Winter of our Discontent: The Game Industry’s Churn Continues

I’m keeping it short this week.

As the New Year began, I mentioned wanting to write less often about the industry’s problems. Last year was exhausting and I was determined to kick off 2024 with a more hopeful outlook.

I still feel good about the long-term future of the game industry. A decade or two ago, February was always a “soft” month for gaming. Big tentpole releases came out before the New Year, and the release landscape in the months post-Christmas was often bleak.

Not so these days. In late January and February, gamers could feast on the technically rocky but well-received launch of Helldivers 2, the odd and arguably derivative phenomenon of Palworld, or a gorgeous survival game in Enshrouded. 

So there’s plenty of great stuff out there to play – which is great, because given how historically awful the industry’s job market remains, we could use some fun distractions.

This year’s annual D.I.C.E Summit, still one of the more valuable conventions for developers, wrapped up last week in Vegas. While I didn’t attend this year, many of my industry colleagues and friends did, and I’ve heard their thoughts. 

The rough job market is still a huge topic of discussion. Folks from Larian – continuing to demonstrate why they’re one of the best teams around – made a few pointed public comments at the awards show.

Back in January, the industry was rocked by more layoffs, including 1900 folks let go from Microsoft on the Activision and Xbox teams. In parallel, the budgets of triple-A titles continue to rise. Grand Theft Auto 6 has a rumored cost north of a billion dollars, and the ten-year tortured development cycle of Ubisoft’s Skull & Bones racked up big bills.

The current cycle of spinning up enormous teams and then laying off half the people as soon as a project’s over is beyond poisonous. The habit has led to mass burnout and forced some of our best people out of the industry entirely.

As rough as it is for veteran developers, it’s even worse for someone trying to break into the industry. For the first time I can remember, I’m reading Reddit threads from young industry hopefuls who have completely given up their dream of working in the industry. 

Games have always thrived on a constant injection of new ideas and fresh talent. Losing a generation of potential gamemakers will hurt down the road.

To me, the path forward has been clear: widespread game industry unionization, coupled with an overall model for employment that is project-based rather than studio-based, hopefully providing a proper safety net of health insurance and gap income for developers between projects.

Embracing remote work also needs to be part of the discussion. Despite a flood of big studios enforcing return-to-office policies in the second half of last year, it’s not reasonable to expect developers to constantly relocate only to be laid off six months later. 

The industry has shown it can successfully ship great projects remotely. The tech and tools to manage distributed teams will only get better in the future. Companies that embrace remote work as an option will have an advantage in hiring and recruiting going forward.

As I repeat myself – advocating for the same solutions I wrote about last year – I’m mindful of a lesson from Prytania Media’s recent cutbacks. The head of the company, Jeff Strain, had been a vocal advocate for game industry worker rights and unionization – only to find himself forced to cut jobs and subsequently go silent on social media. 

Deeply held beliefs have a way of changing once someone finds themselves in a C-suite position.

Indeed, maybe that’s the core problem with the industry. A large company collapses after a failed project or two, and a legion of start-ups spin up in the wake of its destruction – run by employees who got burned at their last position, all making lofty promises of doing things differently and better.

Then they make the same old mistakes, along with a whole bunch of fresh ones, and the cycle of layoffs and studio closures repeats.

But the days of the traditional ways of making games are numbered. In a few years, widespread adoption of better and better third-party tools and the revolution that AI “helpers” bring to the table will continue to tighten the gap between indie games and triple-A titles.

Smaller teams of developers who stick to a strong vision and put the focus on players first can now compete for valuable gaming dollars with big studios. It’s to the efforts of these more focused and less corporate-driven teams I look for the best and most interesting games these days, rather than to Ubisoft and their latest open-world iteration.

For my part, I love games and I’m not going anywhere. For better or worse, I’m a lifer in the business. There’s nothing I’d rather do than keep making funny software toys that entertain, delight, and engage players.

But something in the industry’s current business model has gotta give.

A new Scree Games blog appears every Tuesday. They’re not all this gloomy, I promise.