Will The Video Game Industry Crash?
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- čas přidán 8. 12. 2021
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Will the video game industry crash? Again? Maybe? Who knows? Watch the video? Maybe??
I have another channel if you want more kinda gaming stuff. Or not gaming stuff. It’s both at the same time.
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Some Info Citations:
Howard Scott Warshaw’s Once Upon Atari Documentary/Book
Additional Footage Credits:
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GameSprout
J.C.'s Channel
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Retro Modern Gamer
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Rob's Classic Commercials and Retro Stuff - Hry
Just remember that while the giants may stumble and fall, there are still thousands of indie devs creating games that you could sink thousands of hours into, you just need to find them.
example: papers please
Valheim, Get To The Orange Door, Veloren, Titanfall 2, all wonderful communities in obscure yet super fun games
and then indie games can also suck
frankly both are good
For example War Selection
Play enlisted to all your call of duty and battlefield fans well it free you won't lose money trying it and it fair for a free to play game don't expect much customization because they wanted to be more WWII accurate or post spectrum and they are push tank damage a little further than war thunder did it and that went beyond world or tanks that it went beyond battlefield 2042 yeah battlefield did no innovation just was following what other game where doing
It still kinda blows my mind that the gaming industry is bigger than movies, music and most other media combined. If it does crash then that’d have some pretty big ripples across the whole economy imo
@Tommy Gaming bot
the problem is this: the industry is run by manchildren that "never stopped loving games!" which is supposed to be good. They are bad managers, bad businessmen, and often bad people. I'm not making a social justice argument here, before someone says that, I am saying "these people, are not trained or ready, to run large corporations". And it shows... in spades. Nothing is ever guaranteed with these people. They might one day smell a fart and decide "we need to turn our RTS INTO A LOOTER SHOOTER!" and there is no guy in a suit, that actually went to business school, to tell them to stop. Because they hired their "friends" instead.
@@MrArgus11111 bro Nintendo is run by suits and suits only and they are a horrible company from a consumers point of view.
@@MrArgus11111 Lmao. Nowodays game industry (the big games) are run by greedy businessmen and your argument "we need to turn our RTS INTO A LOOTER SHOOTER!" shows that. They have nothing to do with games and thats why they just copy what brings money for others
@@MrArgus11111 Truthfully what you're describing isnt bad business. These practices, while stupid to some and defiantly unethical at times, make them tonnes of money
To me, it feels like every corporate story goes like this:
First guy in charge understands that employees are human beings, and makes an innovative high quality product at the company that sells well. Things are good everyone is happy.
First guy either gets bought out or fired, and replaced by an idiot from marketing focused on short term gains, who instantly drives the company to be an abusive workplace and guts all products of their quality and innovation just to add onto earnings.
By this point, the consumers probably don't give a shit about the brand anymore, and move onto something else, causing the company to go under.
How hard is it for the idiots in upper management to realize that they're the problem. They barely contibute anything and act as if they deserve to be praised because they push paper. It's infuriating to see companies go under solely because they hire idiots from marketing who don't know how to market a product, only for them to either leave the market, or see the company go under in a small amount of time.
they see it just fine
they just know that no matter how hard their mole man claws mutilate the company, they can skitter off with millions of dollars and live a life of unimaginable luxury
they didn't make the company, so they have no connection to it in any way but greed
The only problem they see is there’s more money to squeeze
They don't care upper management cares only about the money they can squeez out of you they don't care about everyone but them selfs.
Its not a mistake, its a design of the system. Eventually, creativity will reach a peek, and when it goes into a valley a firm will buy out the company, knowing that it will rise again. But the people who buy it don't care about the product, its a salvage operation, they plan to gut everything and get every last penny they can get from the buy out, this results in workplace squeeze and shitty products. They all jump ship before the bankruptcy.
My point of view.
ex amount of people have a dream of creating a game that they themselves would have liked to play, so they work together to create this game.
The game is released and either flops, of which no more games are released or it becomes a success which contributes to more games being created.
These people discover that creating games can be their new source of income, so they resign from their jobs, to instead form a gaming studio.
problem ... If a game flops or if a game costs too much to do, it will affect their studio future.
Hence they start to add varied form of way to make profitable products at the expensive of creative freedom...Such as adding DLC or jumping on the next big trend(FPS,Battle royale,Cod ich)
Or they think that if a larger company buys them up, they will have stable income ... However the bigger companies want profit out of there investment and more often then do not care about the things that made the smaller studio so successful.
if anything, the triple A game market is holding video games back more than it's pushing it forward. The most that huge companies can make is good graphics. Pushing gameplay and storytelling forward is usually exclusive to smaller or indie games.
Have you played griftlands?
@@mohandasjung no, why?
@@SpookeyGael Its a storytelling rpg with a somewhay roguelite structure. Its a indie game that hits the spot of what you where saying!
yap yap
Saddest part is they don't make the graphics either. They just have the audacity and money to send their tasks and animation to crunch companies in southeast Asia where there are no proper labor laws and people work 16 hours to create the graphics
Lesson learned from today.
-games to be released when they are ready.
-gamers WILL be patient if a product is worth the effort
-microtransactions bad
So most Nintendo games? Not saying Nintendo = Good, but they're doing something right at the very least
@@akscraggy2434 They've at least rode the fine line between Harsh and Scumbaggy, they do have a perhaps overly loyal audience though. Certainly they have a worse Copyright Policy rather than a Shop Policy. Even though i think paying for their online service is so cucked because the servers are actually a single rotting egg in a garage in Tokyo.
@@choobs8511 you're right, they're far from perfect. It's sad when a company like theirs is the best example we have (outside of indie devs and teams). But, for the most part, at least I can still have fun playing their games.
You forgot most important lessons. No one cares about woke cult. Hire based on merit not color or sexuality. And no one cares about gender identity so please go back to making good products. And also no censorship no one cares if someone is offended.
did you learned this just now? the young people nowadays.
also that applies regular games, mobile is a whole another story.
So essentially if there is a crash, it would be a crash of the AAA space. Indies have been putting the big boys to shame for years and by the looks of it, will continue to do so
I give up AAA games almost entirely the Last 3 years to embrace indie releases and i can Say with My whole confidence i think that games are the most fun, i've ever have since i was 12. If You know where to look indies are so full of the creativity, fun and sparkle AAA at large lack, also Even if the game doesn't sell 10 million copies some dozens of thousands Sometimes are more than enough for them to make a profit and if the game is a huge hit You can bet the developer will show support, i love fighting games and skullgirls still is releasing new content after almost a decade later. Also indies sometimes know how to cater to forgoten games that people really want but developers will not make, no new old school Castlevania? Try Bloodstained, no new Harvest Moon? Try Stardew Valley, no new Earthbound? Try Undertale and so on. For me as a gamer are more fun, cheaper, You support very invested passionate people and a more sustainable business model.
What gets me is we have already went through a AAA crash. How are Sierra, LucasArts, Brøderbund, Black Isle, and Epyx doing. Didn’t end gaming then won’t end it now.
Whan i played hollow knight i got that feeling i didn't get for years antile this point (3.5 years ago). Ever sence i buyed alot of indie games. Did you ever tryed synthetic. They have a demo. A fucking demo. In this day and age
It's happening right now. Just not in the way that anyone expected.
There's a talent exodus going on in nearly every major AAA company right now. Consumers have consistently acted like herd animals, so the collapse started among the people responsible for producing the schlock instead.
The real shame for the AAA publishers is that there are smaller studios and publishes who are happy making enough money to pay everyone decently without doing microtransaction, constant crunch time, or putting out half-baked crap (or putting out half-baked 'early access' games and then spending years making the games actually good).
That model works as a business, and everyone except "owners" and "investors" are a lot happier with it. That's an existential threat to the AAA publishers... No one will want to work for them.
I honestly think it would be a good thing. The competition from that would cause games to be unique again.
@Tommy Gaming shut up bot
The industry already crashed after 2009
@Tommy Gaming shhhhhh little robot. Into the deep dark void with you.
@@ZontarDow Ehh not really, the games started sucking slowly since 2009 but the Industry™ is still here. Unfortunately.
Lmao, the big companies would just buy the cheap small studios. Best you can hope for is more home-made games.
It blows my mind how big the video game industry is when it isn’t even a century old. Movies too.
HAVENT movies technically been around for 100+ years though?
@@Stryfe52 Yes but not in the same way we understand them. The first hour long animated film with sound, for example, was Snow White in 1937. Before then there were like 10-minute skits or silent films. And considering how big Endgame was and how it piqued in movie sales, who knows where the film industry is going, or even the video game industry.
@@domino_201 Oh I know that, but I didn’t know that Snow White was actually the first film with sound.
@@Stryfe52 snow white was not the first film with sound or even the first feature length film. it was the first feature film length animation. Jazz Singer I believe was the first film with sound. prior to that there was sound even for silent movies but it was separate from the film and dependent on each individual theater showing the silent film to provide whatever sound they deemed appropriate, but it was a rather common practice and studios gave lists of recommendations of what to play over an accompanying audio system. animation didn't necessarily have the same limitations with capturing the live audio of the performance for film so records could be provided to accompany the short skits that animations typically were at the time or they would animate to widely available classical music that would be listed to theaters to be played accompanying the animation. as far as feature films, we would consider it a short film now, but I believe the one film where the lead actor gets shot from a cannon into the moon was the first feature length film, some distributions of the film even being in color by hand painting over the black and white of the film. by the 1910s and 1920s the feature length for film of between 60 to 90 minutes was established.
@@himan12345678 Oh, thanks for the info. I’m not exactly knowledgeable on this kind of stuff, with my only points of knowledge being a Disney documentary and Red Dead Redemption 2 side content.
I'd rather buy complete editions of 10-20 year old games on sale for dirt cheap on Steam than pay for these modern games-as-a-service, tbh.
Agreed
Yup
Even better, why not get these decades old games on something like GoG? DRM free gaming and they usually make the games work properly on modern computers.
Not even gonna lie. That's what I do now.
That's what I do tbh. I cannot imagine spending more than 20 euros on a game. Last week I wanted to play battlefield so I just got 1 month worth of EA play for 3 euros and played the premium editions of battlefield and a bunch of other games too for that money. You simply don't have to spend much on games anymore these days. Also like you said the gigantic amount of older games that are dirt cheap. Also stuff from the 2010s that's better than today's AAA games.
All I know is this: A lack of creativity and originality with the aim of maximising profits at the expense of customer satisfaction has always spelled doom for any product type.
If only that was true...
You people really just make shit up and convince yourselves it's true lmao
unless someone find psychological loophole
@@woaddragon no literally just give it time. His point was about long term viability.
@@virn333 well how long does it need to be. EA has been pulling this shunk for over a decade now...
I dont meant to ne mean, but every video.game failure like google.stadia to tiger electronic is freak madden and Fifa.
Maybe the entire industry will manage just fine, but the AAA's will probably get kneecapped for a minute if these consistent bad practices and scandals don't stop.
Nowadays, you can just buy indie. Competition is the highest it has ever been.
@@the11382 what if I don't like the style of most indie games?
I just think “AAA games” as a concept is going to go away when indie devs have the technology capable of making great looking games on a medium budget.
We're definitely getting there. I'm noticing the PS1/PS2 retro aesthetic is slowly coming into the picture and the dev tools are way more accessible.
First thing that comes to mind is deep rock galactic. I believe that was made by a moderate budget studio, yet looks as great as any AAA
Also it’s so fun
But then, the best indie devs will makes a sea of cash and start making bigger AAA games all over again.
There is such thing called AA games like Senua Hellblade for example.
Hell, it's already happening I'd say, considering how much better a well stylized game looks even now. And it's only going to get better as the technology improves.
The first video game crash ended up being a good thing (80-90s game renaissance), but the question is if a second crash would have the same result.
I think it's already happened. Indie games are huge and started like 10 years ago in response to devs not being allowed to just make good games. If AAA games were completely obliterated it wouldn't effect indie games at all.
honestly it would be hard to get worse than where we're at now.
@@Horatio787 Yeah the indie scene is like a preemptive response in that sense, let's just hope they're able to avoid becoming like the old guard if and when the industry falls on their shoulders.
@@Cri_Jackal things will just repeat, but maybe slowly. Just look at how long it has taken us to get to the point we're at now.
@@Cri_Jackal It whould be a endless cycle, big companies would fall new studios rise they get corrupted by the shareholders they fall and repeat, because investers are the bigggest idiots out there.
I have to agree. These particular “titans”, as you put it, might go down in flames but other aspects of the market are doing fine if not growing as a result. Though I do have to wonder in Activision and Take Two’s case(s) if they’re just too big to fail? Activision lost a lot of interest when Fortnite came out and rebounded with Mw2019. MW2022 would probably be more telling as to how their biggest title is going to perform.
Someone named their group Titans today in my school. Coincidence, I think not!
Nothing is too big to fail.
The only time they are to big to fail is when the government starts pumping money into it.
@@KaiserMattTygore927 The bigger something is, the harder it falls
@@dylanroemmele906 But when it falls it falls hard
I’m sure I’m not the only one, but seeing the shares of the huge AAA companies going down brought a sweet sort of of joy to my cold, dead, heart
Replaced by horror as you realise your pension fund is now wearing concrete shoes as well.
@@louiseogden1296 That's what happens when the Federal Reserve/Central Banks keep interest rates too low; it makes the stock market one of the few places any investor can see a return on investment.
Seeing capitalism go down will bring even more joy, it's raised its bloddy flag over the world for long enough.
This has opened my eyes to the fact that, yeah, it simply cannot crash because mobile games are the money. Instead of people hoping for a crash, they should keep voting with their dollar, supporting companies that don't mess up, while disregarding companies that do. And support indie developers, because those indies could totally end up growing enough to start replacing games that the terrible companies stopped making.
Yeah but the problem is that for every person that does responsibly vote with their wallet, there are legions of consooomer manchildren that just buy whatever because...well, it's expected. That's the target demographic of these shitty, mass-produced games. These companies follow the exact same modern philosophy as the movie industry, food industry, music industry, CZcams, politics and anything else, which is to do the least amount of effort for the largest possible short-term profit (i.e. the lowest common denominator).
In other words, don't hold your breath, this shit is literally never going to change. Just buy the best games you like, and accept that these shitty companies are never going away.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a faceless corporation teabagging a human face - forever.
@@imperiumoccidentis7351 Basically the reason why I dont buy AAA games anymore. They are never good. The only games worth buying anymore are indie games. Star Citizen had potential, but you see how they've ended up.
Like CD Projekt Red. Started as a company that translated games into Polish only to make one of the best trilogies of all time next... and then they created CP'77.
I'm not attacking CP'77 as a game but CPR who started as a beacon of hope for AAA game developers only to become particularly no different than rest AAA game developers.
@@nieznajomy4398 I’ll argue it was worse, it was a mark of doom, kind of like an antichrist
@@skeletonking2501 I think Mass Effect Andromeda or Anthem would fit better this description but I also can't disagree with you 100% because I also concluded that CP'77 showed 5 years development plan for BIG games like CP'77 is not enough at this point.
Playing half life alyx made me realise how bad the market currently is. That game is actually innovative, looks better than any other game, you have no micro transactions and is generally a labour of love.
Afterwards I really ask why can't nobody else make a game close to it currently?
Because something called greed exists.
Because that takes effort ….
because it's VR. there's not enough talented VR devs and the market is too small to take risks in. a game like that was only possible because it was strongly backed by gabe himself.
@@JewTube001 well vr is the shit tho. The problem is just that fucking Zuckerberg dominates the VR hardware market, and the games released for the quest are more apps than full blown games
"At one point, Konami made videogames." This line was PURE GOLD
Tbh if Activision, Ubisoft, or EA had a major crash it would be a boon for the gaming industry. These three companies are almost completely responsible for all the trash quality and monetization practices today
Honestly, I'd put 2k above Ubisoft on that list, not that Ubisoft is good, but if I had to chose three companies to burn down, no way I'd pass on 2k
Nah, as the video already said. If these big western companies fall, other companies will fill its place. Not to mention that they are not actaully the biggest and baddest of the gaming giant. Since a lot of the share in the gaming industry were now owned by eastern companies. Especially Tencent, who is in fact the biggest game company in the world, even bigger than the big 5 American companies (Activision Blizzard, EA, Take-Two, Valve, and Bethesda) combined.
Hats off to being the only person who is well-informed in the comment section
I don't think the industry as a whole will crash but I do think the massive companies that everyone hates now will end up crashing eventually. No empire lasts forever, and no business empire lasts forever, and eventually some companies have to collapse.
I mean hasn't Nintendo existed for hundreds of years?
@@Messier__ Yeah, but they've only been a prominent *video game* company since the 80s. Before that they were in a variety of industries, including card games and love hotels, with mixed success.
@@Messier__ Yeah, but they were a relatively small company with a really diverse portfolio. Pre video game Nintendo didn't really work under the same rules as modern Nintendo. Today, the company makes heaps more money, but they only really make money from one product. If people stopped wanting to play Nintendo games, it's unlikely they could got back to selling playing cards.
@@davidmhh9977 I have feeling once everything is set in done, Nintendo would still live through all of this. I can easily see Microsoft and Sony leaving the industry all together can’t really see them last as long as Nintendo has in the video game industry
@@oscarperez9783 After the wiiu nintendo would of bowed out of the industry entirely or at least the console market if the switch turned out to be another failure. Things are different now but you never know what will happen.
I sure hope it will honestly ! Cost to buy a base game is going sky high, every one has microstransactions and several season passes and loot boxes, and little to no quality control and releasing early in an abysmal state.
This has to stop, otherwise there WILL be a crash. The one that happened decades ago happened due to an overflooded market and poor quality, and look where we are today ?
So much crap by big companies releasing games that are beyond broken, and for some reason people STILL pre-order. That is why i just rather stick to the indie market.
My mom bought resident evil 4 on a whim because someone recommended it to her but then she forgot she bought it
I played on her xbox and played the damn game myself
And upon playing I almost cried
No micro transactions, no manipulation, no broken bullshit
it was a great game made by a great team with the sole purpose of entertaining its audience
I realized i haven’t felt that way in a while and realized how much gaming has changed
It was the first time in a LONG time i was able to just relax, sit back, and play the damn game
The modern gaming industry is garbage
While everyone is complainimg about the next broken game, the battlefield 2049’s, the next COD, another broken Far Cry,
I’m just here playing re4
The cost of games has been the same for ages 50/60
What bothers me the most is that the previous three generations of consoles (including the current one) haven't been much different from their predecessors. The improvements have mainly been focused on processing speed, which in the wide scope of things only really matters of you're playing other people via an internet connection. The last time I checked, battle royale games like Call of Duty, Battlefield and Fortnite have been on a steady decline for a few years, now. As far as I'm concerned, that's a swing and a miss for several high level marketing teams. 😑
@@TinyBearTim Not sure what country you live in, but AAA companies increased the cost from 60 to 80 euros over here in Europe, + that is ONLY the base game cost, you have almost every game with a season pass or what kinda extra edition that is 30 - 60 on top of that.
@@Doctor-Infinite Exactly what you're saying man - the times when you could have just bought a game, and you had a good game !
No microstransaction filled unfinished mess. That is why i either completely avoid the AAA industry, or when i buy a game i REALLY want and it has microtransactions, i just wait for a 50% sale or even 75%, and if it is something abysmal like the last several CoD or BF games ? I don't buy at all, and never pre-order.
The worst that can really happen these days is that the traditional big developers fall by the wayside due to a lack of quality and other reasons. In an open market, like we have today, that just means that other developers have a chance to gain market share - it just means that the wealth goes to other people than the out of touch execs that have been ruining so many game releases over the years.
I feel that the industry is simply far too large and mainstream to fail like how television is. We'll rather see companies in particular continue to crash/rise than the entire industry
I think you're mistaking a "market crash" with an existential threat to the industry. If we're talking about an 83 style crash where people were legitimately wondering if the Industry would exist next month, then yeah, that definitely won't happen.
Markets crash all the time, but are in no risk of disappearing. If a market crash happened in 2021-22 it would probably look more like the Market collapse of 2008, except with no government to step in with the opioid of Government Money. You would see the big companies, like EA, Ubisoft, and Activision collapse, and the market cap shrink a fair bit, but there would be plenty of smaller companies to pick up the slack in the medium to long tern.
In terms of the effect on platforms? PC would ride out the storm more or less intact. People wouldn't get rid of their PCs if that gaming market ceased to be, so there would still be a latent market for that part of the Industry to rebound fairly easily. Of the three big consoles?
Nintendo would honestly probably ride it out the best, although not unscathed. Their part of the Industry is more insulated from the rest as they're more reliant on First Party Titles.
Microsoft will not come out of a crash the same as they went in. In the case of a serious market crash Microsoft would just speed up their efforts to transition away from being a hardware platform and into a software based one.
Sony would likely do the worst here and would be the most likely to be the Atari analogue, but hardly guaranteed. The Playstation is just as reliant on Third Party titles as Xbox is, but without the Software Transitional out that Xbox has.
Over all such a crash would honestly be really good for the industry. When the Industry emerges from the crash it would be a leaner more effective industry with most of the chaff being wiped away.
I feel like we’re stuck in the “glam rock” era of video games. Everything is just regurgitated and repackaged crap.
And people are turning to the classics like people did during the glam rock era. Hence, the surge in retro gaming.
But with every dark age comes a Renaissance. And pretty soon, some new developers will come along with something new and exciting.
Wonder who'll take the mantle as video gaming's Kurt Cobain then.
Now that is a interesting way to look at it, I can appreciate the viewpoint
nono, as the Marilyn Manson song is stating "everything has been said before" well, He probably calculated it with some approximate.
@@MikoyanGurevichMiG21 Tod Howard
honestly thats the best way to put it.
Now's a great time to become an indie gamer or play some older games from a few years ago. You can get those for cheap, and you don't need the latest hardware to run them either.
There are just so many good games, that you can have the time of your life without touching any brand new AAA releases, and without breaking the bank either.
Fallout new Vegas is an all time favorite of mine and I can run it on my potato pc I also got the original versions of GTA 3 VC and San Andreas without the shitty remaster and it’s fucking chad games I love them ngl the only thing is that I have problems modding the old grad since I’m not fluent in the old shit
I feel like there are a lot of stale games out their but there are double the amount of great games comming out currently and past games that are great. The diffrence between the market then and now is that there are so many great games from the past already made as a sort of safety net for the industry to fall on to if it ever does crash this was different to back during the first crash as there wer'nt as many classics already made.
Not to mention that older titles have less hardware requirements
The old breed lost the Mandate of Heaven. I think we're starting to see the rise of indie game companies, and perhaps they'll inherit the industry as top dogs. Or, maybe not.
There will always be top dogs, its nice to see the old guard be replaced. They seriously need to be.
Change is both scary, good, bad, a mix of both, otherwise, a industry like this, all of this, dies
The problem is that it has been corporafied again.
Corporate mindsets are what ruin industries and the entertainment industry has been absolutely shitting it's pants because the consequences finally caught up to it
This is not only a problem with video games but all industries right now. Unregulated capitalism leads to unlimited greed and in the case of video games innovation is being snuffed out and money making has become the priority leading to AAA companies releasing broken games every year.
@@moustachio05 The problem isn't that they are unregulated, it's the fact that the government actively subsidizes them. The U.S is far more socialist than capitalist nowadays, it's mixed, but leaning way towards socialism.
@@dylanroemmele906 lol
@@sexy1735 It's true, A capiltalist country doesn't take 6.2% of your paycheck for SOCIAL Security.
@@dylanroemmele906 more socialist than capitalist? I wish we could say that. We have socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor.
That's the problem. You're expecting executives to look at the lower sales and engagement and think something's wrong. Executives don't think. They're the nephew or son or friend of some other executive brought on to get free money for doing basically nothing.
They'll bring it up at a meeting, blame someone below them with a real job, jettison them and their team and then go back to demanding that you make that square into a circle in five weeks or you're fired. And then when the product's released they'll fire the entire team anyway. The fact that management-types are incapable of rubbing two brain cells together long enough to generate a coherent thought is the whole problem.
I always avoid video games companies when it comes to investing. There are simply waaayy too many games out there already.
thoughts before watching: the Industry™? probably. Indie stuff? not at all
It also seems like now there is way more consoles. Only 4 years ago in 2017 we had just the Switch, Xbox One, and PS4. Now we have the Atari VCS, The Intellivision Amico, The Switch, The Xbox Series X/S, The PS5, The SteamDeck and a few new handheld ones.
Many too consoles was also a huge factor for the original 83 crash
As someone who's worked a few years in the industry gaining experience, this is actually a good thing, for one simple reason: It is hilariously easy to make a better game than the AAA companies, and since me and my small friend group have enough capital to go indie, there's no better time to. You have no idea how awesome it is to not have corporate breathing down your neck and make a game you and your mates are really passionate about.
With NFTs being brought into the industry…I could see the “crash” eventually happening, hopefully. In all honesty, I hope it happens. Maybe it’s what these AAA companies need to get their heads out of their asses…
What about Microsoft buying Activision/Blizzard for 68.7 Billion dollars? That tells me something major is on the way for gaming and I don't know if it is good or bad. It might be good in the short term but bad long term, it could cause more lazy products that are broken to come out and help lead to another crash in the future. Time will tell, I guess.
I have no objection whatsoever to business practices that explicitly target stupid people.
@@CoralCopperHeadthey will try to force it onto everyone, that if you want to progress and compete against other players you will need to buy microtransactions in form of NFTs
I recommend getting into indie games or more niche tittles. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, the Yakuza series, and the Judgement series are games that have really impressed me with their stories
Teehee.. tittles
@@CallMeRabbitzUSVI 13 Sentinels was a once I a lifetime game experience for me
@@GarfiekdKartGo I honestly was not expecting the story to be that freaking good holy shit.
Yakuza isn't indie, though?
It would be nice, I want to see major corps fail and indie makers rise. Games like Deltarune, Hollow Knight, Hades, and so one deserve to be a thousand times as popular even if they are already very popular. These games have heart, they have soul, and they have quality. You don’t find this in AAA games, AAA games right now don’t really CHANGE you. Indie games can very much change the way you feel about yourself, the world around you, and about different ideas. And that’s what games should do in my opinion, games should not just be go here shoot this. They should be able to affect their players on as deep a level as possible, games are art, just as much as paintings or stories or any other type of art. Games should help you meet people, make friends, and help you. The best thing a developer can hear, in my opinion, is “this game helped me get through a dark time in my life”. That is the greatest praise, and I don’t hear it much about triple AAA titles.
My only worry if this were to happen is these Indy teams would grow and become corporate run just like what we have. Maybe I’m just jaded after all the years though.
@@jasonhowland2903 I think a cycle of purity, corporateness and then collapse is destined to hit every company eventually.
That's a nice thought, but mouth breathers will want the latest COD, FIFA and third person walking simulators rather than 'old' stuff.
Like my neighbor who calls his PS4 a "Nintendo".
@@jasonhowland2903 this is already happening all over. indy devs split from studios/publishers and make new studios then release a hit, and get bought again and the cycle resets.
if you look into studios that opened and closed, and high profile studio departures over the last like 10 year or so a pattern will float to the top.
Yeah games like Unpacking, Potion Craft and Trash the Planet are the future of Gaming smh
Games are going to start costing $70 at some point. And I can tell you there are large amounts of games that were never worth $60 and will never be worth $70
No amount of "graphical you upgrades" will hide the fact that some of these are straight up scams, and what's sad about this is that most of the time it isn't even the devs fault, but they'll suffer the greatest.
Most microtransaction heavy games make a lot of their money from relatively few whales that likely have no idea about the issues everyone has with AAA gaming, so I don't think it's really possible for the game industry to crash anymore.
Disney coming after ea over battlefront was the beginning of the end. Gaming will never go away but lately AAA devs generally put out trash while indie devs usually do good work. I think it's as simple as the way AAA games are made now doesn't work for quality, and when the income dries up investors leave. Then the companies have less money to make the next game and thus less quality, less income ect
November wasn't that bad no step back Was awesome.
The only problem I really had with no step back that it broke a bunch of mods but my favorite old world blues is mostly fixed now and also I don’t really have complaints about paradox just the dlc costs and shit but that’s basically all
I'd go as far to say that the way most large corporations are structured is simply incompatible with the creative process needed to make a good game. As long as people who don't really know or care about video games are allowed to control, or even just influence the development process, quality is going to suffer. Over time I think we're going to see more medium sized companies and indie developers taking a larger slice of the pie. The current big companies will slowly fade away, and some of those medium sized companies will grow and take their place. Once they get large enough, they'll stagnate too, and the cycle will repeat.
I hope the game industry crashes. I've been trying to pinpoint when exactly games stopped being fun and started being unironically cynical money extraction devices. Not to mention microtransactions and gambling mechanics they keep throwing in on top of that. I think it was somewhere around 2013? I think I can genuinely count on one hand the number of games I've enjoyed in the last decade. Two hands if I'm being generous.
Same.
Feels like after Halo 4 and Black Ops 2, things went to shit.
Now correct me on this but.. would realistically the gaming market would be in more of a possibility a recession than a crash?
that kinda describes it quite well.
since console+PC is barely more than 50% of gaming industry, it amazes me how huge is mobile games market, it's like a whole universe i don't know a single shit about.
I used to be *such* a Blizzard fan. Back in the day, I'd be playing WoW, StarCraft, and Diablo for hours.
But around 2012/2013, something weird started happening. Mists of Pandaria was released, and although it was pretty awesome, it started to lack something it had before. Diablo 3 was released, and Blizzard seemed to forget a lot of what made Diablo 2 so memorable and replayable. D3 was _linear..._ wut?
StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm was released, and although SC2 was being touted as the next big e-sport, hype quickly died for HotS and the playerbase and tournament prize pools continued on their decline.
It seemed like Blizzard had lost something, they didn't seem to care about what made the games good, what kept people playing. It took them a whole decade to bring WoW Classic, despite people begging for them since Burning Crusade. People begged for better clan support, chat channels, in SC2 and it tooks years for Blizzard to finally get around to it, shame they haven't got around to fixing the arcade, but I think Blizzard's idea towards criticism was to reduce the playerbase to almost nothing, that way almost no one will complain.
I can't speak about the other games but for WoW I'd say the issues started around the time of Cataclysm. Blizz at that time adopted the mentality of making the game as simple and accessible as possible, which led to them oversimplifying many aspects - such as the talent system or the LFG system. That was when people started losing interest and WoW began its decline.
@@Evenst3vn Ahh yeah. I remember being really annoyed that TotalBiscuit (May he Rest in Peace) stopped playing WoW just after Cata's release, when I had just got back into playing it.
I remember how people were either criticising or agreeing with the points TotalBiscuit was making at the time for why he quit playing WoW, and as I played through Cataclysm, it definitely felt different, lacking even. The only thing that seemed like a definite improvement was the questing, but looking back I'm not so sure now, WotLK and BC questing had a certain charm about it
@@Crowbars2 general consensus is that WoW was at its best pre-Cata, a lot of people consider Cata to be the worst expansion (or WoD). I barely played Cata but played a lot during MoP and a bit during Legion… definitely enjoyed it more during BC and WLK. I actually wanna get back on just to play classic (no interest in retail).
As Razorfist has been pointing out for the better part of a decade: by the metrics of the first game industry crash, after 2009 it already did.
that guys better at reviewing albums than producing market or political analysis in spite of his wasted bachelor's degree.
@@tugger yes I get it, you disagree with him ideologically and thus think that means he's wrong, I was 14 too once
Razorfist, is that the yelling guitar guy who got demolished by Hbomberguy?
@@ZontarDow Nah, he's just not correct.
The game industry most certainly did not crash in '09 or any time since (sadly)
A lot of industries were shook but gaming wasn't nearly as affected as say the housing market or the auto industry.
@@yellowbeard1 Hbomberguy has never demolished anyone so no
Me, ten years ago, as a high schooler answering the question: “It’s possible, but it will never happen.”
Me, today, as an adult, answering the question: “It’s probably not possible anymore, but I wish it would happen.
I want video games to be like the PS2 and early PS3 days again! ;-;
I'm specifically talking about triple A games, as indie games are good no matter what!
Gaming industry is the mist inconsistent industry. It's not like basic industries of everyday stuff like producing food, energy etc. It's very dangerous to rely on it in long term, be it as a person who works in it or a person who's company fully relies on gaming and wouldn't survive or exist otherwise.
"A great game can sell horribly"
> Shows Gravity Rush 2
God, it still hurts me to know I'll more than likely never get another Gravity Rush. It was honestly one of my favorite series.
I had planned to start it today so I guess I'll do
I saw that and it hurt my heart, such good games
i bought it, not gonna sell it ever
That series was amazing.
The series was/is one of my favorite and it hurts that well probably not get a 3 ever. Even if their is a chance its years down the line.
It's too big to fail now. It's surpassed music and movies, and gamers drive a lot of industries you wouldn't think are benefitting from people playing video games. Hell, the fact that gaming graphic cards have become people's livelihood are proof enough of that.
Plus, the crash occurred because people had other options for entertainment. Movies were still better, concerts and festivals were a thing. Sure things have settled but we're not going back to what we were before, and more people now than ever are playing video games.
Konami is actually going back into games by reviving some of their obscure Japan only IPs, and have been really selling a lot. Momotaru Densestu especially has sold millions in only Japan and only on Switch.
What about Yu Gi Oh?
@@SlapstickGenius23 I know they made that new game for Switch, and that the card game is selling well.
Something I don’t see talked about it how many casual people don’t have the money anymore to buy as many games as they used to. Rent cost of living and health insurance all are going up and many people just can’t afford to buy as many games as they used to or spend money on small indie games. So many companies used flashy trailers to get people hooked and people only trust the bigger games
No, but I believe we reached the peak of what devs are willing to do to make better looking games. No idea how they can ever make anything better than whatthe best we have rn is. We will probably see a shift from focus on graphics, to focus on gameplay.
Never. Marketing is about feeling. Feeling is instinctual and that (imo) is why graphics have been the buzzword for the last decade. You can alienate people with unqiue mechanics, you can make things too easy or too hard. "Graphics" is simply, how it feels looking at gameplay. Try sell mechanics in an advert, it's very hard. Try sell easthetics, very easy.
If you want an example, look at Fighting Games. They are mechanics based, execution based, skill based, often look ugly and they have everything you seem to want and they are forever obscure. Graphics may not improve, but they won't be sacrificed. Also, games are so graphically complicated gameplay has to suffer to make the things in time.
Hopefully, this does happen though.
I am a freelencer (3D modeler, concept artist, and level designer as well as black box QA tester). Corona did not really effect the amount of jobs and the pay got better. There is a simple fact, the crash has nothing to do with the industry as a whole and everything to do with the AAA part of it. People simply do not want to work on boring and safe projects, they want to innovate and make new trends. This is opposite of what the management wants, they do not like to make risks... The whole situation is simple, with a vertical slice you can now get funding, indie scene is rising and more and more veterans are joining in, sick with the state of modern AAA industry. Take Blizzard for example, while a few years ago it was considered an big deal to enter the company, now people just do it to fill in a place in their resume and leave as soon as possible. Big projects also require a big number of devs and people refuse to work since they know that they will get canned as soon as the project is done... Basically, they are losing talent and also since there is no such thing as infinite growth, AAA companies will make a scandal and if they do it a lot of times, their investors will pull out their cash. So basically, all the most powerful corporations will buy out all the shitty ones (Activision is a prime example, just like Bethesda before it- both were bought by Microsoft...). So basically that's the whole situation behind it, bad practices towards the developers and an unreasonable expectation towards earnings within a short time period. The AAA industry should crumble, it is an example of everything wrong in the industry!
Game subscription services provide a steady income stream. Yes, they can be cancelled, but not as easily as simply not buying a game from a store. Most people will keep their subscriptions as long as there are at least a few games they like on there.
Yea I can see a possible crash happening, but in no would it be an outright collapse of the market. If anything a crash would open up niches once held by the failing companies to be then filled by succesful companies and indie developers. I think a crash would be nice though, it could act as a way to shake up the industry's much needed innovation and quality.
The big development studios can all make catastrophic products that don't work, but there will always be good games by indie studios who still have love for the artform
It cannot crash because gamers are consumer addicts, there are too many individuals buying multiple games a week, or Monthly. That wasn't the case before, most of us had one game for months, now the spending is out of control and they (the companies) know they don't need to make good games, just have a good add campaign, pay the right youtubers, pay people in forums, sit back and enjoy the money, all of the criticism won't be enough to hurt the company.
That's why you can have pathetic games like death stranding and be successful, gamers are behaving like animals, they are nothing but addicts, consume, consume, consume.
this too harsh. there is some artwork put into death stranding.
Last time this happened was in the 80s. Some people on here are old enough to remember that whole ordeal. Will we bounce back? We did it once, we can do it again. But I think dark days are coming before anything gets better.
"Roblox is worth more than Activision".
I had to take a second to let that sink in.
5:40
I like how Fifa was shown when you said shovelware.
It is pretty funny that the most successful of the big AAA games(Halo) that came out this November still managed to drop the ball in some compacity
I do see one crash-like scenario: Lootboxes being legislated. Lootboxes make a ridiculous amount of money not only for console and PC gaming companies but also the mobile games that are the majority of the market. Having that money dry up might not kill AAA development, but I think it'd definitely cause a lot of damage.
(Of course, the fact that non-AAA game development exists is a huge way that modern gaming differs from the catastrophe of yore, and why at this point the industry won't ever die: Anyone with a computer can keep it alive.)
If AAA fail because of lootboxes, then they deserve it.
I feel like it won't even though it should. Most of the gaming community just lets too much slide. I've gotten just as annoyed with them as with the industry. They need to stop pre-ordering, and stop supporting bad business practices. And also, games should not be "broken fun" at launch like some have said about BF 2042. They should have all of the necessary time to be polished so that their issues don't have to be endured until they can be fixed. That goes for any game.
Pre-ordering is a special type of bullshit. Since digital copies are not physically limited, it doesn't even make sense for it to exist in the first place. So companies try to entice people to get them via pre-order bonuses so they can guarantee sales before the consumers can get quality insurance via reviews etc.
I would tell people to stop pre-ordering but seeing how the change it would make is so minimal, I feel like advocating for making pre-order bonuses illegal is a more realistic option at this point.
Your research is great! I like your insights
This video covers the main point well: The modern game industry is too big just to "crash". The big players may find a way to bite the dust, but there are so many people out there who just love games (both playing and making them) that smaller developers will instantly fill any gap left in the market.
Honestly, a "crash" would probably be the best thing to happen to the gaming industry now. Small studios are out there making games right now, if the giants would just move their fat heads out of the way, maybe more people would see these "smaller" (and often better) games.
The AAA space is starting to feel like games that you'd see in fiction being played in the background, as well as beginning to morph into glorified storefronts to sell stuff on.
Games don't need a dedicated "Store" tab. It's because of this that I've dived deeper into niche genres that understand what "fun" is. I can only hope that the failures of the big giants will make people open their eyes and see that they're playing the same shallow games that are designed to sell you colours.
It's crazy that this video exists because a couple of months ago I theorized with my friends that the current state of AAA games shows how the industry will eventually collapse in some way. The cracks are really starting to show.
Now, this all sounds very dramatic but personally I don't believe, or I find it hard that this hypothetical crash will make the industry disappear entirely or be harmful enough so that it can't depend on itself. Games make more money than movies nowadays, no way the biggest gaming companies will just let it burn. The kind of collapse I believe will happen is that big game studios will be unable to make games at the scale they are now, and the scale they will be in the future (if things continue the way they are), games are costing WAY too much money, major AAA releases take almost a decade of development now, and even then developers are still being exploited to release on a specific date, which causes games to come out half baked. The weight of all this things will eventually be unsustainable and big game releases will become something very rare because studios can't rely on them anymore.
This ins't a bad thing entirely, because with big games out of the question, this will boost indie development immensely because studios will depend on them to release games. Part of my theory is that this rise of indie development will bring more experimental ideas to stand out to the mainstream public, inspiring a new generation of creative minds, creating new genres, new mechanics, new rules for future game development, new ways to tell stories in games, the posibilites are endless.
Ok, I do recognize that last part is a bit dream driven because of my personal tastes, but with luck it could happen! lol
I admit this whole thing is exaggerated. Just saying words like "crash" or "collapse" is very dramatic, as I said before. This things just show that the industry has problems that if they're not dealt with, can be harmful in the long run, yes, but overall may not cause a major problem at all. But honestly, I want this whole thing to blow up just to see indie development rise up.
I've been thinking this off hand for some time. Nice to see your thoughts on it ☺️
Games are bad because people have poor taste and pay for crap.
The moment most people refine their taste and understand the concept of having standards, companies like EA, Activision, etc cease to exist.
But they prey on ignorance of the subject, so were stuck with this kind of AAA gaming for a long time.
Not everyone wants to play Skyrim
Honestly the fact that they decided to sponsor a video by you makes me more interested in supporting Squarespace than any ad could
A crash would be the reset the industry needs to purge some of the anticonsumer policies we've seen
I learned from The Gaming Historian that even in Japan, they were thinking in "Japan terms" about video games and even considered outlawing or discouraging the creation of them. But Super Mario 3, what seems to be like the second nintendo rescue, the release of Super Mario Bros. 3 taught Japanese citizenry and government that video games can make for a good time with the family. So they reconsidered. If it weren't for Mario 3, Mario 1 wouldn't have even been able to save it. Since even though that was multiplayer as well, there had been a notable lack of multiplayer games around that time.
So you ever have that moment where you look at two drinks in the fridge for example apple juice and milk, you go "mmm gonna drink me some apple juice" but look away to talk to a roommate or something, accidently grabbing the milk. Now milk tastes fine, good even, but if you where expecting apple juice you'd spit it out and look shocked at your glass for betraying you. I just did this in multimedia form, by looking at a Skooch video while clicking on a KnowledgeHub video, neither are bad but my brain was not expecting Codies voice, lol.
TLD;R: clicked this while looking at another video, and was suprised when I heard this instead of the video I was looking at.
Why did you go on to write a comment with such good analogies and structure just to say "I didn't click on the video I wanted", bro?
Seriously you could use this potential to absolutely obliterate someone in an argument!
@@ixcutamp8059 Thank you?
I can’t believe it’s taken this long for people to get fed up with this crap. I stopped buying games from these companies around 2013 and I haven’t looked back.
Also I don’t think you can group mobile games with pc and console. The types of games and the target demographics are just fundamentally different.
Why 2013
Love seeing Gravity Rush get some attention! Such a shame it didn't any recognition
I mean probably, considering how many hyped-to-the-ass flops keep happening
Best ad transition I’ve ever seen
I believe they will in the following generation due to a lot of their productions just getting lazy compared to 2000-2015 games
I would call 2017-2018 one of the best eras of modern gaming in all honesty, with the amount of sheer quality released in those 2 years
Not really, there really wasn't that many great games per year before, much like today. Most of the game's industry has always been a sea of trash.
God I hope so. Maybe then it'll teach everyone a lesson lost to time. Quality control your product and make it a great product and you'll sell copies like hotcakes. Now a days it takes thousands of people to make a game and I get you can't catch every single bug but I mean the amount of bugs that do come with new games is often embarrassing and some even brick your consoles and PC with no compensation to the victim of the faulty product. Could you imagine a car company selling you a car that will eventually crash and cripple you and you don't get any compensation? Greed is the name of the game and everything else comes second. I feel bad for the small guys because their market is becoming saturated with the same game just new skin slapped on while the big guys make what could be great games but lack anything to keep you there once they fix the bugs.
Your animation style is very endearing
Very epic cody, love dis video
I hope it does because the current state is horrendous
Gaming feels headed for the increasingly dystopia future run by bean counters instead of a genuine crash: Mobile games selling gatcha games, loot boxes and paid to win mechanics to vulnerable children (remember, like cigarettes of old, get them when they young and hook them in on it) who don't know any better. It's the AAA companies desperately trying to import these "surprise mechanics" on top of DLC, season pass and a paid base game and facing pushback but barely enough to make them do anything better. Sports game that are just the same game but recycled surprised card players everywhere that people even setup server bot farms to try and get them and those get confused for crypto mining.
And now? Ubisoft is now proudly moving forward to integrate unique NFT "receipts" of your ingame items when they already completely own the infrastructure to issue, display and render these ingame items on their servers in the first place rendering having a crypto receipt completely pointless. Oh do we also want to remember they *still* haven't patched their latest Assassin Creed's copy protection to work with Intel Adler Lake CPUs. 🤦♂
IDR when was the last time i bought a game and stuck with it.
I always end up jumping back to my old stuff from like 10 years ago.
Had to like because I know an insane amount of researching history went onto this BEFORE scripting the video AND editing the content.
Hopefully it does. I would feel bad for the devs caught in the crossfire but if things continue as they are those same devs are getting screwed anyway.
It seems like the gaming industry pushes forward one brilliant IP at a time. An example, COD: MW4 (2007) really blew me away! Infinity Ward was a company that really understood shooters. The people responsible for MW4 (2007) were pushed out by Activision for the sequels, because Activision thought that releasing 24 crap games a year is better than fostering the creatives that gave them lightning in a bottle. Almost everything wrong with the modern gaming industry can be traced back to companies like Activision and EA (tons of crap product, focus on multiplayer, in-game purchases, no creativity).
I'm old as hell and I gamed right through the crash. You could still go into Babbage's or whatever and get Commodore 64 games. I remember getting Rogue clones and stuff on floppy disks in bags from Radio Shack. There were tons of brick and mortar PC game stores. People like to be so dramatic about the console crash, but it was completely over and forgotten by 1987 once NES took root. It would be like referring to the Wii U as the Nintendo console crash...
Tyler: A great game can sell horribly. *Shows Gravity Rush*
Me: Why must you hurt me like this?
Meanwhile in Europe, Computer games were going through a golden age!. Though there was a die off of manufacturers. (R.I.P. Camputers, Oric, Dragon etc) but we still had Sinclair, Commodore, Amstrad, Acorn, even Atari. The Video Game crash meant nothing to us. Nintendo? That was mobile gaming only until the N64.
But yeah, the big publishers need a shock or even better, need to go.
The Market is too diverse to crash in any way the same as it did before, what would probably happen is major AAA Companies closing up and reducing their scope over a couple years. Ideally motivated by the Companies being forced to eliminate Crunching. Indie Devs and such are doing a lot of carrying for the industry, at least unless its a huge title like a GTA or COD. (In these cases a crash isn't at all likely, just market shrinkage as long as Developer Treatment and Cash over Quality continues.)
As soon as the main stream dies, the absolute horde of indie games will flourish
I appreciate you calling specific gmes shovelware.
The out of control microtransactions, seems like every single game has them now :/ and the outrageous overpriced cost of all parts needed to build a PC could very well destroy PC gaming as a hobby for most people if this trend keeps up! When building a PC now costs more than buying a used vehicle, there's a serious problem!
It's ridiculous how even single player-only games are now being infested with microtransactions. The recent RE4 Remake has that, on top of missing game modes that the OG RE4 had yet "gamers" continue to consoom this dumpster fire, along with many other garbage modern-day AAA games.
@@heywoodjablome2767 It's nothing but pure GREED - I sadly see a day coming where in game currency will no longer exist and every customization will be locked behind microtransactions :/
it got close but idk.
Halo infinite and Pokemon legends could be the games to save the weakened industry.
though game developers like Obsidian could kill the game industry by releasing another mediocre game that get 10s across the board cause it's an Obsidian game. leading to game devs and future content creators to think "Hm... why bother trying?"
I don't know that much about investment but when you walk by the empty shelves where the gpus and consoles are supposed to be, it's hard to make the case that it's cyclical.
Thank you Sir
This is such a great video