The logical endpoint of prioritizing short-term profits over long-term anything

In recent times, triple-A publishers have repeatedly had their lunch eaten — at least, in terms of mindshare — by more creatively nimble indies. Lethal Companywas last holiday season’s breakout hit, andPalworld followed not long after. Balatroand Manor Lords have come out of nowhere to tear up the Steam charts, as have mind-bogglingly fast riffs on this new paradigm like the Lethal Company-inspired Content Warning. Helldivers 2 is both the exception that proves the rule and an example of exactly why big publishers should let studios cook even in the face of only modest success (or failure!). WithoutHelldivers 1, a relative unknown, you don’t get Helldivers 2, the biggest breakout hit of the year. Recent triple-A darlings like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Elden Ring come from similar lineages.

Yes, it’s a slow year for triple-A publishers, but that’s what happens when you spend years quietly canceling projects that you’re worried *might *not achieve such a spectacular liftoff as to take over the entire universe. Eventually, it catches up with you. And years from now — already a record year for layoffs — it’s gonna catch up with the video game industry again.

  • @[email protected]English
    2•7 months ago

    I really wish the tech industry was unionized because these major cuts, even if they can’t directly reach out and affect indie companies (and in some fashion benefit them by removing AAA developer competition) affect the entire industry of video game development and what it is like to be a worker in it even if you don’t actually directly work for one of these companies.

    It is really sad to see game development face a similar fate to the other arts where it is becoming a valueless skill practiced by people in their free time. The word large corporations and execs are using to justify this is “AI” but it really doesn’t matter if AI works or not, what matters is that the identity of a game developer and programmer becomes fundamentally devalued.

    It makes me feel a little less bad seeing the hoards of computer people who stilllll believe AI can never come for their jobs or that anything happening in the tech industry can’t be threat to the value of their profession and they have such a smug sense of naive ignorance about class politics, it is like watching a birthday cake get smushed by a steamroller.

    At the end of the day though that feeling is self indulgent in an unproductive way, I don’t want birthday cakes to get smushed by steamrollers it isn’t how cake should be treated.