Making this mostly because I saw this trailer which is the third game this year I'd actually WANT to play and this video from Arch on how because the games being made are all grey goo (sorry, 'quadruple A') they are losing not just to indies but DECADE old evergreen games like GTA V.
Between the constant woke stories and characters, the piss poor game mechanics and the insistence to be 'live service games' I can't tell if it's deliberate sabotage or they were so reliant on ESG that they forgot how to make a game FOR PROFIT.
And a lot of these games COULD be fixed with mods but thanks to the war on non-narrative modders, a lot of them remain a pile of shit. It's why Fallout 4 still has an active playerbase and Starfield is largely forgotten.
I think 2024, we will see at least ONE major studio fall and a ton of cope articles saying 'gaming isn't as popular' while these guys might make the next hit allowing us to drive a Toyota into medieval knights..
Based on my 20 years in the industry this is the life cycle and it seems unlikely to change.
Group of friends (usually mostly men) start a new company.
Work hard, modest pay, long hours, passionate, comradary, unified vision. Blunt honesty with each other.
Successful indie title, big money
Studio expands, wants to make bigger things.
A parasite gets hired, refers its parasite friends for hiring.
Company becomes large enough that it creates an HR dept.
Now there is massive inflow of parasites, non- parasites blacklisted by HR on the basis of not being a "cultural fit". People are no longer hired because of skills but "race" "gender" "sexual orientation" or because they're friends with HR. Recommendations by relevant seniors are ignored.
Parasites care less about games than their own ideology, reinforce each other and create dishonest hugboxes that kill the possibility of honest feedback.
No unified vision, Products are compromised and politics injected into everything alienating a portion of the studio.
Infighting starts, Orignal members are forced out by the parasites, those good ones that remain become disillusioned and check out, do minimal work and spend their energy on personal projects instead.
Output and quality drop.
Talented staff start to quit and move on, some create new companies. When they are replaced its with more parasites (if the company still has money)
Eventually the money runs out, husk of a company crumbles. Parasites disperse and attach themselves to new hosts.
This trend is pretty much universal.