In a speech at Gamescom Asia, former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden made a grim diagnosis of the state of the gaming industry: AA studios have disappeared and rising development costs have sent the industry into a inventive death spiral (via GamesIndustry.biz).
Layden said that in the early days of the gaming industry, “we spent a lot more time looking at games and didn’t ask the questions, ‘What’s your monetization formula,’ ‘What’s your recurring revenue plan,’ or ‘What’s your subscription formula’?” We asked a straightforward question: is it frigid? Are we having fun? If you answered yes to these questions, you would usually get the green lithe.
The result of rapidly degenerating risk tolerance is what Layden calls a “decline of creativity” in game development. “You look at sequels, you look at copycats,” Layden said, “because the financiers who draw the line say, ‘Well, if Fortnite made this much money in this time, my Fortnite knockoff can make it in this time.”
I think Layden is right about the rising costs of game development promoting inventive stagnation in AAA games, but I would argue that AA games are not as dead as a former console executive might think, and Steam has all the evidence anyone could need. That’s not to say that mid-budget games have it simple: they find themselves in the unenviable position of having to compete with both the exorbitant visual technology of their AAA counterparts and the lower prices of less budget indie games. In some cases, like Larian did with Baldur’s Gate 3, the move to AAA production values was key to finding recent levels of success. Sometimes it doesn’t go well – in the case of Shadowrun developer Harebrained Schemes, the failure of The Lamplighters League resulted in major layoffs and a split with owner Paradox Interactive to go independent with a much smaller staff.
However, we can still see plenty of evidence that middling AA successes are still possible in recent releases like MechWarrior 5 and Frostpunk 2, or any number of farming simulators, 4X grand strategy, and survival games of all kinds.
While I’m a bit more confident about the state of the AA space, I share Layden’s hope of gaining “a little more interest, excitement and exposure” for low-budget, unconventional game projects. “If we’re just going to rely on blockbusters to get us through, I think that’s a death sentence,” Layden said. Considering what happens when these blockbuster bets fail – generally speaking, the devastation of layoffs and studio closures for the people making our games – I’m inclined to agree.
As for other potential solutions to the industry’s problems, Layden made it clear that he doesn’t think artificial intelligence will save us. “All this excitement about Gen. AI seems kind of funny to me,” Layden said. “I can see it being used in certain places for certain things. But it’s just a tool, not a salvation. It’s a tool in the same way that Excel is a tool. It just helps you get things done faster.”
