Gaming just keeps getting worse.
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- Опубліковано 17 чер 2024
- A discussion of why we are where we are in the games industry, and why it's not going to change.
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Regarding visualising a trillion:
a million seconds is 11 days
a Trillion seconds is 31,000 Years
_[Internal screaming intensifies]_
😀😀😀 HUH????? 💀
That math ain't right.
@@eliminator173it is. He just rounded the numbers down
@@eliminator173 I just checked it and uuhh, it's pretty much right. The numbers are actually rounded down so it's even worse.
Chasing endless growth is like chasing the fountain of youth and it's fucking up everything for everyone. It drives me nuts.
Yep, and it’s crazy that capitalism is built around it. Things have to die eventually! Endless growth is impossible
It's like so obviously flawed and doomed to fail in the long run and the fact no one cares about anything longer than 90 days is insane
They'll finally realize this and correct it around the time that the whole world is on fire and there's no water left to put out the flames. Don't worry, they got this 😆
I think gaming is digging itself deep in a whole. First it was we have to be better looking and more over the top than the other guys and that was the practice for a while and now it’s unsustainable. Game budgets are insanely high, and they have to make insane profits to justify the cost/risk while also still competing. Single player games should probably cost well over $100 but what consumer is going to want that? Nintendo hasn’t promised more than it was capable of and sticks with last gen graphics and makes games at reasonable scale that do fairly well. Their non competition has allowed them to stay the course despite any pitfalls. The big studios just set a dangerous precedent.
@@goob8945 It's a popular misconception. Economists still argue back and forth about whether infinite growth is a factor that underpins capitalism. Human greed is pretty boundless though and that's not a problem peculiar to capitalism.
You hit a fundamental note with me. I'm not a video game "consumer" I am a video game customer. Companies that treat me like a consumer don't get as much of my business because their focus has changed from figuring out what I want to figuring out what they can extract from me.
You're the one that determines what gets your money. Just like everyone else. So we directly determine what the game industry will be. The money and gamer time does not fall out of the sky. But yes, if we stupidly throw money at them then they will set up pipelines to serve that demand.
CONSUME THEM...... 😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢 HELP
@@Ralathar44 the problem with this is that the whales will always render our spending habits on games moot especially as long as live service games are viable... they are and will continue to be from a biz standpoint. and for whatever accursed god forsaken reason whales will always be around
@@aldebaran4777 OK so let them have those their games they'll pay through the nose for. There are a limited amount of whales. If everyone fights over the whales most devs will fail and starve. Non-whale oriented games will continue to be made for that reason because while a whale oriented game has great profit potential, that market is massively oversaturated. The game industry isn't whales OR us. Its whales AND us. We're different demographics with different games designed for each demographic. The industry does not discriminate and its more than big enough for all of us.
Movies, music and games. Three entertainment industries who are determined to make their money from recurring user fees rather than good content.
Cars, homes, and goddamn life feel like subscription services now. Nothing you're gonna be able to keep for too long anyway.
Management: Make a shitty live service game
Devs: People will hate that
People: We'll hate that
Management: Do it anyways
Game: Fails
Management: Well now we have to fire everyone. Why didnt you buy our game? This is everyone's fault but ours.
In some cases, the game wouldn't fail as spectacularly if the devs OR management actually listened to their audience. Instead, when you come out bashing the fans and then have the audacity to blame fans for the game's failure, don't come crying about the next one doing even worse (suicide squad being among the recents)
Ah, I see you understand the finer points of business. This is how it all works and it's shit.
From a prey fan who has bought multiple copies of this game on different platforms, this is monstrous. The kicker is deathloop and prey's dlc showed great strides in making great multiplayer content and I could see a world where the next prey had a great multiplayer component. This is going to come back to bite them. It's too much talent not to.
Prey, Ghostwire Tokyo and Evil Within failed too, all were great games. What's your excuse for those?
Everyone knew Redfall would suck and I don't blame people for not supporting that shit, but these studio's problems go way back before Redfall and those other games flopping were in fact gamers fault for not supporting them when they should have.
Basically what they are doing is throw things at the wall, hoping that one or two will stick and make them richer.
The fact that Matt Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios said: "We need smaller games that give us prestige and awards," in a Microsoft town hall a day ago just after they had shuttered Tango is just MIND BLOWING....
Booty hehe
We don’t yet know the full story on what was going on behind-the-scenes with Tango over this past year, especially after Shinji Mikame left.
@@tronam Shinji Mikami stated he was sad to hear what happened. That should tell you everything.
@@Kingdom850 He’s sad that the studio he founded closed down. I’d be sad too, but that doesn’t explain what happened. They were a very small studio. How much of the overall creative drive behind that team came from him? For all we know it was a Studio Ghibli kind of situation with Hayao Miyazaki where he was essentially irreplaceable. I just hope we get some real information about it sometime soon because it’s not clear cut to me at all.
I am so glad I live in the timeline where we have Doug Bowser as president of NOA, and Matt Booty as head of Xbox Game Studios.
As someone working in game development - Current "trends" remind me so much of 2011/2012. I was soooo bad until finally crowdfounding exploded and pretty much refreshed the industry... until now, when we are pretty much back to square one
The troubles with the gaming industry started when management shifted from people who loved making & playing games, to accountants whose only interest is bean counting.
The industry is not dead but it is in a very sorry state that has no light at the end of the tunnel.
If Ferrari sell a car for 1 million is it their fault that somebody bought it?
The paradox of pleasing investors is that they like it when you acquire companies and they like it when you cut costs. This results in an endless bipolar cycle of grow, shrink, grow, shrink, etc.
Of course, because they buy stocks in low cycle and sell on high. Or use as collateral in loans for other investments
Maybe I missed this in the video but what is the purpose of buying these studios only to shut them down. Do they retain the intellectual properties which they can sell off or use as collateral as you suggest? It just sounds like colossally bad business that would upset investors to just buy something only to jettison it…
@@obedear_ Of course they retain the IPs. Whether that's worth something or not is up to debate.
@@obedear_ at the end of the day, investors are stupid. When Microsoft acquires a company, the investors think "oh, line go up" because there's a perceived increase in value. Then Microsoft shows an earnings call where their quarterly profits are a few million less than the previous quarter (but, importantly, still a profit) so the investors think "mmm bad, me want perpetual and unsustainable growth, line go down" so Microsoft has to counterbalance any losses by cutting staff, closing down studios, cancelling projects, etc. This increases their margins, and the investors have already forgotten about the acquisitions since better margins means line go up.
It's capitalism. I'm not bleeding heart communist, but this is an unsustainable economic model.
@@Kyle-yn5hy preach!
this was the best way i ever heard to think about numbers is, 1 million seconds is just under 12 days, 1 billion seconds is just under 32 years, 1 trillion seconds is just under 32,000 years
so you could pay 32000 people $3600 an hour for a year lol.
This is honestly a good one. Puts it in a format that humans can actually relate to. And yes, that difference is so massive. I feel like people often underestimate when discussing billions and billionaires and still think of them as sort of low end multi-millionaires when it's not even close.
@@oldmatttv Who in the wold thinks of billionaires as low end multi-millionaires...
@@jase276What I'm trying to say is that many people just don't think about it and just put those two in the same bucket. It's a psychological thing, when things get big enough it all blurs into a mess.
Speaking of risk: Another issue is that far too many gamers are content with spending $20 on a battle pass for their favorite live service game instead of investing that $20 into a new single player experience. "Why spend $70 to play as Spider-Man for 20 hours when you can spend $20 and play as Spider-Man for 100 hours in Fortnite?" That is actually something someone said to me when I asked them if they were picking up Spidey 2. 🤣
I worked on a live service game for years and I can tell you that the production is worse too.
Instead of crunching 3 times in, say two or three years (alpha beta and release... Generally), you're crunching once a season with each major update. It's hard.
Tim Cain made such a good point about the value in taking a fat stack of $10-30 million risks that have higher odds of panning out than just constantly making $225+ Million titles that might fail.
Yeah, it's ironic that business leaders seem to have abandoned the principle of diversified risk.
Higher risk, higher reward tho. i think the compromise publishers like Microsoft and Paradox Interactive came to was releasing prototypes into the market, and then developing them further if they get mass appeal
@@Retrofire-47 But this just isn't panning out in reality though. For every Fortnite there are 100+ Redfalls, and if making a single Redfall means your studio closes then the risk/reward structure actually isn't that good.
Pretty much 🥺
10:11 jumpscare
having a trillion dollars and destroying 60 families for a few hundred thousand bucks is unconscionable
lmaooo wtf was that
Editing error, what I think happened is that she had b roll footage on the track below the main one, and there was a gap between the tracks so the secondary track shows up during just that instant
Yep. Fun fact for you, the bonus Kotick got when kindly asked to leave the building would have kept both of these studios up for roughly another decade. I say rougly because it' s been calculated from the highest amount developer earns yearly but without stuff like insurance etc. But all in all, decade.
@@Scarecr0wnthat is an incredibly horrendous fact.
Went back to the frame to see wtf that was and that is a great freeze frame 🤣
Looks more and more like the artistic integrity of videogames lies with smaller studios not hellbent on growth. Fortunately, a game like manor lords proves even one guy with dedication can make a beautiful product.
7:08 I'm so glad you added the future-Alanah bit. That did actually help a lot. Thx
06:59 What’s staggeringly, mind-numbing idiotic to me is that these C-Level Execs at WB & Microsoft are missing/ignoring is that the live-service games that have made billions & billions came after “stand alone” games like GTAIV or games that had a long history like Warcraft or games like Fortnite that stood on the shoulders of The Battlefield & Call of Duty franchises.
Their current mentality reminds me of companies that would rather build dangerous products and get sued than spend the money to make safe products.
They’re willing to make absolute garbage over and over in the hopes of getting lucky once. It’s incredibly short-sighted and absolutely punishing to consumers.
GTA Online made rockstar bucket loads, but it had a stand alone game that was extraordinary too.
You're kidding yourself if you think they're ignorant or misinformed.
They understand, and they don't care. They have been sociopathically conditioned to increase shareholder value above all else.
@@DanKaschel 1000% this. Not enough people realize that corpos only care about shareholder value and nothing else. This is the main feature of capitalism
@@Phoenixguy357 Please keep in mind, that the dumbest investors who only look at numbers (not at the business domain like Buffet) are organisations which need constant profit to pay out retirement funds for us, our parents, our grand parents.
On a brighter note, Independent gaming studio, Hello Games (No Mans Sky and Light No Fire) were recruiting people not long ago.
Great, until they get big enough to garner a buy out and the inevitable shareholders descend to kill them with greed. Hope they resist.
@@scottneil1187 dude... read what you just said. Corporate eventually ruins fucking EVERYTHING
There is a disconnect between how we define 'success'. Creative success and Profitability. Its a matter of Art vs Money.
Agreed. Critical success is not the same thing as commercial success
@@AlbertPatrickThat's also extremely shortsighted though. Nintendo is about to make a ton of money from Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. Make a great game and it will find its audience. It will eventually make money and lots of it
@@spacelion4763 sorry for being cynical but Mario is a brand that people will buy no matter what. Good strategy on Nintendo's part, to make games they know for sure gamers will support. What does Xbox have that really matches that, that isn't part of ABK?
@@spacelion4763 Good game or not, Mario sells. Alan Wake 2 is a critical hit, but hasn't really made back its money yet. Hi-Fi Rush is a critical hit, and I think you can do the math on how much it could have made with the knowledge that it apparently was played by about 2-3 Million people. People have said that they are generally lukewarm about COD and that still sells a ton. Critical success does not automatically mean commercial success
@@AlbertPatrick We need to start getting back to success not having anything to do with the financial side of things. Greed is killing entertainment for awhile now.
There's a reason why games, movies and music all used to be better. TV used to be better. It was never about finances. Just about making the best art you could possibly make and entertainment was thriving for decades like that
Lost my job at an indie game studio in september. Can't find anything since then, it's so brutal right now it's insane.
Could you share your story?
wish you all the best dude
Really sucks to lose these studios. Especially since Prey, Dishonored, and The Evil within are among some of my favorite games.
dishonored and deathloop was not austin i think only prey but that game was a banger! only red fall was a fail but they had to do this trash game
@@ic3t3ap3achFor clarity, Arkane Lyon was the main developer of Dishonored 2 and Death of the Outsider (as well as Deathloop). Arkane Austin actually did assist in the development of Dishonored 1.
@@BrianCam. The entire point of this video is that none of your studios or games are safe under stock market capitalism.
I bought Prey on digital on sale, because I didn't think much of the demo. I ended up liking it so much that I bought a physical copy. I bought two copies of Arkane's game it's so good.
i seriously need to revisit prey. idk why i stopped, i remember being incredibly locked in and then just never playing it again.
I think it is worth mentioning that the VAST majority of people playing video games are not the type of people that watch this video, nor people who care about Prey or HiFi rush.
Though those are the people the Publisher Executives are aiming for. They are competing with Netflix for THEIR time. Not for the people that actually love games. Just your normal dude who plays a bit of FIFA, GTA or Fortnite sometimes. They are the market. Not us
Absolutely. Probably the most insightful comment here ~
hey now - why are you speaking so much sense?
Yep, what I have been telling people for years, I work in GAME Retail UK over in Northern Ireland so I know a lot of this first-hand as well.
My manager also does gaming surveys to collect more information on little things like this.
He collects all this data and then uses it to help sell products in-store that people want. Just collects so much information.
No personal data is collected, just gaming information, why you bought this game, why you bought that console, why you prefer this or that has a lot of interesting information
True lol. I think when Xbox moved to subscription based all digital gaming things started to go downhill. Take hi-fi rush for instance. They said 3 million people played that game. But that game was on game pass. If they would’ve sold that game for let’s say $30 or $40. 3 million times that. Would’ve been some good profit. But 3 million at $9 is way less. Not to mention people just cancel after they play. I think when Microsoft decided to put their brand new games on game Pass day one they did themselves a disservice. Because if a “gamePass” type model was viable, you would see Nintendo and Sony jumping all over it. But I think the entire idea of putting all your brand new games including AAA games on there was a very bad idea. Some market expert said Xbox would need 500 million active subscribers for gamepass to be viable. They only have 30 million right now. That’s how bad it is.
@@The_Primary_Axiom The thing is with this modern gaming mindset and i'm responsible also I don't buy games anymore and i haven't brought them for years since Gamepass always has another game i can beat out of the 200 or so rotation library. I'm sure Playstation people might feel same with that subscription service they got also.
If Hi-Fi-Rush was dropped on the store only how many xbox users are going to buy it? 10,000 copies maybe? 100,000 i doubt it.. 1 million no way because we're been condition now to rent games and skip having to pay for them.
Indies or Triple AAA all face that same fate.. I'm not going to buy them anywhere unless it something special. GTA 6 is probably the next game i'll be willing to buy otherwise i got 100s of games from different services to pick from
[sips coffee stoicly, hits like] Yeah, all this. All we can do is try to support eachother and build better things from the ashes.
I honestly feel when games like League of Legends, Fortnite, Honkai, and F2P Phone games started showing success and the profits (just look at Candy Crush), the industry looked at that and was like "Ok let's do that, but not understand why it's making money, but throw all the F2P things, like a battle pass, boosts, inconvenience, and also charge $60+ on the game. We don't want to make a profit, but all the profit."
It was the BEST(profitable) of times it was the most layoffs of times.
We are almost at a point, where half of the games industry is let off.
And It doesn't matter of doing a good job or not.
The whole economy is beyond fucked man and we have no power to counteract any of this shit. Makes me not want to have children because of the fear of seeing them grow up in a world like this (overdramatic I know)
@@shawklan27Not overdranatic at all, it's called being responsible. Why would you want to subject a new life to the corporate hell scape we now live in?.
@@shawklan27 The economy is an entirely seperate thing, but as far as gaming goes we have all of the power, but people are either too lazy or lack the conviction to see it done. THEY need US, WE don't need THEM. Show that and you'll see a swift change.
One point I want to add about the "live service vs. one-and-done" side is that I think it's not even so much about live services having more potential for success or less risk of failure, it's that given both are equally successful, they provide a more consistent revenue stream. For these companies, it's not even about profit necessarily, it's about cashflow - a larger injection of cash all in one go is sometimes less desirable than a smaller constant drip throughout the financial year and beyond. It's why the entire software market has shifted to subscription services for discrete pieces of software. Add onto that the fact that, yes, there is the potential for it to blow up and earn gangbusters forever on top, you can see why big publishers are desperate for it. It won't stop unless gamers stop tacitly condoning the behaviour by rewarding live service titles as a whole, I worry, and that includes megahits like Fortnite and Genshin (let's not even mention mobile/gacha). One or two flops won't deter them, unfortunately.
EDIT: Time war is absolutely the right term here. Dark times.
This is it. Shareholders want projections, projections are easier with subscriptions. This is why subscriptions are king for these companies, including SaaS, GaaS and all the other asscronyms. Feels bad, feels real bad.
It's why whenever the argument is made that "you don't have to buy from cash shops if you don't want to" it infuriates me. It doesn't matter if I don't, your choice is going to affect me and that's the reality. As long as someone spends on these micro transactions, that's insensitive enough for companies to keep doing it and in order to have something to sell they start removing things from the base game. It's inevitable. The gaming community is often so ignorant of how any of this works and it's to the benefit of these corporations
Tldr: companies learned nothing from the MMO wars of the 00s. So many dead WoW killers and companies. Like Mythic, Carbine, shit fairly certain BioWare Austin shut down a couple years ago when SWTOR was spun off to a different company. Might just mean more indie titles as trusting your career to a bunch of MBAs sounds exhausting.
Coming from the publishing side, esp. working on live service games in the past, this is an underrated comment for another reason: iteration. The market is fickle and expensive/challenging to test pre-launch in. A live service game gives you more shots on goal of using rev flow to measure what works and doesn't work. A one-and-done doesn't have much outside patches to rebalance things, and those bring their own pitchforks.
IOW a continuous rev stream gives a foundation on which to iteratively improve the game. Over time, ongoing live service games occupy a greater mindshare in corporate backrooms and are harder to cut. Compare running a franchise restaurant vs a pop-up event.
@@MatthewBosk exactly. The one and done games are capital expenditures. It requires budgeting and market analysis. It doesn't matter how great you predict a game will be because there are other factors with how much "product" you can sell. One of those factors is the economy.
These companies have to budget a game for multiple years. When the economy is predicted to fall and interest rates for loans are currently high they can't justify the cost to the board members why approve the budget.
A good portion of the budget for live service games can get classified under revenue/operating expenditure. If they are adding new features the capex timeframe will be a lot shorter (not to mention they don't need as big of a dev team)
With these big companies when the economy is predicted to go into a deep recession and there are high interest rates you can't go to the board with a 5 year capex budget on a new game. However, being able to give quarterly updates on revEx/opEx makes it easier to convince the board to keep a project going.
That isn't to say those projects are safe from layoffs either. The project is safer from getting cancelled because one of the easiest ways to keep it in budget is a "reduction of force" down to a "skeleton crew"
"the quality of a game doesn't matter"
I have a controversial opinion: it absolutely does matter, why should i buy a mediocre game full price or a game I have zero interest in?
She means it doesn't matter to the executives. Shitty games still make money, and money is all they care about.
@@redjc99 I understand that part but we have tons of games that sell well because they're good and have wide appeal. Obviously this doesn't always happen, (HiFi Rush), but I would much rather buy another copy of HiFi Rush, HellDivers 2, Maro Kart, Portal, than something like Roller Ball or Red Fall. Awards are great but those don't always guarantee sales either. All in all it's a terrible situation
Then explain to me why COD, FIFA and other GAAS are cash cows, while HI FI rush got widespread attention only when it got to gamepass? And even then, few people that picked it up actually finished it.
@@mondodimotori because they massively appeal to people outside of video games? It's not that hard to understand
Outer wilds is the best game of all time and only 20 people played it. That’s what she means.
I know you said this feels like a sad video, but I really appreciate your insight into all this. Your commentary on companies competiting for our time is spot on.
We had to do layoffs. Our company is so poor. We are only valued at 3 trillion.
market valuation does not equate to operating cost and revenue
well wow xbots mocking sony that they only have billions while MS is 3 trillion, yet they close studios from Bugthesda without giving anything to the devs.... f****ng unbelievable
@@arcsphere Their operation cost and revenue should be enforced public information in the first place. Show the paper trails. Where is everything going?
@@arcsphere I promise you Microsoft isn't drowning in operating costs. They make a profit, just not ENOUGH of an exponentially increasing profit margin.
Also Microsoft is Microsoft it's different when it comes to the budget of the Xbox department.
The problem with the live sevice mentality is that there are a limited number of people out there who pay for a live sevice game. If a new hell divers competetor comes out. It has to be better than hell divers 2 for most people to switch from playing hell divers 2 to the new game. They may get some initial sales but unless your service is better than the competition it will probably flop or undersell because people dont want to invest in multiple live sevice titles, they probably play one or two at most. But corporations just see wow look how good X live service game is and we could do that. But the market for that is already saturated and typically NOT what gamers want unless it is done right in a non corporate greed fashion
I feel the same way. It kinda seems like audiences invest their time much more effectively than how companies invest their money. People have limited game time yet companies seem to forget it (I'm also talking about how grindy some live services are, that just makes it easier to abandon them)
@@eduardoarmenta9232and even then most won't even switch because majority of people spend so much time and money into one or two said live service game that they aren't really looking to do or can't put more money and time into another one. The problem with all these live service games is they are to many and the execs are realizing that not all gamer's play every single thing out there or even can do so. Most people have their thing they like to play and that's it.
I really do love these brutally honest but sincere videos. Best place to get an understanding of what's going on from someone who is passionate and knows what they are talking about.
It is a pleasure and an honor to have worked with Arkane Austin. They will always have a place in my heart.
As someone who has watched the video game industry my entire life (dad bought the 1st pong home console - that old), it IS a shame to see it blossom only to now, 40-some years later, slowly start to decay. The industry is no longer about putting out great games and making great IPs that fans love. It's now just about corporate greed and what can AAA companies get out of gamers ($$$) and how much and how fast. It also doesn't help that our collective memory is shorter than a goldfish's, but that's all across the board. Not just in video games.
"It's now just about corporate greed"? C'mon, no it isn't, you're being incredibly blinkered. As I say about pretty much any medium at the moment; by and large the worst is worse, and the best is better.
The medium is bigger and more diverse than ever, and we're still getting phenomenal games being made. Capitalist derangement has certainly escalated, sure, but that's just a reflection of the broader sociocultural sickness, particularly given how big the industry has become.
But it is not 'decaying'. Going through a rough patch? Sure, and it can be hard to see seismic changes being made any time soon given how consolidated things are becoming. But indies of various budgets will always be there, and the triple-A has its moments, too.
I'd pick no other era of gaming to exist in over the present.
Been gaming since back then too, first machine was a grandstand pong TV game my dad bought. It's so damn depressing to see what sheer unadulterated greed has done to my love.
We should never have allowed corporations to buy up these studios. It's not just gaming, we see the same thing happened in every entertainment industry. We all know monopolies are bad for consumers yet here we are and the government just gives them a free pass. They all need to be broken up.
bullshit there are plenty of great games being released
@@toot1st105 Such as? I remember a time when there were a shitton of games released and 80% of them were "good". We were always excited. RE, Silent Hill, Street Fighter, CoD (at the start), even EA Sports games. All these games that released FULLY. Not these half-assed releases now that they may or may not fix. None of these "Live Service" games. Those days of 20 years ago....gone.
This was a very sad day for the gaming industry, this year hasn’t been great as a whole
Yeah just waiting for next year to happen because of GTA 6
@@shawklan27while gta 6 will definitely be one of the best games ever, I don't think that alone will save gaming as a whole.
yeah this generation as a whole is my least favorite. I even had more fun with my Atari 2600. :)
@@iraford5788 I don't really care as I don't pay much attention to modern gaming news anymore because I can't stand the drama of it all.
no its not
I think the reason Tango of all studios got shut down is like you said, no live service components for it and also the higherups probably thought "Well we already made our money from it, it's outlived its usefulness now and I need a new yacht"
I heard someone say that the Games industry is where the Film industry was at way back in the day (the '60s or so, if I remember correct), where the film industry ended up consolidating soo much and eventually collapsed, and then new studios rose up to fill the space. And I can see this being plausible.
We couldve gotten Hifi rush 2 and im SO UPSET MAN
Hopefully the team lands somewhere else and can still give us that game.
@@theroguerider it would be funny if they create a new studio and release a game called Lo-Fi Sprint (or something similar)
@@thomaswedge42LoFi Studios! I’ll contact them!
Hi-Fi Zoomies, where you play a dog with super-technology AI headphones companion.
We might probably will still have but not on Xbox
3 Trillion people would be 375 Earth's.
That's like a really big room
3 trillion people would also be 115,384 Australia’s 🇦🇺
At 60 frames per second, it would take 1,585 years to watch a video with 3 trillion frames.
Did someone say SUPER EARTH?!
That's 2 million times the population of Nebraska!
I love how nobody talks about 2 years of high inflation, the effects on the average income person, high rents... What do you guys think happens to low-prio consumer products such as games during such a time period?
That's actually an interesting question. Certain entertainment/luxury products are surprisingly ressession-proof or even counter-cyclical. Current analysis does *not* show a reduction in spending on games (moderate single digit growth last year).
Games media don’t like to talk about the shitty economy because that helps Trump.
The irony since gaming is eclipsing the entertainment industry as a whole. The reason why gaming is in this is state is BECAUSE it makes so much money. AAA games make just as much, sometimes more, than blockbuster films in the same amount of production time. Sometimes even quicker. I blame this wave on GTAV. That game made 1 billion on the first three days of launch. Everyone wants a piece of that pie.
Why is it that games cost so much money? Why do games have to have massive budgets in the first place?
It's the Execs that decide the budget for a game. Why not have smaller scope/ scale? Have lots of smaller projects than fewer massive projects.
I just find it so head banging when people say "Games cost sooo much to make these days" ,
If anything the software/ technology advancements are making it cheaper and cheaper. It's just that the Execs are forcing ginormous budgets and huge investment gambles into these games. And as a result if it isn't a smash hit; then they lay off the staff to meet the quarterly financials.
People who are managing Nintendo, Fromsoftware and Larian are coming from game dev background and game business. Miyazaki is not only director at Fromsoftware. He is the president of Fromsoftware. Sven who is running Larian is making video games since late 90s hands on. Nintendo CEO is not game dev. He is finance guy but he is at Nintendo and gaming business since 94 right out of the collage. Also people like Miyamoto and lots of legends in the game industry are very influential in the company. These people are not refrigerator salesman like other executives in game industry.
Alpha Dog Games is a real big hit locally as in Halifax we don't have a huge gaming industry with only a few small mobile devs and a Ubisoft satellite studio. It's pretty much a case where people losing their jobs need to pack up and move to Quebec or BC.
Why can't the big developers just make AA games instead of AAA (I mean an arbitrary term for smaller budget)? Big companies should be able to manage making unique, well made AA games with smaller budgets and shorter development times (2-3 years like the old days?) but ultimately, they provide the same value to the customer if they are good games. Which is really all people care about.
I think they will going forward tbh.
It's a marketplace, so the top, most AAA games will be purchased by the player base regardless of whether that game ends up profitable or not. So to make a AA game you also have to have other people make "worse" products and to get funding in the first place you need to convince someone that they should fund a product with lower potential upside.
For AA to capture market share the market has to grow (it isn't) or AAA has to retract (it might). What's more likely is there continues to be an outflow to mobile from console/AAA and inflow in the other direction to live service and f2p models now that privacy/discoverability concerns are tightening the noose on mobile.
Because that's what sells. You have to understand it's not like the golden age. It's not gamers making games for gamers anymore. It's "how do we make the most money from these consumers"? With gaming being as lucrative as it is, and with the majority of consumers fawning over graphics, many studios are either led to believe or are forced to make AAA blockbuster games. Jim Ryan literally ordered that for Sony and that's what we've seen since he's become CEO. It's no puzzle as to why Japan Studio closed as soon as he became CEO. As for third party studios, they see that Ubisoft's model sells so they copy that. There's less and less "gamers" in these studios. Especially big ones. You'll find many constantly hire and fire fresh out of college devs. That's why so many games are over 100 gb and are terribly optimized/compressed. You could write an entire book on why big studios are making the same AAA games that do not do well. There are studios who DO want to make smaller AA games but the CEOs or the ones in charge want the bigger buck.
@@jase276 When was the golden age? I know chasing graphics has been a thing for at least 20 years (and likely longer than that). Hiring and firing fresh out of college devs has also been going on for at least as long (it was the literal stated approach of John Riccitiello back in 2004). I would say there are definitely more business oriented folks in the mix now. I think that's a somewhat natural consequence of studios of gamers making games for gamers going bankrupt when the gamers didn't buy the games in sufficient quantities (for a variety of reasons I'm sure)...it sucks though. There's a lot of people who want to make the best game they can but market pressures require that people make the best product they can.
I was waiting for a video about this exact topic from you. All I want to do is enjoy games again and have publishers and big game companies allow developers to be as creative as possible while living a happy life off a liveable wage. It doesn't seem like that'll be the case unfortunately. Thank you for sharing your insight, Alanah.
I really fear that Ninja Theory is next. There's been no advertising at all for Hellblade 2, and it comes out in two weeks. They're going to release it with little to no advertising, it will "underperform", and Ninja Theory will be shut down even if it reviews well. That's my fear.
I would bet money on it. When it doesn't make a morbillion bucks and excecs realize it's 5 years until the next game, Ninja Theory will get flushed instantly.
@@anaguma90 Or, even worse but also somehow more likely, Hellblade: Battle Royale mode, launching 2026, gets announced.
And their studio director, who is also the writer and director on Hellblade just left.
@@communistwookiee4727 He actually left a long time ago. He took the money that Xbox gave him when they bought the studio and pretty much said "see ya, and good luck!"
It's kinda sad too in the fact that the Xbox back then (pre-ABK) essentially saved Ninja Theory from going under and even let them release Bleeding Edge; which was a critical and commercial failure. The Microsoft-Xbox-ABK of today simply wouldn't have done the same.
They nuked Phils Fallout 76 camp 😂😂😂
Rightfully so.
Lmaooo. That's amazing.
They've already done that before years ago
@@UlyssesM Back in the day was Pete Hines' camp, I think.
Thank you for making this video. You were very level headed and told us a lot of facts calmly :) It’s so refreshing. Hope you have a good week!
The inherent problem with a "time war" is that we all only have a very finite amount of free time we can spend on any leisurely pursuit and the more we're flooded with options the more picky we become about how we spend that time. In that sense there will only ever be a handful of 'successful' live-service games that can co-exist while remaining successful. I think this will just lead to constant re-skinning of generic shooters vying for our attention... wait... has that ship sailed already?
That's a big reason of why I have not bought AAA games in years. I hate the direction the major companies have been taking this past decade.
Missing out
You are missing a lot of good games
@@shrekrealista5045 I still have enough games on steam. I don't want to spend 100 hours on one live service
I haven't bought them because they mostly haven't even been good. But certainly other reasons like having their own launchers (in fact I avoided Steam for ages since that felt stupid and unfair too), annoying DRM, and being greedy have also played factors, but really I haven't even heard of any excellent big-company AAA games that I've been interested in or liked unless it's counting, Elden Ring/Armored Core 6 (do these count?), Tears of the Kingdom, God of War Ragnarok, etc.
@@shrekrealista5045 nah I'm good. I prefer to play a lot of smaller games instead of one giant live service one.
I just got into the industry, indie, and this type of news just keeps hitting so hard in morale.
You in danger girl😮💨
Why? this is great news for indies in particular. Let the big corporations eat themselves out from competition to make room for smaller studios without share holders
It is only sad for the massive amount of old school game devs in big AAA corporations, but this will could be great for gaming industry as a whole, and launch a boom of smaller more agile game studios that are independently funded and founded by these layed off developers
You can do it. I'm not sure where, but I hope you find a good path to do work you like with people you like
Best wishes for a good career. I encourage people in risky careers to SAVE money for potential layoffs. Normal folks should have six months expenses, game devs maybe more. Live cheap for several years. People spend too much anyway.
I agree with others here, this is a better scenario for indie devs than if the big studios were focussing on the classic non micro transaction styled games.
As Alana states, it’s still not great but this is an inevitable scenario overall, if you got a great idea and a team that is well managed (balancing budget etc) you have the same odds of succeeding regardless at this point.
Good luck to you, making an indie game is something I’d love to be part of irrespective of success, these types of game are art, not business and for this reason they are far more timeless.
Alanah basically said this at the end, I would like the discourse around the Corporate Profit goal to not be talked about as a “Need”, but as a “Want”.
Infinite Growth is a fallacy. Companies don’t “Need” to make more money than the previous quarter or year, they are choosing to chasing it.
Sustainable business models have been forsaken, and we should talk about the Infinite Growth Fallacy as The Problem, not the status quo.
Thanks for explaining things in such an honest way truly appreciated
Vote with your dollar, and your time, folks. This is only the beginning.
90% of 'gamers' nowadays don't care or take an interest in this stuff. Most are just casuals who have no idea.
@@scottneil1187 yeah unfortunately. They’re edging out the classic gamer. The new gens only know and are growing up with live service as a standard.
The industry is going to crash whether we vote with our dollars or not. And I don't understand what you mean by that. Are we supposed to stop buying games and that will fix the issue?
Voting with your dollar doesn't do shit. Publishers want want they want and they will go down in flames trying to get it. They want ALL the money and would rather lose everything than just make "a lot" of money. A lot of money isn't worth anything to them anymore.
Voting with your wallet only works when your wallet is very big. Whales, consoomers, and shareholders are running everything into the ditch.
Personally, I'm just accumulating physical media and getting ready for the day when the internet is basically unusable.
I'm a game designer who was laid off last year after the indie studio I worked at closed down. I was incredibly fortunate in the fact that I was able to bounce back with a new role within 2 months. However, I have many friends who were laid off alongside me who still cannot find stable work over a year after the studio closure. The sad reality is all these layoffs end up flooding the job market and can make finding new work almost next to impossible unless you're extremely lucky. This is compounded by the fact that many studios since COVID are willing to hire remote. On its face that's a good thing in the sense that you don't need to live in a tech hub city in order to find work in the games industry but it makes getting through the hiring process much harder because the talent pool is immense. This wouldn't be so bad if there wasn't such an extreme deficit in game jobs right now (studios aren't exactly rushing to rehire after laying off X% of their staff,) so this has resulted in the games industry being almost inaccessible for even seasoned professionals looking for work, let alone newcomers trying to break in.
This is just the normal job market. It's happened to many other industries many times. It's happened to gaming before. Always have a plan B.
Don't be sad it's over. Be happy it happened. I'll replay older titles while I still can. And when that too is no longer an option , I'll just forget about it. Like so many other things I've forgotten about (music, TV, cinema...) , video games are now exclusively made to please the shareholders. I'm not a shareholder. Therefore I'm not gonna play these games.
The '00s and the '10s were full of masterpieces and I'm glad I had the chance to experience it all. I still play them to this day. Who knows... Maybe it'll happen again...
Maximizing shareholder profit is not a human interest, in fact, it's aggressively anti-human. At some point we have to decide to conduct ourselves like humans, for the benefit of humanity. Worker ownership is the only way to stop these corporate sociopaths from reaping all the profit from the people who actually create all the value, and then turning around and throwing them in the trash
True!
I have been super disillusioned with the gaming industry for the last couple of years, which I've mentioned before on the channel. Then someone in the comments said something out loud that I should have considered... "find a new hobby" and they emphasized with me, which really helped.
I'm tired of the time-consuming live-service games, the competitive multiplayers slaving away to the meta, and overbuffed battle pass weapons. I've read more books in the past year than I've done my whole life. And while it's hard to tackle my backlog of games, I realized this whole ordeal just burned me out and now I'm just taking things slow and enjoying what I have.
I feel you are right. For now, I am in the fortunate situation of still having loads of great games to play on my backlog and then I'll probably go back to all my favourites. But yes, it is still a good idea to find fun elsewhere. Story driven single player games are my thing and good ones are going to be very rare in the future.
If you don’t care for the live service games then why even bother thinking about them, let alone playing them? The only live service game I’ve ever played is Helldivers 2… but other than that I play single player games. That’s it. I’m just curious why you think/feel you need a new hobby if games you don’t like and don’t play are a small PART of the AAA industry? I love reading because I love good stories. The same with gaming. Keep everything in moderation and don’t worry about what doesn’t have an effect upon you directly. I hope this doesn’t come off as confrontational… it’s just… it seems odd to care about a portion of the industry that, seemingly, you don’t play.
This almost sounds like a conversation I had a while back. If everything in your hobby is upsetting you and pissing you off it's time to drop the hobby even if you originally loved that hobby. Sometimes it's better to step away and take a breath and come back with a new perspective or move on and enjoy life in other ways.
@@matthewjalovick maybe research before trying to act cool and play out your confirmation bias. Out of 537 studios 500 were working on live service games that is almost 95% and not a SMALL part of the industry. You also don't seem to understand that SP games can be live service or GaaS and if it has mtx or BPs it's a live service game at that point. The whole industry at this point is falling apart.
Why are you focused on live service, competitive multiplayer metas, and battle passes? That's like 5% of gaming. Tell me the genres you like and I'll toss you some titles to look at. Gaming is huge and there are an insane amount of great games out there. Both AAA and smaller. And even if you're only focused on AAA then a % of the company's you support today will be the AAAs you see tomorrow.
I like using seconds...
A million seconds is like 11.7 days
A billion is 32 years
A trillion is 31688 years
31,000 years ago modern humans coexisted with neanderthals.
I usually say something like this, million is a lot, billion is surreal and trillion is incomprehensible! Doesn't make any sense to have so much money in a world where some many suffer cuz of lack of it! This world is so unfair!
@@brunoferrid I'd rather be entertained now, than save for a meal I might not get to enjoy.
-the world
Wow. That is actually way more than I thought. Thanks, this is a great way of putting it.
@@hederahelix4600 tom Scott has a good UA-cam video to help you visualise it better too.
This is absolutely fixable. We just need to eliminate business' fiduciary responsibility to shareholders
I know it’s been a highlight that it’s “happening to other industries”, but i think it’s important to look at, the layoffs are prevalent in the software industry. I think if you see layoffs in one sector of the software industry you’re likely going to hear a game company is also going to get folded, especially one connected to a major software company. And let’s be real, games are in the software industry themselves. Working at a software company myself, we’re still hearing layoffs every other month or so. So yeah, I don’t think this is stopping any time this year.
The stock market is ruining games.
The stock market is ruining -games- *EVERYTHING*
ftfy.
The stock market is the only reason people can retire and not work till they die. You wanna try to save up 1-2 million dollars without investing and getting compound growth? If you started at 20 yrs old you need to save about 1800 dollars a month every month for 45 years. Investing in a total market index fund with a historical 8% avg growth you would only need to invest 220 a month to hit 1 million by retirement.
@@justwait9822 Hard to save up that money in the first place when thousands of people are being laid off every month to satiate investors.
@@justwait9822this is what a lot of people don’t think about or just plain don’t realize. The average people that get online and complain about big companies in the stock market are the same people who’s ability to retire at all actually entirely rests on the stock market doing and causing these things. If big corps that everyone says they hate all fail, the average person that has the entirety of their retirement in the market will absolutely have to work until they die.
@@justwait9822 Just because that's how it's currently done doesn't mean there aren't other ways to do it. There are absolutely ways we could fund people's retirements without the stock market. In fact, funding it that way is an *incredibly* recent invention.
Something to note is these studios appear to all be part of Zenimax. These layoffs all seem to be Zenimax led layoffs at the source. (Doom devs iD and also Bethesda are also under the umbrella of Zenimax.)
I'm willing to bet they just told Zenimax to clear some capital due to underperforming in the last few years and they just dissolve this studios as a result. I'm not defending Microsoft (if anything they accepted that proposal, as it has to be green lit), but Zenimax had a poor management for a while now, pushing for more live service games, like Fallout 76, The Elder Scrolls Online and is also quite obvious Redfall started development that way but ultimately could not be save
I'm so uplifted. Thanks
Hey Alannah, much love from back in Straya. As you are someone in the game production part of the industry, what would you say is the ratio of people leaving the industry to people coming in? I see people talk about job descriptions as evidence/ insight into upcoming games so they are obviously adding people but would you say its less or more than the people going out.
From my experience in first the hospitality and then the building/ manufacturing industries, there are always report of larger companies shutting down but other smaller ones getting bigger and going from strength to strength. I heard people make comment that so many cafes were shutting down during the COVID times but that is actually pretty common as the cool new thing changes so a once packed cafe will close down a few years later. The savvier industry people know to start a new thing, get the beginning hype and try make that last as long as possible but it will get to a point where they know to get out. Then they sell and try something else new, rinse repeat.
Would you say similar things are happening in your industry or its an actual massive shift?
It amazes me that these studious don’t try to make AA sized games. Like we don’t need every game to be 50+ hours. Make a 20 hour game, charge $50 instead of $70. And if it does well start production on a sequel.
High-Fi Rush is literally a great example of a 10 out of 10 AA game, with virtually not bugs at lunch and a solid experience to the end, yet they still weren't worth saving by the company. The execs are the ones to blame not the studios, they are the ones who always push to make it as big as possible and when the investment doesn't pay, they prefer to issue layoffs rather than cut their salary or antagonize their investors
They do. Hardly anyone buys them.
@@bargaintuesday812 Because they're never advertised and are offered for "free" on a cheap subscription service that prevents any actual sales.
@@bargaintuesday812 this is true because it go back to the time issue. Only have so much time to play games so best tend to gain those slots and the niche get bought only when you have the time
@@stewarde17 And it's understandable. As much as I love stuff like Pentiment, HiFi, Grounded etc, it doesn't fill the void the same way stuff like RDR, Elden Ring, Ghost of Tshushima, etc does. And a significant amount of gamers only play a small handful of titles a year so they're going to chose those big ones almost any day of the week. The market wants what it wants and very rarely does something like a Hollow Knight or Hades bust through.
I think it was Charlie (penguinz0) who said that xbox has closed more studios than they've released games this year. Also, the time war sounded so much cooler when Doctor Who talked about it....
Thank you, I appreciate you explaining yourself for the ad in the middle. I was ready to write ‘not appropriate’ thank you.
Honestly projections and spikes in record earnings that couldn't continue due to a number of variables has been the biggest issue. They projected they would make X dollars at full staff and instead they made Y which was less than X and to please shareholders they cut X - Y dollars from employee budget and get paid a generous amount for a brilliant move to keep the stock from falling too far.
I wish the executives at these big companies felt and thought the way Swen Vincke from Larian studios does. I absolutely loved what he said at GDC 2024
11:00 This reminds me of a similar issue whenever AAA studios get busted for terrible work practices (crunch, harassment, etc), a bunch of fans will use that as evidence for why you should support indie devs ... but if anything, they're *worse* about that kind of stuff. AAA studios have hiring departments, HR reps, and (increasingly) unions. The indie landscape is chock-full of small teams not getting paid, built around "passion" for their game, often being led by a single person who is in a position to take advantage of other members. I used to work as a consulting dev for indies and saw some instances of teams where everyone was sleeping with the team lead and no one blinked an eye about it, or where devs were being expected to work crazy crunch hours without any pay. There have been several indie teams that quickly fell apart due to drama within the team over stuff like that, but you never hear about them because most of them are nobodies within the industry.
Worse, it's that many executives - and all CEOs - are **legally required** to drive profits for shareholders. Even the ones who want to help can't because they can be sued for making decisions that aren't 100% in line with maximized profits.
Tech and gaming in particular is in such rough shape right now. Shuttering studios who lose money, I get that. Closing studios who make award winning games that make money, just not enough compared to block buster x or an identified maximum ideal figure, I don't understand that. They aren't game creating scripts that you can just turn off, these are people with lives and families.
10:12 Anyone else catch that?
Lmao😂 key frame cuts
The funny thing is that I generally don't enjoy live service games because they appeal to general audiences almost always.
Dear industry - shift away from attention markets and influencers. It sucks and isn't worth my time as a video game consumer who is only interested in buying the game, but without the culture.
Again, what management doesn't seem to understand is that there is a limited amount people can spend on games, just as there was a limited amount people would spend on streaming services (and a limit to the frustration people are willing to put up with before they stop paying for streaming altogether). The more live service games out there, the less each live service game will manage to squeeze out of the players, and the more the player base will be fragmented across all titles. In the old days when intelligence was still a thing managers seemed to understand the value of market segments and niche markets, instead of trying to copy the same thing en masse.
To summarize what you’re saying, these corporations want players to be addicted to their screens and not have any ability to discipline themselves with the limited resource that is their personal time
This is the case with Alan wake 2 a brilliant game that has barely broke even. Its a shame because that means no matter how good a game is if it doesn't make money over time it's not worth the venture. Things will definitely get worse before they get better and that might takes years or even decades.
The second person that brought up Alan Wake 2 and the second person I've had to say this to. Had Alan Wake 2 came out with a physical copy, it would have sold way better. It basically became the poster child game for trying to push a digital future. I know a lot of people personally in the game space who boycotted the game because we love our physical media and want more of it.
Alan Wake games are for niche audiences, comparatively. I have no interest in them no matter how good they supposedly are, and I like non-mainstream genres. The reason they had trouble breaking even is that they failed to cost- and scope-control a game with a builtin limit to its market.
@@paulie-g Don't agree with this at all. The Soulsborne games were niche games as well and Elden Ring sold unbelievably well.
Alan Wake 2 could have sold better but failed to underestimate how many of us still support physical media. Plain and simple. They fucked up and found out
@@spacelion4763 I'm not saying your point isn't valid and I haven't tracked what ppl were saying about the lack of a physical release.
My perception is that Souls games, as ARPGs, have a much larger addressable market than whatever Alan Wake is. ARPG players would want them, fans of sword combat would want them, h4rdc0r3 g4murz would want them because they're difficult and give them a chance to yell 'git gud' at people etc, masochists would want them, lots of normies would want to try them because of the zeitgeist and to be part of the conversation (in the same way ppl who don't care about fantasy/grimdark and haven't read a book they didn't have to in their lives watched GoT)..
@@paulie-g I think there was clearly a wasted opportunity with Alan Wake 2. I'll never understand these companies that go out of their way to shoot themselves in the foot or half-ass something.
Remedy made Control and it was incredible. They managed to tie the dlc into the Alan Wake universe. They even came out with Alan Wake HD just before Alan Wake 2. There was an opportunity to really put Alan Wake, as a property, on the map.
And what do they do? Go out of their way to discard a large portion of their potential market.
I'll never get it.
It also sucks for Arkane Austin because they were two weeks out from releasing dlc and a patch for Redfall (admittedly had a very bad launch)which would have added two more characters and a patch adding offline mode meaning once the servers went offline you could still play it. So being that it’s always online when the servers go that game goes bye
Ah yes, capitalism, the final boss for creativity and mankind.
That is the problem companies, they are no longer concerned with making "a great product" they are just worried about time and retention. A lot of these companies make consistently good products that's why I put that in quotes but to gain capital it will be at the expense of talent and people. Old Gary at Kinda Funny and Barret were talking about the lines blurring on art and corporate capitalism not working. In a perfect world our money would go to where it needs to but it doesn't and it goes into some suits trust fund and it sucks.
I just kind of rounded off at the end I'll just keep rambling if I don't just end it. Lol
Almost feels like WB ignored their own results of Suicide Squad but saw the success of Helldivers 2 and got reinvigorated.
What's most frustrating is the dev's of a lot of these games are forced to do what the studio wants, and when the game inevitably fails, the dev's are let go and the people who made the initial decisions are safe. That's not always the case, but it seems that it's a huge problem.
they said that before helldivers was released
you're right. I think the vid has a great point on this-- because a successful live service game profit's are so disproportionate to the effort made for that game, it is almost more efficient and cheaper to hire and layoff to make a low effort live service game.
@@toot1st105 Yeah, I was being a bit facetious
Really interesting, thank you.
I've been playing since '91 w/ the Genesis...this hobby used to be so innovative
Sadly expected. We knew this was going to happen with all the acquisitions. Happens every time. Acquire studio, suck them dry and discard them.
yes they buy the ips but never do anything again. so many studios died and good ips are lost.
Truth. Microsoft has now officially closed more studios than the number of games they've released.
Prolly the most infuriating thing about this is Matt Booty saying that Microsoft still wants to make "small games" that earn rewards.
THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT HI-FI RUSH WAS.
Hi-Fi Rush was more AA.
i think the recent Prince of Persia game qualifies as "small". My interpretation of his statement is they want the overwhelming majority of funds to go into live-service titles, and a minority into more experimental ones...
Lol that random "It's" cut 3/4 the way through cracked me up. A little whoops there
Great video, Alanah.
1000% correct on the Time War. I've been thinking about that for years. It's a big part of what makes me more inclined to play retro games these days. That, and I'm ancient.
Can somebody make a list of all live service games of the past 10 years, how much money they made, and how many of them can be considered a "success"? Not counting mobile games.
Because I can only think of the same, maybe 5 games? Fortnite, CoD, Destiny, EA/2K sports games..
Apex Legends as well
Minecraft, roblox, gta
@@buckman234 they have been around for way over 10 years, but yeah, they make a ton of money still.
In more recent history I feel like most live service titles failed. But publishers just keep trying like a gambling addict hoping for a jackpot.
@@CL4MP Gacha Games. Genshin Impact, Star Rail, Nikki. They're making 8 figures a month.
Valorant , r6s ,pubg, and helldivers too
The sad thing is the money is there but greed consumes everything
is it though? The companies usually have to purchase insurance and bonds on these titles in case they don't do well. Those costs have skyrocketed in the current economy and geopolitical turmoil. Not everything is "greed".
@@Kainis80I know not everything is down to greed. However game companies going bust is usually greed Investors want massive profits back instead of a decent profit
My comment seems to disappear after I post it?
The more investment firms get involved with any industry, the worse outcomes you have for the industry people and customers. Video games are absolutely no different.
Losing Arkane is devastating to me they got me into gaming and RPGs in general, I hope Raphael with his studio picks up a lot of the Arkane devs he makes high quality hidden gems always.
This got me worried for Hellblade 2
Also I implore anyone and everyone to play AA games sure they can be janky but that adds to the charm imo I've always said it's my AAA because it's always made with love
Video game layoffs and shut downs are becoming the new American "thoughts and prayers." No longer surprised when this stuff happens. It sucks and I don't know the logical solution on how to start fixing the issue. The only "positive" I see is if the quality of future games, especially AAA, really starts to decline, then working on my backlog will be easier.
Always hitting the nail on the head Alanah. This shit is stupid, and I genuinely feel bad for all these people pointlessly loosing their jobs.
Until consumers stop buying into the live service model, this is the reality for gaming.
Really great view and explanation on the economics of all this…which blows for gamers or just any media consumers
This is why the PS2 days were better lol
You're not watching the industry die.
You're watching the richest most visible corporations within that industry back themselves off a cliff.
Indie will continue to do just fine, poised to replace the big corpos when they inevitably fall or pivot to something else.
Real games will replace AAAA live services once they've fully died off.
I agree with this . We are seeing more indie games reach next gen now. Sea of thieves getting a ps5 version is the best example.
You obviously didn't watch the video for you to make the assertion lol.
Dishonored 2 in my opinion is generally one of the best games. I can say that this is the last game in the last few years that I have completed more than once and this is the first and, as it seems to me, the last game in my life that I have completed 3 times and not in order to get trophies, but simply by changing the character for the game and play style. In general, apparently thanks to the ghoul from Mikesoft, I will go through it again, experiencing feelings of loss and nostalgia
I've been watching your stuff for a long time. The reason why I started following you was your interview back in the day for Mass Effect 3. You were the only honest person on the panel who was signaling red flags. I liked the fact that you have integrity. It's good to see that this hasn't changed in your videos later, especially with becoming more mainstream.
I've been gaming for about close to 30 years now and what we are seeing are paradigm shifts - gaming used to be an art expression, then it became a product. And now it's becoming a live service. They are pushing this trend hardcore and I wouldn't be surprised if in the next 5-10 years - we wouldn't even own the games. They would be entirely on cloud - they wouldn't even be on your hardware. You would be paying subscription like a TV service and pay for the time you spend on them. It's an entire consumer shift. What's worse is that we often pay the price of a product but get a service - one that can get shut down at any point of time to which you lose access completely. Or you can get your access revoked. Regulations and legislation has not even caught up to this yet and will take awhile.
Overall, it is a very concerning shift. And the only thing we can do is vote with our wallets, punish greedy practices and reward quality products. But we as consumers have more power than one might think. The recent Helldivers fiasco and the EA lootbox scandal proved that if enough consumers wake up to it, we can make a difference. And people are waking up. Spend your time and cash wisely.
Greetings from Bulgaria.
I hope future and current indie game dev studios will think more than twice to not sell the company they worked hard for to megacorps. They will only gut and filet your studio for parts.