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In recent times, triple-A publishers have repeatedly had their lunch eaten — at least, in terms of mindshare — by more creatively nimble indies. Lethal Companywas last holiday season’s breakout hit, andPalworld followed not long after. Balatroand Manor Lords have come out of nowhere to tear up the Steam charts, as have mind-bogglingly fast riffs on this new paradigm like the Lethal Company-inspired Content Warning. Helldivers 2 is both the exception that proves the rule and an example of exactly why big publishers should let studios cook even in the face of only modest success (or failure!). WithoutHelldivers 1, a relative unknown, you don’t get Helldivers 2, the biggest breakout hit of the year. Recent triple-A darlings like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Elden Ring come from similar lineages.
Yes, it’s a slow year for triple-A publishers, but that’s what happens when you spend years quietly canceling projects that you’re worried *might *not achieve such a spectacular liftoff as to take over the entire universe. Eventually, it catches up with you. And years from now — already a record year for layoffs — it’s gonna catch up with the video game industry again.
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“Why aren’t we making more money?!?” Cries Phil Spencer while wringing the neck of yet another golden goose.
Exec, as he swallows the last bite, of the last liver, of the last goose: “yeah that’s a fun analogy, but sometimes there’s nothing quite like a good foie gras”
It’s like they don’t consider Game Pass plays as the game being successful/profitable. They need to reconsider all that.
Thing is, it’s not because it’s not translating to new game pass subscriptions. It’s not bringing them in more money, and that’s what matters to them. They aren’t getting enough from game pass to pay for development, not after the giant expense of buying Activision.
Ok, there is a real lesson here:
In recent times, triple-A publishers have repeatedly had their lunch eaten — at least, in terms of mindshare — by more creatively nimble indies
And that lesson is that online-obsessed, industry-focused journalists and fans have a super skewed view of the industry.
Don’t get me wrong, all these layoffs suck and I agree with the sentiment that a longer term strategy for investing in games where you snowball up from small, successful ideas, is probably a better way to do things than trying to constantly chase the billion dollar game right away… but the “mindshare” argument is very skewed and the examples are cherry picked at best, tortured or outright incorrect at worst (Baldur’s Gate 3 and Elden Ring “come from similar lineages”? Seriously?).
I think it’s time we take a deep breath and decide what we mean by “triple A”. If Grayson wants to argue that triple A is “American conglomerates spending a lot of money in games with some degree of games-as-service design meant to make billions” then maybe we need a new term for all the other games with nine digit budgets.
MS is ironically breaking up several big publishers and creating a slew of small, independent game studios. Basically out of their own incompetence. It silently heralds a new and hopefully much better era in gaming.
Also, it’s time to seriously wonder about the future of the Xbox console. It seems hopeless at this point. It probably has too small of a marketshare to justify any exclusives, even first-party ones. You wonder when MS will have to just admit that it is a PC in a box, and begin selling it as one.
It’s genuinely upsetting to see people losing their jobs in pursuit of company profits.
That said, the AAA game development model is broken financially. If Indies and small studios get the release space and attention they need to thrive now, the death of widespread AAA gaming is a wonderful thing.
How many of the most interesting gaming experiences in the last decade have been indies? I would argue most of the best games have been made by teams with less than 30 people, often single dev “studios”.
I really wish the tech industry was unionized because these major cuts, even if they can’t directly reach out and affect indie companies (and in some fashion benefit them by removing AAA developer competition) affect the entire industry of video game development and what it is like to be a worker in it even if you don’t actually directly work for one of these companies.
It is really sad to see game development face a similar fate to the other arts where it is becoming a valueless skill practiced by people in their free time. The word large corporations and execs are using to justify this is “AI” but it really doesn’t matter if AI works or not, what matters is that the identity of a game developer and programmer becomes fundamentally devalued.
It makes me feel a little less bad seeing the hoards of computer people who stilllll believe AI can never come for their jobs or that anything happening in the tech industry can’t be threat to the value of their profession and they have such a smug sense of naive ignorance about class politics, it is like watching a birthday cake get smushed by a steamroller.
At the end of the day though that feeling is self indulgent in an unproductive way, I don’t want birthday cakes to get smushed by steamrollers it isn’t how cake should be treated.
