With the unprecedented failure of Concord we're almost there in the west. The last of ESG funds and government welfare needs to dry up. Just like in 1983 the video game industry crash mostly happened in the US. Japan's video game industry was still going at that time.
The industry won't go away but it'll shift. The game studios in the USA and western Europe will shut down. The AAA studios will rise in China and the indies will go to Eastern Europe. Nintendo will keep doing its own thing.
China now has a foothold in the AAA space thanks to Black Myth Wukong. This was helped by all the free marketing that was given by the game journals. I'm sure a bunch of people bought BM:W just to spite Kotaku and Sweet Baby Inc.
I'm actually happy the Western game industry is becoming radioactive. The woke shit they pushed is demonic. It's not just bad media, it was designed to actually make people hate it. I don't think that other points in history made culture that was as insufferable as the woke games of current year. The turd on top of this trash pile is our tax dollars went into making this woke shit.
Rest in radioactive piss, western game industry...
They should learn the consequences of ignoring who actually buys and plays video games. I’ve been told I blame Sarkesian too much but somehow she convinced gaming companies that there were millions of feminists dying to play video games that appeal to guys.
What makes it most annoying is that she is the type of woman who probably mocked nerds in high school but saw an opportunity when nerdiness became trendy.
In the bright side maybe Elder Scrolls 6 will be great. Maybe
It is highly unlikely that any studio which has been turned will be able to course correct. The woke don't care about the product, actively purge people who do care about the product, and tend to entrench in HR and management first. Nobody is going to root them out, the parasite will kill the host.
The best you can hope for is a new owner for the IPs you care about after the bankruptcy proceedings.
True. Pretty much the same thing that happened to comic books
Not necessarily, but they need to have a publisher who will enforce a turn on them. Creative Assembly went pretty woke and tried to create an arena shooter named Hyenas that would have been on par with Concord in terms of "comically over the top woke". They poured so many resources into it it started affecting their work with Total War games, especially Warhammer 3, and then lied that they had moved people for it.
But eventually, Sega realized just how off the rails the whole process had become around the time they released a beta (which flopped) for Hyenas as well as a trailer. So Sega sent a man in a suit with interesting tattoos with orders to inflict pain upon the gaijin, Sega reorganized Creative Assembly with one studio being entirely shut down and some directors being fired, and then gave them orders that in no uncertain terms amounted to "Stay in your lane, make Total War unless we tell you otherwise." And they did indeed bounce back pretty well and fixed the reputation and quality of TWW3, as well as Pharaohs (which had also had a mediocre launch), and announced they were putting all their effort in a major historical title.
But I do agree that a studio with publishers willing to do that is fairly rare.
Elder Scrolls 6 is going to be filled with pronoun characters. The series is dead.
And Elder Scrolls 7 will be made by whoever scoops up the IP after the bankruptcy.
"Elder Scrolls 6 will be great"
Seems like you've just woken up from your coma 2 months after playing Oblivion on release.
Allow me to point you at every game Bethesda has pushed out since: all dogshit.
Don't cope like this bro, it's unhealthy
I have very little hope. I feel like when the first trailer comes out there will be obvious signs of current year. I guess since I’ve been anticipating this game for so long my mind is creating a game that just won’t happen. Did the same with Starfield
I'm going to dogpile on the Elder Scroll 6 will not be good. I was a TES fan. Seeing how Bethesda (now Microsoft) is, this game will maybe be a second steam sale buy for me.
Realistically I agree, but a part of me wants it to be the amazing game I’ve been waiting for for a long time. Like you said Bethesda shows no signs of changing
Tes6 is gonna suck based on trends. Marrowind/oblivion great. Fallout 3 and nw was great. Skyrim was good and modding was the hottest it ever was. Fallout 4 was mediocre. Fallout 76 was shit. Starfield is dog shit.
Starfield is "skyrim in space" or "fallout4 in space". Well, tes6 will be "starfield on nirn" lol.
Fuck rebooting games, they need to reboot studios.
Clear out the DEI hires and promoters, purge the HR departments and bring back the project managers who give a shit about quality rather than pronoun quantity. Privately owned and answerable to nobody. No "concerned board members", no consultancy caterers. Give the community a microphone and actually listen to it instead of hiring some diaper enthusiast to monitor a subreddit.
I know these things are impossible. We need a surge in new, privatized game development.
A bit contradictory
I think by "answerable to nobody" he meant "not under the thumb of a publisher or soulless hedge fund". Which is rather optimistic because even relatively large dev studios rarely publish their own stuff due to the logistics and cost, but it could happen.
Also, listening to the community does not necessarily mean blindly obeying. Gamers love hate and will dog pile anything that gets whatever laser pointer pointed at it. But if your game mechanic legitimately sucks they'll point it out. Stupid nitpicks like "let us pet the cat" are a given but I've seen legitimately good ideas pop up.
Maybe it will crash but there aren't going to be good games from western devs any time in the future. DIE has metastasize. A crash is not enough.
I'm hoping for a fiery, devastating crash but the world isn't this kind.
Good. The industry needs a crash at least equal to the legendary video came crash of the 80s. Burn it, burn it all, western and eastern. The Indies will survive but triple a will not and that is exactly what I what. I don't care if we have to set every IP to the torch. Relying on them is lazy, innovate and come up with new stories, new adventures.
GOOD.
The crash will be like a cleansing forest fire, that clears away the dead wood.
The benefit here is that I think the "indie" and "AA" development scene is so fundamentally strong at this point that the collapse of the AAA game development will leave the stronger parts of AA development unaffected. Meaning that even if something crazy were to happen, like EA going under, most of the good workers in the industry will be fine, or rise from the ashes.
They need an Elongated Muskrat take over and purge.
Fire 75% of the staff, and make sure all management and HR go first.
Anyone not consumed by the mind virus can stay and get promotions
make them take loyalty tests the woke would absolutely fail.
Considering Trump is putting him at the head of a government 'efficiency' commission, I get a good feeling.
Now that the video game industry is in bed with government funding for propaganda, I wonder if they'll suddenly be Too Big to Fail.
Difference between the Eighties and now is the Eighties just got out of stagflation and on the path to recovery, whereas now we're sliding into stagflation as all the cooked numbers and bullshit can't cover up the cracks anymore.
There won't be anything left during the recovery, assuming we recover at all.
Good point. People don't have the cash to buy a bad game on pre-order like few years ago. They'll wait for month for the game being out to see if its worth it.
We could very well see a contraction. Maybe even a large one. But I don't think we can ever repeat the '83 crash. It's too mainstream now. The crash was a 97% drop.
Very rough math from random sources, but ballpark total video game revenue is about $180B. Around $30B of that is Tencent. You could loose every video game company besides Tencent and that would only be a 83% drop in the industry.
Even if a huge swath of AAA folds, the money is just going to move around to other games. No one is going to go, "Activision is gone. There's no new CoD to play. I think I'll take up fishing."
Excellent points; the other problem is that as some others commented above, the woke mind virus has metastasized throughout the industry from the moment they enter school to the moment they enter the work force. Even if there is a soft crash, there is still the problem of a bunch of converted artists, engineers, and designers who will still tow the line.
If this is upstream from the rest of culture, then this is great as it also shows how leftism as an ideology is failing.
A lot of these western studios should have either downsized or closed down years ago but the lockdown surge from people gaming because they were stuck inside delayed that from happening.
This time nobody is going care about the crash and the lack of quality games for a decade because we all have tens if not hundreds of never played steam games acquired for pennies for the last 20 years
To quote /v/ the musical:
This has been overdue. The giant was being held up by its own corpulent mass, but it had keeled over a while ago.
There are plenty of small studios that do good games and make good money. Let the woke big studios die.
The failing companies will get bought up and consolidated. Xbox and Sony will just be brand names for set top PCs. ESG games will keep coming out until the dollar collapses. No one fails until everything fails.
If that means hot chicks back, no faggots and no niggers in my games - ill welcome our new Chinese gaming overlords.