The state of the industry does not look good, especially in the AAA world.
Gearbox started firing people as soon as it was bought by Embracer
Nintendo restructures it's testing department
Skull and Bones is slashed by $25 after three weeks on sail
Relic entertainment sold by SEGA
_B: EA Losses
EA drops star wars games and fires 650
EA is looking away from licensed games
_B: Saber Sold
Embracer sells Saber interactive along with other companies. This includes Metro series and new Warhammer 40k Space marine game
Space Marine is still being made
It's being delayed though
They don't seem to care either.
Valve created an orb for video making using steam decks they had lying around. Half Life 3 is still not released.
Activision QA has a large union now
_B: Warner Bros keeps on losing path
Warner Bros Gaming would rather commit suicide squad than make another successful Harry Potter game.
They really want that Fortnite style money
This has made them lean into the DEI money like Sweet Baby Inc
How Sweet Baby Inc ruined a game called Flintlock
Interview with women who work at Mojang. Buzzfeed article says diversity will help us all.
It also means companies leaning into milking the existing player base Instead of trying to grow it.
A lawsuit is coming for game makers that accuses them of making addictive practices to make more money. The response has been, “you can't sue us for making good games”.
Why I stopped being a framerate snob… advert for Steam deck
A business model designed to milk small amounts of players, rather than selling well overall. Comparison to the Cable channel model.
This has meant the Game Developer Conference has some awkwardness.
_GDC: AAA and Creativity
It costs too much to be creative in the AAA field.
Maybe AAA deserves to die. Corporations are greedy! Become an indie!
_GDC: Scream
A group go together to start
Screaming in a park
Meanwhile Monopoly Go has a huge publicity budget.
Monopoly Go had a nearly half a billion promotional budget.
And Toys for Bob is finally making their own game
Toys for Bob is making their own game. They usually make them by assignment, and have been very successful at it. The NFC toy games were started by them, and they created Tony Hawk Downhill Jam.
Also, Capcom has raised the pay of their employees.
Capcom raises salaries in tough times
So there is a silver lining.
At this point, gaming can't be killed. Not like it has in past crashes. Even if Steam collapsed, indie games would still be made because people want to play games. It will just be done through different funding and distribution channels.
Arcades and others were the other methods back in the day. Nintendo arrived while the crash was happening through arcades. So it's a cycle.
The Atari crash was real, but the state of PCs and development tool availability have made that impossible. Everyone has a gaming machine in their home and anybody can make games if they want to.
They can... just until the infrastructure collapses.
I guess I can't argue against that. But some people will be playing real PUBG at that point.
That's how the computer revolution really started. I still want a good BASIC to teach my kids.
There's always QBasic to teach programming fundamentals.
I think apple used to offer a ][e emulator on their website for free, though they're certainly out there if I'm misremembering. that thing ran on BASIC for it's command prompt, though it was a bit different from, say, commodore or IBM BASIC, and I know for a FACT they used to have archives of all the old manuals on their website, so you should be able to find them if you wanna teach your kids about old computer hardware at the same time...
Tbf past crashes couldn't kill gaming either. Only the regional availability of products for normie consumers. Europe was basically unaffected by Atari crash.
The Famicom came out as the crash happened.