Did you watch the video? As she says Indie studios aren't in any better of a position. This is an issue with the overall market and capitalism as a whole and how it shapes the entire model/expectations etc
Alanah Pearce - why the industry is going this way and why it will probably get even worse
- Thread starter Tony72495
- Start date
I'm pretty sure the people working on games in Japan just aren't paid as much either.
Competition not consolidation the 90s especially early 90s was Sega vs Nintendo and some amazing games was released on both consoles during those years.
Today its all about Consolidation not to mention the cost of game development has skyrocketed.
The consolidation is a symptom of the increased costs and time needed to develop modern games. If modern game development wasn't so risky, time consuming, and expensive we wouldn't be seeing as much of it as we are. Publishers are buying out studios and whatnot in order to try and deal with the issues plaguing modern development.
Right, and I'm talking about an idealistic unrealistic 3-4+ years from now where gamers have grown tired of being nickel and dimed, resulting in a kind of mass reset for the industry akin to 1983.
Basically no one is Japan is paid as much comparing it to US wages. That doesn't really mean anything. The cost of living and the general state of the economy is different there. Relative to the market, video game devs in Japan are paid in line with everywhere else.
This isn't it. If anything, it's the fact that there is so much competition that is part of the problem. Back then in the 90s there was way less competition, not to mention the dev costs were way smaller. A mega hit would only need to reach a million in sales sold but that's not the case today.
Comparing the industry in the early 90s to now in regards to this particular conversation seems entirely pointless.
Single Player DLC usually isn't a big seller outside of rare exceptions like CDPR and From
The only reason these issues are appearing is the chase for infinite growth. Lets not forgot most of these companies are making billions and billions every year, more than they ever have in fact.
The issue is they are all in on infinite growth and that growth is now hard to come by. They've had it easy the last two generations as digital adoption and the MTX boom massively improved their bottom lines but now those easy wins are tapped out (and the core gaming user base is stagnant) the only way for them to achieve "growth" is cutting the fat and reducing costs.
If they stop chasing infinite growth and settle into a mindset similar to Nintendo's of being fine earning a few billion every year then all these problems go away overnight
The issue is they are all in on infinite growth and that growth is now hard to come by. They've had it easy the last two generations as digital adoption and the MTX boom massively improved their bottom lines but now those easy wins are tapped out (and the core gaming user base is stagnant) the only way for them to achieve "growth" is cutting the fat and reducing costs.
If they stop chasing infinite growth and settle into a mindset similar to Nintendo's of being fine earning a few billion every year then all these problems go away overnight
It is inevitable that AI will become so good that anyone with an idea can create a game. This is great news for creative people. This will save time and money and it will usher in a new age of creativity. Without this happening, yes it will only get worse, because publishers are greedy. They will lose their power once AI becomes stronger. Devs won't need them anymore.
It's really only Story based DLC for "one and done" games that struggle.
The strategy/sim/rogue like based genres thrive on selling more content
No it's not. It's already the case that anyone with an idea can make a basic game. We get 10000 new Games a years on steam. All AI could do is make prettier templates. If you want to do anything that people are willing to spend money on, AI won't be able to help you.
Last edited:
Bro AI aint shit. It is not what you think it is. It will literally never work like this.
Because the industry is in a terrible state, I have no hope that it'll improve before crashing, but I do, naively, hope it will come back better after.
a crash isn't a tabula rasa that reset the playing field, a crash would eshittify the situation even further.
So you're hoping for development studios closing down and a lot of people losing their jobs while giving more power to companies in the employer/employee relationship as there are less positions available and a lot of people wanting to get into those positions? Because a crash will do that with no guarantee things will be better afterward.
That's only in the east, over here in the west Netease ran out of money basically and has cancelled a ton of projects just in the last year
Well, I don't think it would reset the playing field. What I would hope is that publishers would feel it enough that there's some change in course from where we are now. The reality is, development studios are already closing for no good reason. People are already losing their jobs. If they're going to close anyway, I want publishers/shareholders/CEOs to hurt for it instead of benefiting from it.
But a crash is going to make even more studios close and more people lose their jobs than what's going on now. The publishers are going to feel it last compared to the people that are under them. Hoping for a crash isn't a good thing at all.
Generative AI isn't even good enough to let anyone do rudimentary python/js
The service games are the the least likely to be affected by a crash.
They all have established playerbases.
People won't suddenly stop playing their favorite games
Using text inputs AI has already created crude but playable 2D platformers. Considering where AI was with just static images a couple of years ago it really isn't hard to imagine more feature rich games being generated in the perceivable future.
Even if what you say is true, you'd end up with gazillions of games. Literally. And what works then? Marketing, mind share and presence. All things publishers do.
People won't just play other people's games. They'll pay for the ability to play their games.
Nintendo is forecasting for growth just like every other publicly-traded company. And broadly if a publicly-traded company came out and said they weren't going to grow anymore, that means they're saying their price per share will never grow. So the only logical conclusion would be for all shareholders to immediately dump their stock as quickly as they can.
If you don't want to grow, you have to go private
But that's kind of not true? They forecast like everyone else but outside of yearly projections all they commit to is making "nintendo like profits". And guess what - If you are making billions every year when you have zero debt to finance then that is growth, whether you are piling it into a vault or using it to invest or divest into other things. It's still growth in the company and its assets. It's just not the kind of insane linear YoY growth most of the markets go after where it's not good enough to make profits year after year but instead you have to make ever increasing profits year after year.
And there are other reasons people hold onto stock besides a continuous increase in stock price such as dividends - which weirdly can be quite good / fruitful when the company is making billions every year. Like Nintendo. Which is one of the reasons most of their biggest stock holders are massive banks. A lot of stocks are held very specifically for that reason.
Nintendo has never committed to an insane path of continual growth - yes they say they want to grow the company in general and improve results and do X / Y / Z but they have always said that the aim is to achieve "Nintendo like profits" every year. They were literally asked the question by a shareholder in this years Q&A if they would increase / specify a number on what they mean when they allude to aiming for "Nintendo like profits" (given that the last few years profits were way over the assumed number of 100 million yen) and the answer from Furukawa was - no we won't be doing that ("at this time, we will refrain from talking about a specific figure for what we consider to be appropriate for Nintendo").
Nintendo is maybe in a position to do this more so than others because they are basically debt free, sitting on a mountain of cash and don't really have to deal with any kind of shareholder activism or really even need the shareholders - but still, being debt free and raking in billions every year is growth. You do not require ever increasing revenue and profits to grow and its that kind of insane thinking that is incredibly destructive
I don't know how useful looking at Nintendo is. They have the most profitable games, built on IP that's been creating over the course of decades. They have the most profitable platform, built on decades of platform successes (and for many years, their portable division had basically no competition). Now, they even have the most profitable movie and they're getting into other fields like theme parks.
They have such a massive amount of money and a lack of debt that they can afford to invest all the time they want in future games & projects to make sure they get them just right.
They have such a massive amount of money and a lack of debt that they can afford to invest all the time they want in future games & projects to make sure they get them just right.
It's not growth unless the dividends are growing or you're re-investing it to make more than you made before. Saying "we take $X and turn it into $Y, and $Y increasing is not our plan" is not planning for growth. Investment is zero-sum, every dollar for you is a dollar I can't give to someone else. Companies like NVidia are right there, so if you want investors to pick you over those kinds of success stories, you've got to be pitching something more than that (as a percentage of share price or dividend distribution).
This is done for risk aversion for banks, it's not something you anchor your share price to. If you ever need to reduce your dividend, you signal problems automatically. The real reason Nintendo hasn't faced as much pressure is this:
Nintendo going from the Wii U to the Switch is like sandbagging round 1 in a best of 3. There's no investor holding Nintendo shares who's unhappy with them over the past decade, the growth is insane. The question is what happens when Switch 2 sales are flat or behind Switch 1? No one really believes consoles will outsell the Switch, it's going to end up holding the record for decades.
Nintendo's not dumb, that's why they're monetizing their IP in ways they have traditionally resisted. It's not like the Mario movie wouldn't have cleaned up the box office 20 years ago, but Nintendo was happy to get their growth in console gaming for most of that time. They know though that the writing is on the wall, you can't just do console gaming anymore.
Do you have experience with ChatGPT or GitHub Copilot? Those models can surely do basic coding, especially python and javascript.
On thr topic of Nintendo being a bastion; if Switch 2 ends up underperformed which is strongly possible and then Nintendo stops funding smaller games.
Iwata had a great attitude to layoffs but totally possible current and future leadership may succumb. Japanese publishers different sure but we thought about Sony to an extent...
If this board is anything to go by there's a closer overlap between people who play non live service AAA and indies IMV. And as said indies are struggling as they are.
Iwata had a great attitude to layoffs but totally possible current and future leadership may succumb. Japanese publishers different sure but we thought about Sony to an extent...
Yup. The idea that indies would thrive and live service stuff would die is... naive. If anything if we see the From Softs and Larians die then indies would get dragged with them.
If this board is anything to go by there's a closer overlap between people who play non live service AAA and indies IMV. And as said indies are struggling as they are.
Competition was not even close to what it is now. The amount of games that get released every year is fucking massive and costs of development has also gone up compared to that time. As a consumer you are living the golden age right now. There has never been this much games and specially good games to choose from. Market is bloated and extremely competitive.
Games are also getting competition from other sources of media. Streaming services for movies, social media, smartphones and mobilegaming. All those things take time and money from us customers. Think about PS2/PS3 era. If you wanted to watch movie, you needed DVD/BR player and those consoles had them, not to mention they were also cheap way to get dvd/br player. Now every TV has app for streaming service or there is cheaper alternative to get it than buying console. It is also so much easier to just start streaming service and choose from thousands of possible movies/shows and suddenly spent whole day with them, instead of physically buying or renting movie.
Then you have smartphones which can also stream, you have social media and mobilegames. I would bet most people even in this forum spent more time on their phones/social media than gaming.
Now start adding that basicly everything you wanna buy costs shit tons more money, but salaries have not been rising at the same pace and you kinda grasp it.
Tldr; It was simpler times.
To be fair, TONS of people praised Game Pass; customers and developers. I heard it all the time: "the best deal in gaming," "get it on Game Pass," "I'll wait for it to come on Game Pass." So much value for a whole bunch of games, and no one really thinking about what would happen when subscriptions peaked.
It wasn't just Alanah who was starry-eyed about this. It is only natural for people to praise a good deal, even if it was a "deal with the devil", as it turned out to be.
I mean I gave you a literal quote from CEO as of a few days ago where they were essentially asked about what is expected when they refer to "Nintendo like profits" (this is the term Nintendo use to set expectations and has used for like two decades btw not me paraphrasing something) - whether they would raise the floor of what that meant in light of their recent success and give it a number - and they declined to do so.
So yes you are correct in that Nintendo is not dumb, they aren't - they set the wider expectation at a vague, non specific level and do not tie themselves down to a model of infinite ever increasing growth by endlessly raising that floor when they find success - when they have good years the aim remains "nintendo like profits" and when they are doing poorly the goal was to return to making "nintendo like profits". You can keep talking about how this is totally wrong and not something any company would present to shareholders but you are ignoring the literal statements from the guy running the company and the way they have addressed their financials and shareholders for the last couple of decades............
When I was growing up, one of my goals was to play every RPG. And back then, when you only got a handful of RPGs per console in a year that seemed like an attainable goal. As time progressed and the rate of RPGs coming out increased, that goal quickly changed to "Play every good RPG" and eventually turned into "Maybe I'll eventually play every RPG that's already in my Steam library."
Well, I sincerely hope that some of my favorite devs that do engage in the riskier types of projects find a good way to pivot that still appeals to me. Really all that I can reasonably ask for.
It FEELS like Nintendo will weather the issue, but nothing is super certain. I'm kind of bracing for a reality where Nintendo is my main platform because it's the one that can maintain a steady pace of releasing games that appeal to my personal tastes. Kinda feels like they might actually really benefit from dropping out of the high end hardware race.
It FEELS like Nintendo will weather the issue, but nothing is super certain. I'm kind of bracing for a reality where Nintendo is my main platform because it's the one that can maintain a steady pace of releasing games that appeal to my personal tastes. Kinda feels like they might actually really benefit from dropping out of the high end hardware race.
Ok, so I'm kinda just imagining what the future might look like and being kinda pokey in the process.
For absolute sure, if you've got AI tools capable of creating viable games based on textual input then you're going to get a flood of content, way more than now even because people just need to provide ideas rather than needing the know how, and like now it will be about marketing and word of mouth that lets certain games actually perform.
But I can also see services pop up where you pay a fee and you get to define the game you want to play and it gets built. I'm thinking more for single player games, rather than multiplayer necessarily. Everyone has their thoughts on their "perfect" game, and this is that. This is not short term, but looking at the rate of development of AI I don't think it's so fantastical in maybe 20 years.
Any developer will tell you that coming up with a good idea for a game doesn't give you a good game. A good game is a million good ideas that all work together to make something that's more than the individual pieces.
I don't see AI ever being able to do something like that.
I don't see AI ever being able to do something like that.
True, but the difference now is that generating a strady revenue stream is easier. Withn an MMO you only payed a subscription, and keeping content interesting for a long time was eay too expensive. With social and farming games there were no subscriptions, and the microtransactions were a new thing, and only selling for cents usually, with only a few whales to sustain the model.
Now, microtransactions have been normalized, buying cosmetics for tens, or even hundreds of dollars is normal, and is the main revenue stream. It is easier to make money sustainably with a live service game now than it was with the previous two examples you gave, when consumers so eagerly buy menial stuff.
You'll never get tools that can build an original game and that you, a regular person, can use. Never.
Know why?
Because if it can build an original game just from your idea, it doesn't need your idea. It also wouldn't be building an original game, it would be making a better AI system, and you wouldn't be able to tell it what to do for very long. Games are just software. AI is just software. If it can make an original game, it can make a better AI, eventually.
Something like "Take Mario, make the graphics look like game X", maybe, but more likely is that the people making games manage to do more with less.
At no point did I say about a completely original game. All the flaws and limitations of AI would still exist, but there is a trend of people expecting tailored and unique products.
Take AF1s, for example. You have a pretty standard structure, but for a premium you can customise it to be yours. Same with Xbox controllers. Nestle even lets you design your own Kit Kat bars! Those aren't examples of the same thing necessarily, because they don't use AI, but it's to highlight a trend in customer expectation: tailored content.
AI right now can make the wall decorations that you want without you needing to be an artist. This is just an extrapolation of that.
Yes, in theory, you can say that AI doesn't need your idea (and could probably create one based on learned preferences from the algorithm which is the next logical step), but building something using an input from the customer is both attractive and worth a premium, based on the examples I cited in the second paragraph which are proven and viable routes to revenue.
I'm also not saying that's a desirable trend for the market, but I'm just observing where things are.
Last edited: