6 ms·

The little dinosaurs are ignoring the great big elephants in the room: gaming. The article doesn't mention it. The market for video games in 2024 was around $22

The little dinosaurs are ignoring the great big elephants in the room: gaming. The article doesn't mention it. The market for video games in 2024 was around $225B, compared to movies at around $33B. Hollywood has worked very hard not to realize that their industry has become niche and have succeeded. My last week may be an indicator. I've watched zero TV or movies but have spent about 40 hours helping a small colony of scrappy hard working beavers survive on post apocalyptic earth. Steam got my money, Hollywood didn't.

the__alchemist 7mo ago
Of note here too: There's been a lot of (social media at least) backlash against AAA studios lately. Anecdote: 2025 had a number of great (High quality, popular, award winners/nominees etc), and they weren't from big studios. There seems to be a niche middle-budget level that produces wonders. Just to limit scope to 2025: KCD2, Expedition 33, and Blue Prince were all incredible games. Expedition 33 has my favorite sound track (Or album in general?) of all time. Death Stranding 2 is another great one. By a big studio, but let a creative person run wild with it. I suspect the problem with AAA games is the same one movie studios face; mass-market appeal and profit-driven-design degrades the experience.
- zdc1 7mo ago
  There's definitely been an enslopification of both. Endless sequels. "Franchises" with meaningless stories and common tropes. Maybe it's survivor bias when I think back on older works, but nothing just seems that exciting these days.
  - the__alchemist 7mo ago
    Right, but you can ignore them, as they don't stifle the good stuff. You can ignore Ubisoft, Bethesda etc and still have a nice selection.
- no_wizard 7mo ago
  The difference between games and movies is how easy it is for entrants comparatively. Indie / small studios have an infinitely easier time going to market than one would with making a film or especially a TV series. You just make an account on a platform, sometimes submitting some additional information and paying a small fee, and that’s it. You may not even need actors like for text based games (Shovel Knight, Balatro etc) Movies is so much more. And the cost of production is higher. Also, the other big thing to realize is by far what games many people play is dominated by a handful of highly successful live service games. I have friends who only play Fortnite and have for a long time. They don’t play much else other than a few casual games when they take small breaks from Fortnite. It’s not universal but there is a reason they’re always top of charts for revenue. Millions play every day. The one other thing I’ll say is that seemingly unlike other media there is enough sufficient customer diversity that one business model doesn’t completely choke off all other types. Look at Expedition 33 for example
  - the__alchemist 7mo ago
    I also suspect this is the core reason. There are plenty of bad books, video games etc, including some for the same reasons we have bad movies. But the lower barrier-to-entry allows great ones to exist too!
Trasmatta 7mo ago
Didn't The Game Awards receive more viewers than the Super Bowl? It used to be referred to as, like, "the Oscars for video games", but now it's immensely more popular than the Oscars.
- zimpenfish 7mo ago
  > Didn't The Game Awards receive more viewers than the Super Bowl? To be fair, barely anyone (in global terms) watches the Super Bowl. You are correct though - [0] claims 171M for TGA with [1] claiming 125M for the Superb Owl 2026. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_Awards_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_Awards_2025 [1] https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2026-02-10/2026-super-bowl-ratings-second-largest-audience-in-history https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/20...
  - mmooss 7mo ago
    There's no cite for the 171 million, which is a bit hard to believe. There are cites (which I didn't check) for these claims. Maybe they are counting people watching clips on Twitter? According to Streams Charts, the ceremony peaked at 4.4 million concurrent viewers—the most in its history and a 9% increase from 2024—including 1.4 million viewers on the official YouTube broadcast (an 8% increase) and 1.8 million on Twitch. On YouTube, the ceremony peaked at 2.4 million total concurrent viewers (a 9% increase), including a record 8,600 co-streams.[6] More than 16,500 creators co-streamed on Twitch—a record for the show, representing a 50% yearly increase—with total unique viewers and hours watched each increasing 5% from 2024.[6][114] On Twitter, posts about the show increased by 12%, with more than 1.79 million posts from December 10–12, while the broadcast and related videos received over 60 million views.[6]
    - Jensson 7mo ago
      You also have to count that people often view these events together in front of the same client. Superbowl isn't shown on that many TV's, its usually a lot of people watching each screen, so you have to count the same way for the game awards.
alephnerd 7mo ago
> The little dinosaurs are ignoring the great big elephants in the room: gaming Partially, but a massive issue has been the offshoring of Hollywood [0]. UK, Canada, EU states like Ireland and Poland, and others match dollar-for-dollar in subsidizes to incentivize local production, and factoring in lower salaries are able to outcompete even Georgia. After COVID and the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike, production completely left Hollywood. Film production is high risk and expensive, so margins really matter, so the double whammy of the COVID shutdowns and then fhe WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike became existential. California has been trying to reincentivize onshoring [1], but it's too little too late. Hollywood even lobbied the Trump admin [2] for a 100% tariff on foreign produced films [3] which more diversified media companies pushed back. [0] - https://milkeninstitute.org/content-hub/research-and-reports/reports/hollywood-reset-restoring-stability-california-entertainment-industry https://milkeninstitute.org/content-hub/research-and-reports... [1] - https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/06/gavin-newsom-hollywood-film-industry-00391499 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/06/gavin-newsom-hollyw... [2] - https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/15/hollywood-lobbying-firms-ai-threat-00608521 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/15/hollywood-lobbying-... [3] - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g78e809zqo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g78e809zqo
blell 7mo ago
That’s because Hollywood makes movies, not videogames. You also spent a few hours driving but Hollywood hasn’t done anything about it because they are not in the business of making cars.
- alephnerd 7mo ago
  > That’s because Hollywood makes movies, not videogames Not true. Most media conglomerates own both video game and movie production. The big players like Disney, Sony, Comcast, Universal, etc all have ownership stakes in video game companies and most TMT funds invest in both as a same bucket.
  - blell 7mo ago
    Yes. Those conglomerates also do TV. But Hollywood makes movies, and not talk shows. Many of those conglomerates also have internet access businesses. But Hollywood doesn’t lay fibre.
    - alephnerd 7mo ago
      "Hollywood" is a metonym/catch-all term for the media industry just like how "Silicon Valley" is for the tech industry and "Wall Street" is for finance.
      - closewith 7mo ago
        Silicon Valley is a not a catch-all term for tech?
        dredmorbius 7mo ago
        Metonym & Toponym <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toponymy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toponymy>. "Silicon Valley": As more high-tech companies were established across San Jose and the Santa Clara Valley, and then north towards the Bay Area's two other major cities, San Francisco and Oakland, the term "Silicon Valley" came to have two definitions: a narrower geographic one, referring to Santa Clara County and southeastern San Mateo County, and a metonymical definition referring to high-tech businesses in the entire Bay Area.[citation needed] The name also became a global synonym for leading high-tech research and enterprises, and thus inspired similarly named locations, as well as research parks and technology centers with comparable structures all around the world. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley>
BeetleB 7mo ago
The gaming industry has been bigger than the film industry for decades. This isn't new.
lanfeust6 7mo ago
As I wrote elsewhere, I think TV is what is actually consuming cinema's lunch. The average hours spent watching TV have only gone up over the years, but the same is not true of film. Gaming as a "primary" hobby is also quite male-coded (women tend to play on their phones, but they spend by far the most amount of time watching trash tv and Bridgerton or whatever).
telesilla 7mo ago
I don't game at all but watch at least one movie a day as my relaxing time: criterion collection, mubi etc. I go to an indie cinema about once a month, often to see older movies as much as new ones. The cinema is rarely full but they have a good café and affordable subscriptions and I'm guessing some municipal funding, they won't ever run out of films to show. Though the day A24 goes out of business will be my sad day.
- WastedCucumber 7mo ago
  I don't watch a movie a day, but I'm at my friendly local indie theater at least once a month. It's got a more comftorable audience, more consistently interesting films, and it costs less than the big theater. If I went just a bit more often, I'd for sure get a subscription. There's already so many good films, and so many good indie films being made, I just don't need the big cinemas.
- ndesaulniers 7mo ago
  When you buy movie tickets, you go see the movie. When I purchase a game, I generally don't have time to play it. We are not the same. This may be why gaming is a few multiples larger an industry than film.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
epolanski 7mo ago
The biggest competition for movies is actually from Youtube. While the streaming business led to a growth of the movie industry, pre Covid and pre strikes at least, it's difficult to compete when millions of people can produce good content for low prices. On top of that, it doesn't help that movies stopped innovating, 2025 box office was entirely dominated by prequels and sequels. I don't care about avengers, I really don't, the first bored me enough.
- msabalau 7mo ago
  Maybe one could reasonably blame on-line video and or video games if this were a global phenomenon. But it isn't. China and India are going gangbusters. Japan is thriving and doing strong work. Nigerian cinema is projected to hit 3 million ticket sales for the first time this year. The UK--is at least stealing work from Hollywood with tax breaks. Korea had a rough patch, which they turned around by doing more mid-market films. The US studios problems are unique, which at least suggests that the answer lies in the failures of their leadership. Perhaps their long project of abandoning original mid-market films to push bloated huge special effects heavy franchises was ill-advised. It's almost Like having a portfolio of 10-20 reasonable original bets is better than investing everything in a single expensive "sure-thing" sequel it increasingly seems like no one actually wants to see. So I agree that Hollywood has stopped innovating, but am dubious that any other problems has much to do with Youtube (as much as I enjoy YouTube).
  - DiscourseFan 7mo ago
    To be honest, a lot of the YouTube content creators, especially the most successful ones, actually moved to LA and Hollywood already, suggesting that its not Hollywood itself, as a place for developing fresh ideas, that is dying, but its more established institutions. I would say that if you are in LA right now, there is no end to the amount of young people ready and willing to work on some creative entertainment project, but the market is YouTube, and the biggest studio is MrBeast's (among others).
  - MonkeyIsNull 7mo ago
    Everytime I see a trailer for an american film I feel like it's the same crap just re-hashed with different actors and the same plots over and over again. Give me something original. Something from Japan, Turkey, India, someone with a new idea. The Koreans? Yup, they push the boundaries of story telling. For example the School Nurse Files, that was either one of the best or the worse series I've ever seen. I'm still trying to figure it out. No way a Hollywood studio would take a risk like TSNF.
ebbi 7mo ago
The time I used to spend watching movies is now spent on YouTube. With the high quality cameras and drones at approachable prices, it's amazing to watch individuals create videos at such high quality but also has a bit of that DIY vibe that makes it more relatable and enjoyable. My current fav is watching 4X4 overlanding videos of people driving along some stunning landscapes.
fraXis 7mo ago
That game sounds interesting. What is it called? I only saw Beavers Be Damned when I searched Steam.
- gbnwl 7mo ago
  Not the original commenter but they could be talking about Timberborn. Don't have it but have friends who play.
- natebc 7mo ago
  Timberborn. It's fantastic!
- fatuna 7mo ago
  Not OP, but I think they meant Timberborn. It just hit 1.0 release . I tried it a while back, definitely a fun premise for a game.
frmersdog 7mo ago
They're trying to avoid thinking (or at least talking) about it because they don't control it. They're hoping that the next downturn (which will almost certainly include a partial collapse of the game industry as we know it) will present an opportunity to scoop up incumbents. At that point, they'll be open about their relationship to, and ambitions, for gaming. Until then, the most you'll hear is A24 stuff, Kojima stuff, and tut-tutting about Ubisoft (almost certainly their first target).
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
Zopieux 7mo ago
Timberborn 1.0 is indeed quite nice! Very chill, and the surprise automation feature drop is a god send.
HoldOnAMinute 7mo ago
If you like movies, and you like scrappy beavers, then you might enjoy this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundreds_of_Beavers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundreds_of_Beavers

the__alchemist 7mo ago

Of note here too: There's been a lot of (social media at least) backlash against AAA studios lately. Anecdote: 2025 had a number of great (High quality, popular, award winners/nominees etc), and they weren't from big studios. There seems to be a niche middle-budget level that produces wonders. Just to limit scope to 2025: KCD2, Expedition 33, and Blue Prince were all incredible games. Expedition 33 has my favorite sound track (Or album in general?) of all time. Death Stranding 2 is another great one. By a big studio, but let a creative person run wild with it. I suspect the problem with AAA games is the same one movie studios face; mass-market appeal and profit-driven-design degrades the experience.

zdc1 7mo ago
There's definitely been an enslopification of both. Endless sequels. "Franchises" with meaningless stories and common tropes. Maybe it's survivor bias when I think back on older works, but nothing just seems that exciting these days.
- the__alchemist 7mo ago
  Right, but you can ignore them, as they don't stifle the good stuff. You can ignore Ubisoft, Bethesda etc and still have a nice selection.
no_wizard 7mo ago
The difference between games and movies is how easy it is for entrants comparatively. Indie / small studios have an infinitely easier time going to market than one would with making a film or especially a TV series. You just make an account on a platform, sometimes submitting some additional information and paying a small fee, and that’s it. You may not even need actors like for text based games (Shovel Knight, Balatro etc) Movies is so much more. And the cost of production is higher. Also, the other big thing to realize is by far what games many people play is dominated by a handful of highly successful live service games. I have friends who only play Fortnite and have for a long time. They don’t play much else other than a few casual games when they take small breaks from Fortnite. It’s not universal but there is a reason they’re always top of charts for revenue. Millions play every day. The one other thing I’ll say is that seemingly unlike other media there is enough sufficient customer diversity that one business model doesn’t completely choke off all other types. Look at Expedition 33 for example
- the__alchemist 7mo ago
  I also suspect this is the core reason. There are plenty of bad books, video games etc, including some for the same reasons we have bad movies. But the lower barrier-to-entry allows great ones to exist too!

Trasmatta 7mo ago

Didn't The Game Awards receive more viewers than the Super Bowl? It used to be referred to as, like, "the Oscars for video games", but now it's immensely more popular than the Oscars.

zimpenfish 7mo ago
> Didn't The Game Awards receive more viewers than the Super Bowl? To be fair, barely anyone (in global terms) watches the Super Bowl. You are correct though - [0] claims 171M for TGA with [1] claiming 125M for the Superb Owl 2026. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_Awards_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_Awards_2025 [1] https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2026-02-10/2026-super-bowl-ratings-second-largest-audience-in-history https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/20...
- mmooss 7mo ago
  There's no cite for the 171 million, which is a bit hard to believe. There are cites (which I didn't check) for these claims. Maybe they are counting people watching clips on Twitter? According to Streams Charts, the ceremony peaked at 4.4 million concurrent viewers—the most in its history and a 9% increase from 2024—including 1.4 million viewers on the official YouTube broadcast (an 8% increase) and 1.8 million on Twitch. On YouTube, the ceremony peaked at 2.4 million total concurrent viewers (a 9% increase), including a record 8,600 co-streams.[6] More than 16,500 creators co-streamed on Twitch—a record for the show, representing a 50% yearly increase—with total unique viewers and hours watched each increasing 5% from 2024.[6][114] On Twitter, posts about the show increased by 12%, with more than 1.79 million posts from December 10–12, while the broadcast and related videos received over 60 million views.[6]
  - Jensson 7mo ago
    You also have to count that people often view these events together in front of the same client. Superbowl isn't shown on that many TV's, its usually a lot of people watching each screen, so you have to count the same way for the game awards.

alephnerd 7mo ago

> The little dinosaurs are ignoring the great big elephants in the room: gaming Partially, but a massive issue has been the offshoring of Hollywood [0]. UK, Canada, EU states like Ireland and Poland, and others match dollar-for-dollar in subsidizes to incentivize local production, and factoring in lower salaries are able to outcompete even Georgia. After COVID and the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike, production completely left Hollywood. Film production is high risk and expensive, so margins really matter, so the double whammy of the COVID shutdowns and then fhe WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike became existential. California has been trying to reincentivize onshoring [1], but it's too little too late. Hollywood even lobbied the Trump admin [2] for a 100% tariff on foreign produced films [3] which more diversified media companies pushed back. [0] - https://milkeninstitute.org/content-hub/research-and-reports/reports/hollywood-reset-restoring-stability-california-entertainment-industry https://milkeninstitute.org/content-hub/research-and-reports... [1] - https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/06/gavin-newsom-hollywood-film-industry-00391499 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/06/gavin-newsom-hollyw... [2] - https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/15/hollywood-lobbying-firms-ai-threat-00608521 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/15/hollywood-lobbying-... [3] - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g78e809zqo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g78e809zqo

blell 7mo ago

That’s because Hollywood makes movies, not videogames. You also spent a few hours driving but Hollywood hasn’t done anything about it because they are not in the business of making cars.

alephnerd 7mo ago
> That’s because Hollywood makes movies, not videogames Not true. Most media conglomerates own both video game and movie production. The big players like Disney, Sony, Comcast, Universal, etc all have ownership stakes in video game companies and most TMT funds invest in both as a same bucket.
- blell 7mo ago
  Yes. Those conglomerates also do TV. But Hollywood makes movies, and not talk shows. Many of those conglomerates also have internet access businesses. But Hollywood doesn’t lay fibre.
  - alephnerd 7mo ago
    "Hollywood" is a metonym/catch-all term for the media industry just like how "Silicon Valley" is for the tech industry and "Wall Street" is for finance.
    - closewith 7mo ago
      Silicon Valley is a not a catch-all term for tech?
      - dredmorbius 7mo ago
        Metonym & Toponym <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toponymy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toponymy>. "Silicon Valley": As more high-tech companies were established across San Jose and the Santa Clara Valley, and then north towards the Bay Area's two other major cities, San Francisco and Oakland, the term "Silicon Valley" came to have two definitions: a narrower geographic one, referring to Santa Clara County and southeastern San Mateo County, and a metonymical definition referring to high-tech businesses in the entire Bay Area.[citation needed] The name also became a global synonym for leading high-tech research and enterprises, and thus inspired similarly named locations, as well as research parks and technology centers with comparable structures all around the world. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley>

BeetleB 7mo ago

The gaming industry has been bigger than the film industry for decades. This isn't new.

lanfeust6 7mo ago

As I wrote elsewhere, I think TV is what is actually consuming cinema's lunch. The average hours spent watching TV have only gone up over the years, but the same is not true of film. Gaming as a "primary" hobby is also quite male-coded (women tend to play on their phones, but they spend by far the most amount of time watching trash tv and Bridgerton or whatever).

telesilla 7mo ago

I don't game at all but watch at least one movie a day as my relaxing time: criterion collection, mubi etc. I go to an indie cinema about once a month, often to see older movies as much as new ones. The cinema is rarely full but they have a good café and affordable subscriptions and I'm guessing some municipal funding, they won't ever run out of films to show. Though the day A24 goes out of business will be my sad day.

WastedCucumber 7mo ago
I don't watch a movie a day, but I'm at my friendly local indie theater at least once a month. It's got a more comftorable audience, more consistently interesting films, and it costs less than the big theater. If I went just a bit more often, I'd for sure get a subscription. There's already so many good films, and so many good indie films being made, I just don't need the big cinemas.
ndesaulniers 7mo ago
When you buy movie tickets, you go see the movie. When I purchase a game, I generally don't have time to play it. We are not the same. This may be why gaming is a few multiples larger an industry than film.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]

epolanski 7mo ago

The biggest competition for movies is actually from Youtube. While the streaming business led to a growth of the movie industry, pre Covid and pre strikes at least, it's difficult to compete when millions of people can produce good content for low prices. On top of that, it doesn't help that movies stopped innovating, 2025 box office was entirely dominated by prequels and sequels. I don't care about avengers, I really don't, the first bored me enough.

msabalau 7mo ago
Maybe one could reasonably blame on-line video and or video games if this were a global phenomenon. But it isn't. China and India are going gangbusters. Japan is thriving and doing strong work. Nigerian cinema is projected to hit 3 million ticket sales for the first time this year. The UK--is at least stealing work from Hollywood with tax breaks. Korea had a rough patch, which they turned around by doing more mid-market films. The US studios problems are unique, which at least suggests that the answer lies in the failures of their leadership. Perhaps their long project of abandoning original mid-market films to push bloated huge special effects heavy franchises was ill-advised. It's almost Like having a portfolio of 10-20 reasonable original bets is better than investing everything in a single expensive "sure-thing" sequel it increasingly seems like no one actually wants to see. So I agree that Hollywood has stopped innovating, but am dubious that any other problems has much to do with Youtube (as much as I enjoy YouTube).
- DiscourseFan 7mo ago
  To be honest, a lot of the YouTube content creators, especially the most successful ones, actually moved to LA and Hollywood already, suggesting that its not Hollywood itself, as a place for developing fresh ideas, that is dying, but its more established institutions. I would say that if you are in LA right now, there is no end to the amount of young people ready and willing to work on some creative entertainment project, but the market is YouTube, and the biggest studio is MrBeast's (among others).
- MonkeyIsNull 7mo ago
  Everytime I see a trailer for an american film I feel like it's the same crap just re-hashed with different actors and the same plots over and over again. Give me something original. Something from Japan, Turkey, India, someone with a new idea. The Koreans? Yup, they push the boundaries of story telling. For example the School Nurse Files, that was either one of the best or the worse series I've ever seen. I'm still trying to figure it out. No way a Hollywood studio would take a risk like TSNF.

ebbi 7mo ago

The time I used to spend watching movies is now spent on YouTube. With the high quality cameras and drones at approachable prices, it's amazing to watch individuals create videos at such high quality but also has a bit of that DIY vibe that makes it more relatable and enjoyable. My current fav is watching 4X4 overlanding videos of people driving along some stunning landscapes.

fraXis 7mo ago

That game sounds interesting. What is it called? I only saw Beavers Be Damned when I searched Steam.

gbnwl 7mo ago
Not the original commenter but they could be talking about Timberborn. Don't have it but have friends who play.
natebc 7mo ago
Timberborn. It's fantastic!
fatuna 7mo ago
Not OP, but I think they meant Timberborn. It just hit 1.0 release . I tried it a while back, definitely a fun premise for a game.

frmersdog 7mo ago

They're trying to avoid thinking (or at least talking) about it because they don't control it. They're hoping that the next downturn (which will almost certainly include a partial collapse of the game industry as we know it) will present an opportunity to scoop up incumbents. At that point, they'll be open about their relationship to, and ambitions, for gaming. Until then, the most you'll hear is A24 stuff, Kojima stuff, and tut-tutting about Ubisoft (almost certainly their first target).

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

Zopieux 7mo ago

Timberborn 1.0 is indeed quite nice! Very chill, and the surprise automation feature drop is a god send.

HoldOnAMinute 7mo ago

If you like movies, and you like scrappy beavers, then you might enjoy this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundreds_of_Beavers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundreds_of_Beavers