier has gone out of his way to explain that even indie studios are having to spend more time and money into games, to the point that starting a new indie project in 2023 may well mean the game wouldn't come out before the beginning of the new gen.

3. One what planet do only the big publishers follow trends? This is business. The indie scene is rife with pretenders and ripoffs. Nostalgia bait copies of 90s platformers, bandwagonning farming simulators, projects doing everything they can to be the next PUBG, Escape from Tarkov or Minecraft, etcetera.

4. B-tier studios and indie houses are having just as much trouble as the big publishers right now. Just yesterday Deck Nine laid off a fifth of their staff. The Disco Elysium devs have cancelled 3 projects in as many years and had layoffs as well. Embracer is stock full with mid-low tier studios and IP that are getting gutted or canned as we speak. One of them is a German dev that was working on a TMNT game for crying out loud. There are a whole bunch of other examples that I can't call to name either because I can't remember them all, or you and I don't know - as a result of media bias towards report and talk over the big studios, and a no information being released as smaller operations have less obligation to do so. Again, purple forum, but worth seeing:

5. The idealized view of the game industry in the 90s all the way up to the late 2000s in the wake of these layoffs and corrections (ie the correction of the global economy) really comes down to a lack of knowledge. Even with all the layoffs from last year to now, and the waves to come, this industry is more stable than it was back then. Major publishers and dev studios would get gutted or close down routinely. For similar reasons to what's happening now. How many studios and games do we forget or never knew because they were trying to be th next big MMO post-WoW? Do people know the history of Ion Storm and how 2 different proposed Deus Ex games got cancelled before Squaresoft bought Eidos and set up Eidos Montreal? No. They didn't have a social media environment gull of armchair businessmen to eulogize them.

6. Gaming is a luxury medium. It is not necessary, and risks are large. The only reason it's around is becayse of the profit incentive. The only reason it's as big is as it is now is because investments were made to enhance the medium and attract more people. The boom in customer growth sufficed for a time, but that growth has slowed to a crawl, and prices have not increased enough. It's nothing to do with "too much greed". The more you invest and put at risk, the higher you want the reward to be. And the incentive is to take the big swing.

If the mid level project is going to cost 90-100 million dollars over the course of 4 years (see Callisto Protocol or Immortals of Aveum), with the most optimistic of optimistic profits totalling to 10-20 million dollars lifetime - and more likely a slight loss as displayed with the aforementioned titles - why would you take that over the 5-6 year 200 million dollar project that has the potential to take away anywhere from 60-90 up to maybe 150 million dollars? Time and money is finite, and the cost of spending them on one prospect as opposed to another is higher than ever.

Sorry just 2 points here. For number 1, I remember back then even some of the most well known games could be done by 20 people and not only that, they would pump sequels like in 1 year for example Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 & 2. Some people would argue, if any dev can produce the same game with almost the exact same amount of content today, same physics and all, why would it take 5-6 years or why would you need like 1000 people.

And second, do all people in that forum talk like that ? Whenever something from that forum is posted almost always their conversations look like social justice discussions about supporting or not supporting or cancelling and stuff.

 

[BobLeeSwagger]

What studios/developers need to realize is that they can’t continue to get their big budget games greenlit every time.

The solution for the past decade was to increase headcount to get these games out the door. Now it is at the point where it’s not even realistic to keep paying $50M+ a year to pay their hundred of workers and whatever else is needed.

It’ll work for some games that you know will generate profit (Madden, NBA, GTA, COD) but for others, what reasonable investor would greenlight a 4-year $200M+ project?

Developers/Studios need to find ways to make game development more efficient/time-saving and with less manpower.

 

[BennyBlanco]

What studios/developers need to realize is that they can’t continue to get their big budget games greenlit every time.

The solution for the past decade was to increase headcount to get these games out the door. Now it is at the point where it’s not even realistic to keep paying $50M+ a year to pay their hundred of workers and whatever else is needed.

It’ll work for some games that you know will generate profit (Madden, NBA, GTA, COD) but for others, what reasonable investor would greenlight a 4-year $200M+ project?

Developers/Studios need to find ways to make game development more efficient/time-saving and with less manpower.

AI tech is gonna handle this and then some. Nvidia is gonna have the entire industry by the balls in 5 years.