It's generally agreed that this is a very bad time for the videogame industry. There's some disagreement on just how bad it is—Tim Cain says it's not as bad as the infamous crash of the early 1980s, Brenda Romero says it's worse—but the bottom line is that if you're comparing your current situation to that very specific moment in time, the situation is definitely not good.
In a new Knowledge newsletter, originally published in Edge magazine, numerous veterans of the game biz shared their thoughts on the industry's troubles, and what might be done to address them. It's a very interesting discussion, but also a bit disheartening to some extent, because several make the point that the real problem goes way beyond just videogames.
"It's impossible for me to look at this as a game industry problem, when really it’s the result of this much bigger, complex system that we’ve allowed to be captured by greedy, rapacious forces," former Arkane Studios creative director Harvey Smith said.
Pointing to Redfall, the game that preceded the closure of Arkane Austin in 2024, Smith continued, "Instead of just being crushed and thrown to the wind, maybe those people would have figured it out and then, another cycle along, they would have had another Dishonored.
"And, even if they just made the occasional hit—one out of every three or whatever—wouldn’t you want to hold onto that? I guess the answer is no. You wouldn’t want to do that, if there’s an opportunity cost where instead you could put that money into AI, and even if it’s a bubble, your share price goes up massively."
Other developers shared similar thoughts. "I don’t think our current financial models are set up for art or entertainment," Kitfox Games co-founder Tanya X. Short said. "I just don’t think art is what capitalism is designed to nurture. But humans are."
ltima Online and Star Wars: Galaxies vet Raph Koster, whose Playable Words studio recently launched a new MMO called Stars Reach, said "systemic dynamics are what really make this happen," and that "absent regulation, it develops into market concentration, followed by cartels, followed by monopolies. That’s intrinsic in how it works."
Sam Barlow, known for games including Her Story, Telling Lies, and Immorality, put the situation in even starker terms: "Ultimately, to fix what’s broken in the videogame industry, we might have to fix reality."
It's a depressing thought alright, particularly given humanity's seeming drive to do the opposite of 'fixing things,' but it's hard to dispute the point when the mainstream videogame industry is busy swallowing itself via multi-billion-dollar mergers and acquisitions that seem to inevitably lead to massive layoffs and increasingly constricted creative decisions. Earlier this year, Devolver Digital, which went public in 2021, announced its intent to get off the stock market because the videogame business is simply not compatible with the market's demands for "predictable, sequential growth"—a stark admission that the system as it stands just isn't working.
Despite the gloominess of the situation, Smith said he's "an optimist," and he believes that "people will keep coming together and keep making cool things."
"The model might be different, the structure of it all might be different, but I’m hopeful there’ll always be a market for that, as long as people are brilliant and creative, and they want to do good work," he said. "That’s what gives me hope. As long as I see that, I’m like, we’re going to come out okay in the end. It may suck for a while, we may have to depose some kings, but it’ll be okay."
The full report covers a lot of ground, and features commentary from other industry veterans including Shawn Layden, Tim Sweeney, Craig Duncan, and Amir Satvat, who was honored at The Game Awards in 2024 for his work assisting laid-off game developers. It's worth a few minutes to read in full—check it out at edge-online.com.
