Will we see another video game crash?

Spyxos

Spyxos

Member
Studios are being closed everywhere at the moment and you hear about layoffs almost every day. I realize that gaming today is bigger than when the first crash happened. Maybe it's just me, but isn't the gaming sector in a crisis right now?
 
They probably expanded way too much during the pandemic and now are scaling back. Isn't gaming like 5 times bigger in revenue than movies right now? I don't think it's in a crisis.
 
Consumer spending is fine. 2023 was a huge year with many titles selling extremely well. Why the layoffs? Too much consolidation, gaas misses, and AAA bombs. Those have consequences.
 
ReyBrujo said:
They probably expanded way too much during the pandemic and now are scaling back. Isn't gaming like 5 times bigger in revenue than movies right now? I don't think it's in a crisis.
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Yup.

Also interest rates are around triple what they were during the tech ramp ups just before and during covid. So ramping up on my costs and debt at that time starting in 2022 when loan rates rocketed up was the worst time to be taking out giant loans. See embracer going ape shit buying companies from 2019-2022.

Maybe if gaming sales keep zooming up the charts instead of leveling or dropping a bit the past two years perhaps it'd work out for some companies. But they bet the farm, that bar chart trajectory would keep going up like a Nasdaq stock on fire which if you extrapolate the performance with a dotted line for the next 10 years, the stock price is on trend to reach $1,000 if it keeps going.

The only overarching industry got go caught holding the bad in covid hiring sprees was I think tech. Not really surprised. They got tons of money, can get giant loans and typically have crappy financial controls. Tech companies are a go big or go home kind of way of doing business. Spend shit loads on people, software, slick buildings and marketing and hope it leads to global scope attention and sales.
 
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rofif said:
Whatever just make ff7 reunion first
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They already did :messenger_winking:

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Nope, the first crash in '83 was mostly a North American phenomena back when everyone still thought video games was a passing fad.
People will still buy games even if there's a shakeup in the industry. In fact, I'd go so far to argue that having a crisis is a good thing, it'll make the money guys questions certain creative decisions.
 
ReyBrujo said:
They probably expanded way too much during the pandemic and now are scaling back. Isn't gaming like 5 times bigger in revenue than movies right now? I don't think it's in a crisis.
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That's nothing to brag about because the film industry is in they're own crisis right now.
 
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It can't happen.
A gaming recession, maybe, but not a full-on crash.
 
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Holammer said:
Nope, the first crash in '83 was mostly a North American phenomena back when everyone still thought video games was a passing fad.
People will still buy games even if there's a shakeup in the industry. In fact, I'd go so far to argue that having a crisis is a good thing, it'll make the money guys questions certain creative decisions.
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The 83 crash was heavily skewed to lots of shit games flooding the market. You had cereal companies getting in on the action making games. And the farther you got back in gaming, the generally shittier the games are. Now, ya you can get shovelware especially all those Steam 99 cents noname games which resemble flash games, but your typical fully priced or indie game now is leagues better than the typical game from 1983.

Anytime an industry is too fucked up, it's good to shake out the weak ones helping contribute to it. And that doesn't mean poor small studios making junky games. It also means any company (like blowing budgets up the wazoo) shape up and learn how to make games responsibly and on time. Shake out the crum bums and the industry gets stable.

It's like every once in a while you hear about real estate going into booms and busts. Low rates = people go ape shit buying homes with 20 people in line bidding up properties. That leads to a bubble. Raise rates, and prices stabilize and all those bidding warrers disappear. The people holding the bag are ones who bought high and now caught in bad mortgage rates. And then they might need to dump. I'm hoping that the general public reads this stuff since the interest tells everyone everything and dont do this shit next time.
 
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Spyxos said:
Studios are being closed everywhere at the moment and you hear about layoffs almost every day. I realize that gaming today is bigger than when the first crash happened. Maybe it's just me, but isn't the gaming sector in a crisis right now?
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Whats happening now isnt a video game crash, publishers over estimated games value, happens every 10 years
 
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The acquisition frenzy is over, Eastern gaming is back, pushback against DEI and workers finally getting their ass back to office. The new golden age is upon us bros.
 
I hope so. This industry needs to burn down to the ground and be replaced by literature. Kids aren't reading anymore thanks to garbage like Fortnite.
 
I'm about done with AAA gaming. AA seems to be the sweet spot for me. The only ambitious AAA game is fucking FFVII Rebirth, everything else has been boring
 
How would the biggest entertainment industry in the world where every publisher is raking in massive profits crash, exactly?
 
Majukun said:
No.
The videogame crush happened because the business model was completely different from the present one.
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This also western gaming industry is the one having hard time....Japanese gaming doing just fine, this year just started but we got crazy amount of high quality games form them.
 
We just had 2023 as one of the best years ever.

Twitter laid off 80% workforce and it is running as healthily as it ever can be.

Jeez, give those type of threads a break.
 
Spyxos said:
Studios are being closed everywhere at the moment and you hear about layoffs almost every day. I realize that gaming today is bigger than when the first crash happened. Maybe it's just me, but isn't the gaming sector in a crisis right now?
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I think you mean we hear about layoffs almost everyday…on Gaf? Definitely not the overall status of anything. Layoffs have been going on since a long time ago. Please don't base your feelings on what some Gaf threads say…I promise, it's not that serious 😂
 
Layoffs are happening all over the place in every industry except service pretty much. This is just things returning to a somewhat normal level after the COVID explosion.

What's with this barrage of "industry is doomed!!" and "please publishers, please charge me more!!!" threads lately?
 
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No but publishers aren't gonna make as much money as they did a few years ago which is why people are faux crying about a potential crash.
 
GaaS and mobile are carying the industry and they are doing better than ever. Japan is doing better than ever. The reason layoffs and big things are happening is because the industry was expected to grow by a certain rate. So companies invested expecting a bigger industry in 2024, 2025 and so forth.

Here's an analogy. Imagine owning a restaurant in a city where you hear all the restaurants, analysts and whatever raving about how the city is growing and there's going to be so much money to be made over time as the population grows and people spend more money on eating out. Lets say you start to hire more people to train and prepare your existing employee to be able to serve a wider array of dishes. Uh oh, the econmomy is not so great right now, goverment is causing interest rates to go up, supply chain problems and high inflation. Analysts are starting to say well the industry is not goin to be booming anymore any time soon. Now you see all the other restaurant owners echoing yeah our sales targets for the last quarter month missed and we also no longer think the market is going to be as booming lets cut back on all our plans. And so when you see other people echoing that the future does not look so great you follow suit. It doesn't mean the restaurants are going to fail it just means they they need to slow down with their growth strategies and so they they might need to get rid of people they no longer need and cut some ideas that might not pay off anymore.
 
Bumblebeetuna said:
Layoffs are happening all over the place in every industry except service pretty much. This is just things returning to a somewhat normal level after the COVID explosion.

What's with this barrage of "industry is doomed!!" and "please publishers, please charge me more!!!" threads lately?
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Exactly, alot of people forget that unkown developers (developers that never released a game) were shutdown at the start of the 360/ps3 era because a huge amount of publishers were scared about how much games would cost to make while publishers like atari and midway were still in the mindset of games being created with ps2 level budgets which also took them down
 
jakinov said:
GaaS and mobile are carying the industry and they are doing better than ever. Japan is doing better than ever. The reason layoffs and big things are happening is because the industry was expected to grow by a certain rate. So companies invested expecting a bigger industry in 2024, 2025 and so forth.

Here's an analogy. Imagine owning a restaurant in a city where you hear all the restaurants, analysts and whatever raving about how the city is growing and there's going to be so much money to be made over time as the population grows and people spend more money on eating out. Lets say you start to hire more people to train and prepare your existing employee to be able to serve a wider array of dishes. Uh oh, the econmomy is not so great right now, goverment is causing interest rates to go up, supply chain problems and high inflation. Analysts are starting to say well the industry is not goin to be booming anymore any time soon. Now you see all the other restaurant owners echoing yeah our sales targets for the last quarter month missed and we also no longer think the market is going to be as booming lets cut back on all our plans. And so when you see other people echoing that the future does not look so great you follow suit. It doesn't mean the restaurants are going to fail it just means they they need to slow down with their growth strategies and so they they might need to get rid of people they no longer need and cut some ideas that might not pay off anymore.
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Gaming and restaurants are pretty similar in that both industries are easy to break into. Especially gaming where one guy can make and upload a flash game even wanted to. At least with restaurants you got to go through hoops, costs and permits etc…

But it can't be that hard to open a restaurant because in every city there's shitloads of them.

What I'm getting at is the easier the industry to get into (hell look at the millions of people trying to be overnight doing social media personalities), the more gunning for the gold rush you get. And when the gold runs out, it's time to chop up the wagon wheels for firewood. So pending the trend or fad, you get roller coaster rides of success and failures.

On the flip side something like building airplanes is done by a small number of companies. It makes zero difference if airplane sales goes up because it's likely going up be the same companies. Virtually impossible for any person or small company to suddenly say… hey jumbo jet sales rocking, let's create a new company and build one in the next 5 years.
 
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Video games are crazy now. Play, or look at helldivers and then think back to the PS1. Tomb Raider was the most amazing game ever in 95.

I recently bought the 1 to 3 collection and don't get me wrong I love it but it's huge and empty. Bats come out first and you only know this because of the eek eek sound but can't find them until they're on your head. After that scare you see some 6 sided dogs, graphics eh.

Anyway I hope not. Getting ready to play FF7.
 
No.

This is a correction from COVID. Not a crash. And studios get closed and people get fired in the games industry. It has ALWAYS been like that. You can just take a cursory glance at pretty much every year going back say a decade. You'd likely find that every single year, there was something being closed and people being laid off.
 
I think crash rumble has put a bit of a stain on the ip.

I think we will see another video game crash however.

/s

(Yes this is a joke so before you angrily quote respond, know it is)
 
When Helldivers and Palworld are crunching numbers, I don't think industry is headed for a crash.

Worst case scenario, giant company fires most talented staff and they will go and make their own AA-premium games like Palworld.
 
It's too deep into mainstream to crash. It's like wondering if music or movies will crash. No matter how shit it gets, mainstream media will always thrive one way or another.
 
Gaming is too mainstream and too much a part of everyone's lives to have a real crash.

Back in the 80s or whatever it was sort of niche.

There will be a contraction for sure as we already see.
 
This is a crisis of business and finance, not the gaming market. We are seeing new records and breakout hits on steam all the time.
 
Spyxos said:
Studios are being closed everywhere at the moment and you hear about layoffs almost every day. I realize that gaming today is bigger than when the first crash happened. Maybe it's just me, but isn't the gaming sector in a crisis right now?
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Maybe you spend too much time here :D.
 
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