4 ms·

The market has grown a lot, but lower barriers to entry for developers have also attracted a lot more people who are making games. Now the market is more than s

The market has grown a lot, but lower barriers to entry for developers have also attracted a lot more people who are making games. Now the market is more than saturated. It is hard to even keep track of everything that is newly being released. Making AAAs on huge budgets is no longer a guaranteed ROI, and neither is making critically acclaimed indie games, and everything in between is probably suffering even more. The market just seems due for a correction, and it's not like this hasn't happened before. The only question is how bad it will get before it stabilises.

Cumpiler69 2y ago
>Making AAAs on huge budgets is no longer a guaranteed ROI AAA games were being made in the past on budgets fraction of today even when adjusted for inflation. What changed? My take is that studios and executives got greedy and stupid for the sake of investors with the following logic: "If we spent 10 Million $ on that AAA game in the past and it made 5x that amount, then if we spend 100 Million on the next game, we'll make 500 Million $" and everyone in the boardroom clapped. So they massively over hired and became insanely bloated and inefficient chasing these mega returns that never materialized because the quality of the game in rarely proportional with the size of the teams or the budget you put in. Hollywood has the exact same problem where studios waste crazy money trying to recreate their own the next MCU when they saw how much money Marvel made with that. Now we're seeing the market correction and hopefully a return to making games on smaller budgets with leaner teams with a tighter focus.
- jarsin 2y ago
  And the tools are better than ever. Unreal is even moving towards not needing 3rd party dcc apps like Maya anymore. All for free unless your funded or successful.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  >AAA games were being made in the past on budgets fraction of today even when adjusted for inflation. What changed? gamer demand, obviously. Despite the meme, people don't want shorter cheaper games with worse graphics. So you got 3 choices: 1. hire more people to make graphics prettier and game bigger 2 use less people but take longer to make those prettier games 3. find various ways to cut corners. a mix of all 3 are happening, but they don't necessarily make for "better games". Just more profitable ones. >So they massively over hired and became insanely ineficient It's not really as big a factor as you expect. Or as a collorary: you don't get $100m funding without saying you're going to hire 200 devs to begin with. The way VC works is fundamentally broken as it chases wrong targets. But hey, it's their money and optics to follow. >Now we're seeing the market correction and hopefully a return to making games on smaller budgets with leaner teams with a tighter focus. I see the opposite: we're just seeing a consolidation of established big boys taking the pot. Everyone else fights for scraps. There will be no Rockstar competitor for a long time if that's what gamers want. At least not in the West.

Cumpiler69 2y ago

>Making AAAs on huge budgets is no longer a guaranteed ROI AAA games were being made in the past on budgets fraction of today even when adjusted for inflation. What changed? My take is that studios and executives got greedy and stupid for the sake of investors with the following logic: "If we spent 10 Million $ on that AAA game in the past and it made 5x that amount, then if we spend 100 Million on the next game, we'll make 500 Million $" and everyone in the boardroom clapped. So they massively over hired and became insanely bloated and inefficient chasing these mega returns that never materialized because the quality of the game in rarely proportional with the size of the teams or the budget you put in. Hollywood has the exact same problem where studios waste crazy money trying to recreate their own the next MCU when they saw how much money Marvel made with that. Now we're seeing the market correction and hopefully a return to making games on smaller budgets with leaner teams with a tighter focus.

jarsin 2y ago
And the tools are better than ever. Unreal is even moving towards not needing 3rd party dcc apps like Maya anymore. All for free unless your funded or successful.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
>AAA games were being made in the past on budgets fraction of today even when adjusted for inflation. What changed? gamer demand, obviously. Despite the meme, people don't want shorter cheaper games with worse graphics. So you got 3 choices: 1. hire more people to make graphics prettier and game bigger 2 use less people but take longer to make those prettier games 3. find various ways to cut corners. a mix of all 3 are happening, but they don't necessarily make for "better games". Just more profitable ones. >So they massively over hired and became insanely ineficient It's not really as big a factor as you expect. Or as a collorary: you don't get $100m funding without saying you're going to hire 200 devs to begin with. The way VC works is fundamentally broken as it chases wrong targets. But hey, it's their money and optics to follow. >Now we're seeing the market correction and hopefully a return to making games on smaller budgets with leaner teams with a tighter focus. I see the opposite: we're just seeing a consolidation of established big boys taking the pot. Everyone else fights for scraps. There will be no Rockstar competitor for a long time if that's what gamers want. At least not in the West.