My thoughts on the games industry in 2024.

I’m writing this the day after a whole bunch of layoffs went down at The Escapist. The owning company Gamurs (I hadn’t heard of them either) has removed multiple members of staff which has lead to a number of other members choosing to resign. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. The senior staff of Giant Bomb rotated within a year with many of its well-known staff members leaving or being fired from the outlet.

One thing after another

Then there’s been the issues of the gaming development Industry at large. There are currently ongoing legal cases with Activision Blizzard, there were a host of issues with Riot Games and Ubisoft and I’m sure others that have gone unreported. At some point one has to wonder who would recommend the games industry generally?

On the media side of things you have a business model that is struggling to cope with a changing environment. How people get their news and opinions on almost every topic has changed drastically. I remember being in a news agents years ago and having a plethora of video games based magazines to choose from, these days you have to go out of your way to get any real selection. Additionally being a video games reviewer seems to be an incredibly thankless task. You run a gambit of being accused of being a shill, being bad at the game, not representing things properly amongst others. This despite the fact that your job is to present your opinion. This is all before we talk about the weird outrage I have seen gamers have to “unacceptable” review scores.

Lots of work for not much reward

Then you have the tales of the development staff to contend with. Here people are having to sacrifice their own time, work ridiculously long hours in high pressure environments for wages that are considered to be below expectation for people with these skill sets in other Industries. Then there’s the whole concept of “crunch” which in my view, is entirely down to poor project management. This is also before a number of very serious accusations of incompetency can be levelled at senior management. I’m reminded of the time Square Enix management considered one of the Lara Croft titles to be below expectations despite it cracking the multi-millions in unit sales.

The unfortunate thing is is that in both cases the positions are idolized by people who want to enter the industry. There have been any number of people who have dreamed about working on their favourite game franchises. Then there are people who read these game reviews and would love to be part of this exclusive club where they can get their hands on the latest releases and play them before anyone else. I can understand the appeal, but rarely do I see that being tempered with the reality of both of these Industries.

Let’s not disappoint the kids

Regardless, I think it is terrible to stop people from dreaming, so how do we move forward?

The situation that we’ve seen recently with The Escapist as well as from development studios being shuttered stem from a constant demand to grow, to achieve bigger and higher targets. This stems from these owning companies having to respond to shareholders expectations of growth in a company so that their investment grows. It’s a bizarre situation because growth is prioritized above all else, even just simple profitability! Twitter wasn’t even profitable at the point it had been sold and since then it certainly hasn’t been profitable and has reportedly halved in value.

I think a lot of games media is going to have to end up being owned privately by individuals who are more concerned about profitability & quality rather than continued growth. I think this is achievable as small outfits that create a good reputation for themselves will find an audience that can be monetized. Not only that but the overhead costs can be reduced by leveraging other platforms like YouTube. Additionally, smaller outfits are able to react to changes within their audience much more nimbly.

Band together and do better

The development side of the industry is a much more difficult task, especially when you’re looking in the AAA space such as Riot or CD Project Red. The difficulty comes from the sheer amount of money that has to be put behind some of these projects for them to be even remotely achievable. Holding management accountable and calling out some of their poor decision-making is certainly a move in the right direction. Hopefully the stories of unionization that we have seen recently will continue to gather pace so that developers are able to protect themselves behind collective bargaining.

I think there is a lot of room for the return of “A” and “AA” games. Games that have lower project costs, team size and thus have access to more business models and finance opportunities.

Wishing for a brighter tomorrow

Video games have been with me in one form or another for most of my life. I have been following the industry for two decades at this point and it is deeply saddening to see the constant flow of bad news coming from the industry. I hope that in the future the industry is able to clean up its act so that it can be everything the people who dream of entering this industry hope it is.

Please treat people kindly on social media when discussing these issues, those affected by recent layoffs have enough to deal with and waves of negativity don’t help.