Campfires

I don't have faith that a western game development industry will exist in the next two years.

Since 2021, I have logged into my LinkedIn to see that another studio is experiencing a closure or a layoff. I watched the company I worked at go through two layoffs while I was there and apparently it has gone through another two since then. Games come out, miss ridiculous profit targets and people lose their jobs. Games come out, do exceptionally well and people do their jobs. CEO paychecks get fatter and the industry seems to have fewer and fewer jobs for the hundreds and hundreds of talented developers, designers, artists, writers, what have you who keep getting the boot.

It feels like the C-Suite types at the top want games to be like TV or Movies, where the project ends and everyone is released, but the thing about those industries is there is a union to govern this whole thing. Said union is by no means perfect, but it does offer some protections. Game Development, unfortunately, has the same problem that all software has in that everyone was convinced they were irreplicable and thus forewent all of that until recent efforts.

As things continue and more and more studios close to pinch a penny, I find myself wondering: who's even going to be left when the smoke clears? With Bioware's closure in recent days, I struggle to even name what EA has left in house other than The Sims. Microsoft seems to be going out of it's way to get out of the games business with all it's closures and weird pivots, and Ubisoft looks like a house of cards waiting for a stiff breeze to knock it all over. The general state of AAA Game Dev is a hollowed out derelict; as someone who dedicated a good portion of their life to getting the skills to work in the industry, it's not what I would call encouraging!

"But Honey," you say. "Don't lose hope! All that talent is out in the pool now! They can form their own studio and make games like they used to! New Indie studios will save us! We're all invited to their new swimming pool full of games!"

With who's money?

I've come to accept a crash will probably happen. A crash probably needs to happen in order to actually correct some of what's happening. At some point we gotta watch everything go wrong and fail so the Tim Sweenys of the world can remember there's more to this whole thing than number go up.

So, I guess the question is: what do we do? And I think the answer is accept that it IS all gonna fall apart from the top. But that doesn't mean we can't still create and work passionately on things we care about.

When Epic eventually collapses under the weight of all it's vibe code, there will still be small studios trying to make a game about sentient fighter jets finding love in the upper atmosphere (don't steal that). There'll still be the creator in their bedroom poking at a project with an artist they've met over the internet, collabing with other creatives to get an idea up and running. Game jams will still occur and there is someone out there getting ready to make the next Balatro as we speak.

I don't have hope for the megastructures that are AAA studios surviving. But I do have a strong belief that when they come crumbling down, there'll be little embankments left. Little campfires being maintained by weirdos with ideas who want to see them get made. And I'll be rooting for those weirdos when its time to rebuild the whole thing all over again.

The industry can't be saved, I think. Too many invasive species in the forest fight off. But it can regrow after a good controlled burn.