The Video Game Industry is Officially Broken
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- čas přidán 7. 05. 2024
- Amidst the shutdown of Hi-Fi Rush's studio Tango Gameworks, multiple industry lay offs, the balloon unsustainability of AAA, is it time to admit the game industry is broken?
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#finalfantasyviirebirth #finalfantasy #hifirush - Hry
Tango Gameworks didn't deserve this. It's so unfair...
I believe this is done on purpose to make AA games look like they are not worth it compared to AAA games and to prevent the studios from taking off and competing with the AAA market. Corporations suck.
@@pipz420 it will have been done as that's where they will save the most money.
Life's not fair.
@@PatrickF.Fitzsimmons I believe if someone is making you more money for less cost that is saving you money. This is just crushing competition.
Barret talking about Shinra sucking up the lifestream at 8:02 with your commentary was not lost on me lol
"I KNOW you can feel it!!"
Square Enix has become ShinRa.
@@MacUser2-il2cx If anything Square Enix seems to realize there is a problem and they have been part of it given recent restructurings and getting FF7 Rebirth done in as short of a time as they did. They just don't know how to fix it entirely.
@@MacUser2-il2cxAt least Square has made an effort to keep the majority of the team working on ff7 remake trilogy intact over the long decade or so of development. Most companies wouldve purged talent, cleaned out several departments and replace with new ones. Theyre taking steps in a good direction.
Final fantasy 7 remake and god of war when they say billions they mean millions
These game companies are going to regret committing to live service games in milking the consumer dry as much as they have. I hope we go back to a time where single player games rule supreme.
Please no. Videogames are to be enjoyed together.
@@shakeweller SHUT young gen kid
There should be room for both. But the costs are so high that there is a clear problem in a lot of areas. Live service games really probably should be on the MMO subscription plan and there should be a lot less of them. At the same time, the overall scope of single player games really should be scaled downwards. Look at the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series which releases games consistently on shorter timelines than almost all of its peers because they figure out how to reuse assets from game to game in a continuing narrative that still has clean jumpin on points.
Not as long as there is internet
I feel like they kinda are. They rarely have multiplayer nowadays or even co-op which has been upsetting me for years. A co-op should be a stanfard at this point but after watching this, i dont even know anymore.
I think the biggest problem is we have too much. Too much media, too much games, too much movies, videos, T.V shows, streams, everything. In terms of entertainment, I believe society has reached it's peak and now we are entering into an age of decline where many media and entertainment companies face bankruptcy, layoffs, and even closures. For many, this is no longer about expressing creativity and imagination, it's about survival.
That and a lot of AAA gaming is extremely wasteful in their spending and end up sabotaging their games into being failures. Do you really need to have advertising budgets as big as budgets it takes to make the game? No, you do not. There is such a thing as diminishing returns in both advertising and in making games.
In advertising, I remember in FF14 Shadowbringers there was a commercial that had Tom Holland in it. Even though it was a good commercial and entertaining, my thought was, 'That is probably a waste of money as it's not going to get anyone new to play the game.'
In game development, I remember when Insomniac games decided to change the look of Peter Parker in their Spiderman games. It seemed like it was done for such a stupid reason, and it wasted a good amount of money I'm sure.
Part of the blame should also be aimed on us. Our standards are through the roof. People raged about FFVII Rebirth's performance mode, the lighting, the textures and whatnot. We lose sight of what is important and we complain about trivial things, demanding absolute perfection in every aspect of a production.
Also, Gamepass is the archvillain of videogames nowadays. A lot of us called it years ago, and here we are now...
It thought it was because performance mode really tanked the game and made it look bad. Did Square Enix really need to improve the graphics of FF7 Rebirth over what FF7 Remake had? Pretty sure, people would've been fine with that since the game looked good still, and performance would've been good by default.
@@urazz7739 you do realize FFVII remake is mostly made out of linear corridors and that the entire background is nothing but a 2d panorama image right? Rebirth is open world and everything is rendered in 3d...
U mean the rage on ffxvi 16
PpI got mad at spiderman 2 for not releasing with a way to repIay missions. Some of the most amazing games in history dont have that feature. Its insane.
The amount of people I hear that call a video game “MID” is insane… What a disrespectful comment to a group of devs that work on a project for several years. Nobody appreciates gaming art anymore.
I will tell you the real problem. There are WAY too many games. Nobody has time to play every single game that come out, not even people who play games for a living. And it costs way too much too. Other industries have it pretty balanced. There are a lot of movies each year, but each of them take only 2-3 hours of your time. They don't even have to compete for your attention to make money. They just need to be good.
Meanwhile the video game industry has hundreds of cooks stepping on each other's foot to get your attention for over 50 hours. Of course that's going to fail. Doesn't matter if they are good or not. Nobody has time. The only winners today are the franchises that built a fandom over decades, and those that are lucky.
It's horrrific to see so many truly phenomenal games, made by even better people, living and working in one of the most corrupt industries in entertainment. If success isn't enough, what is? The industry is in serious need of restructuring, the dropping of false promises, but most importantly, security. Who would have guessed being a game developer, one of the most under-pressure, high talent jobs has so little job security, and what is promised means nothing if this Tango Gameworks news is anything to go by. I think its more important than ever to show our love and support for the beautifully talented teams behind the games we love, but it's hard when their safety nets are nonexistent. Thanks for making this video Sky, time for the community to cry out
Damn didn’t know FF7 was the first AAA games FF7 truly goated
Yet the Remake hasn't exactly been lighting the world on fire like people thought.
@@mr.awesome6011 its bloated out the ass, by the time the game is over you're like thank fuck no more lame ass minigames. Yes the OG has minigames but like a total of 20, remake has like 60+
It became broken soon as DLC practices became the norm and studios decided to chase after the bloated impractical budgets of Hollywood, even despite doing better than Hollywood.
Exactly spot on🏴☠️
Yes that's a shame we need to pay for DLC for games which are not even complete nowadays. Business makes it so messed up. Especially when games like Fifa or stuff are pay to win... They've broken video games and the way we play it. The spirit is no longer here.
Indeed. Even the issue with the DLCs become too big, that the DLCs end being like the 50% of the game itself in some cases, meaning that you'll play actually half-game, if you don't buys the DLCs.
Without count that now we must pay a fee to uses the Online mode in the videogame platforms, turning the videogames in a decievement to bleed us more than we paid for the game itself.
I think if game companies want to make games that rival Hollywood they should just make them into animated movies. They always end up being movies and series on Netflix anyway.
@@MacUser2-il2cx Yeah. The games had lose their way on this days.
I remember when Hironobu Sakaguchi was interviewed about making a modern triple A game, his answer was "Its daunting". I guess this was what he really was pertaining to. With its current pricing, its not just profitable anymore, and if you increase the price, the sales will plummet. Its a lose-lose situation. I was hoping UE5 will greatly help as they promised that it will greatly help with game development, but with recent articles about UE5 being very resource hungry, its becoming more hopeless.
Fun fact : there's extra layoffs that are not announced publicly. Like me & others at Maximum Entertainment :)
And other departments at MS that dont make headlines.
I'm so sorry to hear that. Thanks for what you do, hope you're in a better place!
That's a damn shame you guys were working on double dragon and a couple other things I actually like
Not only are they expensive, they also take 5 years to make
And there is a lot of things they could cut. Like you hear about a AAA game having an advertising budget matching the cost of making the massive budget of the AAA game and you realize that they don't know that there is such a thing as diminishing returns when it comes to investing money in making games. You really don't need the advertising budget of a game to be as high as a game. And not only that, but they need to stop letting studios waste money on pointless things.
I wanted to work in video games too as a kid… boy I’m glad that didn’t work out, they treat most developers like cr*p
I think about that all the time too. I have a boring, but incredibly stable and well paying job that I have immense security in. I would have to try to get fired, and even then they would hesitate. Not having a guillotine over my head has given me more time I can spend on things I love, like playing games.
Sad times. Also congrats on 97k
I think what's happening with video games is going on with the entire entertainment industry, including movies and streaming. The mid-budget movies ($60-90 million budget) have all but vanished and most of the great classics fell into this category. Streaming prices will continue to go up while most new shows will never make it beyond season 1, ending on a cliffhanger. Video game quality as a whole has gone down because so many of the more talented developers have left the industry (for example, Bethesda has nobody left from the Skyrim development team).
People have shat on Nintendo for AGES for not chasing super high fidelity in their games
But I've felt, and Said, since the GameCube, that the way they do it is the way to go.
Creating fun, exciting games, that still look good without going insane with the graphics... Then turning a higher profit. Just makes sense.
I remember kids in school being OBSESSED with only playing games that were the most realistic looking. Often not caring at all about story or gameplay. It was so weird to me. Chasing the dream of photorealism is cool and all but... It's not worth the cost. It's not worth destroying an industry over.
I would love to see the industry move towards stylized art styles and innovative gameplay again. I'd also love to see more focused games. Open world high fidelity super realism bloated walking simulators just AREN'T sustainable.
HiFi Rush was a Nintendo style game, hell it was better than most First party Nintendo games. It flopped.
@@KH-nk8ry Idk what alternate reality you came from but Microsoft themselves came out saying that Hi-Fi Rush was a breakout success for them and "couldn't have been happier" in terms of that success DESPITE the fact that it basically shadow-dropped with no further marketting.
To say "it flopped" is probably one of the most ignorant things you could say regarding the game itself.
The industry moving to more stylized games would need more game players able to play them. I mean, I have personally seen some game recommendations I made or games I was excited for looked over because they didn't look realistic. Not to mention sometimes a game's style may be good for some but off putting to others. I remember a particular game reviewer of the late 00's/ early 2010's basically said he couldn't get into FF9 because he couldn't stomach the art direction.
@@RippahRooJizah I totally agree! Ff9 is great example! It's my favorite ff game in the series but I know multiple people who hated it JUST because it was cartoony looking.
It's very frustrating.
Then pokemon scarlet / Violet disgusting bug problems show how much nintendo doesnt give a fuck about consumers
Sad times. As a designer (with dreams to be a part of the gaming industry) LinkedIn has just been filled with so many lay-off posts from peers and people I follow and I feel for them :(
A single project taking hundreds of people and half a decade to be made is simply unsustainable. Video games as goods need to go back to being made by dozens of people and be finished from beginning to end in no more than three years.
When a more comprehensive AI comes about that can craft the idea that the producer(aka the head visionary of the project) can picture in their head comes to market, it will solve those issues mostly immediately, the only problem is right now, AI is considered one of two things, the best thing for Humanity, or the worst thing for humanity.
I agree. I think PS3/360 levels of graphics are fine, but with superior draw distance and AI. That would be perfectly fine. 👍
@@williamwhite6502 AI is definitely a double edged sword. People are concerned that if game development studios start using it extensively, they will replace workers and use AI instead. But if they don't do that, then game budgets might become unsustainable so they have to shut down and the workers are out of a job anyway.
@@Psyk60 Then again, a lot of the decisions in AAA are stupid as hell. Like why do you have the advertising of the game as high as the budget to make the game? It should never be that high. They also don't need to be top of the line in every single entry, especially if the game is a sequel to another game with good graphics already or do pointless crap like change the model of the main character of the game for some stupid reason (Sony's Spiderman series).
@@urazz7739 The problem is, if you spend a huge amount of money making a game, you need to sell more copies to make a profit, so you need a larger marketing budget. Maybe sometimes the marketing budget is too big, but sometimes it's not big enough. Really both the development and marketing costs need to come down together.
Man I had to work hard day in and day out figuring out how to kick start my voice acting skills for these games industries. Plus this was the really hard part of trying to be a voice actor. Also not to mention I'm living in my parents house since my last job went bankrupt and I had to work part-time season jobs.
When I was a kid I had the same dream to make games, but honestly I'm glad I gave it up because in the gaming industry has no union , doesn't make sure it's employees and their lives are safe, it's honestly a gamble because at any minute anyone and any studio can get shut down without notice and it's sad. I'm glad I didn't get into that industry. My life would have been up and down and up and down and working just knowing my studio or anything can get shut is heartbreaking and can cause serious trauma and anxiety. One minute you live good you make good money and the next shit hits the fan without warning , you lose the house , end up homeless starting from the beginning once again. I had a dream and I had to let it go because me and I'm sure most want a stable life and not want to live in a way where they have to be worried 24/7. The industry is a very cold hearted place and it's rare to find a place that gives you the sense of security and stability and warmth that everyone should have at work regardless of what type of work. It's a cold world out here.
This is why so many publishers are researching and investing in AI, they are trying to find ways to cut costs and dev time. Build tools that can replace the work of people. A topic that enrages people in itself cause people hate being replaced by AI, but it's their answer to unsustainable costs of making games. I think there is a middle ground there that works for everyone but i do agree it's probably a valid approach to solving this problem.
I started college 2 years ago with the hopes of pursuing game dev. Now after seeing everything happening in the industry I’ve switched majors to comp engineering because as much as I love games and would love to work on one eventually, I need a stable job that I won’t have to worry about being laid off all the time. I really hope this industry can get back on its feet soon, but as it stands not even indies are safe.
It all started with Oblivion's Horse Armor DLC. Thanks to that corporates realized they could generate EZ money. As technology advanced, their greed increased. As a consequence the quality of AAA games drastically plummeted as it became less about making good games and more about making good wallet extractors. And now quality games like H-Fi Rush despite the success is looked at as a failure because it didn't make "EZ money."
The Indie Genre is the new Game Industry now. AAA is dead.
I blame mobile gaming more than Oblivion's horse armor.
Asia gaming is the best it's ever been though, if you factor out Square Enix.
110%, basically we let the bean counters start running game companies, instead of gamers
It's the gamers who buy all the little things in games for big money that you should blame.
@@rainku498 That's basic human behavior. These companies knows what a dopamine rush is.
I think they should start charging a wider net of prices for games. If a game has the content to warrant charging $100 than do it. If a game has mtx than charge a much lower base price. Not every AAA game is worth $70, but some I would say are worth more and some less. I would have no problem spending $100 for Rebirth but a yearly series like CoD or Madden should be more like $40. Gamers hate to hear this but we are LUCKY games only cost $70 when compared to everything else that has gone up in price.
Encouraging price gouging is insane.
There's already videogames that have $130 editions. They don't need more money.
@@Mr_Mistah Look up the meaning of price gouging.
@@Dinosberg Sure thing bud!
"the action or practice of overcharging customers for something by sharply increasing its price"
What's your point? Stop licking their boots
@@Mr_Mistah Price gouging is raising the price of services or commodities such as food, bottled water, or gas to unfair levels typically during a crisis. Video games going up in price is simple a result of inflation. I don't even know I'm arguing with someone who immediately tosses out braindead NPC buzzwords like "bootlicking".
I'll admit idk much. But 3 million actual sales of the game vs 3 million gamepass players sounds like vastly different sums of money
Marketing budgets need a serious slashing. Good games sell themselves.
maybe you should try more indie games or double AA games they are doing a lot better than triple AAA games.
This is incorrect. Marketing is more important than it’s ever been. Look at all the good games that flat died because nobody knows what those games are. Half of Squares Games in the last few years (smaller titles like Harvestella, ogre battle, Star Ocean) were good games (7/10) and they all died immediately after release.
Yes & no. Without marketing, there's a general lack of awareness regarding most games. You can't rely on word of mouth exclusively. Most AAA games have the benefit of belonging to established franchises with sizeable audiences and newer properties that stray too far from common trends tend to struggle. For every Halo out there, you'll see a Gravity Rush-esque game that fails to grow due to neglect.
I miss the days when you could just pop in a game and play.
There are still games like that. Stellar Blade, for example.
I know where you're coming from... But I will say, fast SSD's and optimization have brought things back around a bit. In fact, popping up an already running game from your dash is about as good. And being able to patch things is probably a plus on balance. But I know where you're coming from, as an 'oldster' (or getting there, ha...)
@genjiharvester1876 My main fear is that eventually, counsels will go away permanently because mobile games are cheaper and more profitable. What happens to your game libraries when those services like psn shut down?
@@eternalepoch3134 If the fear is everything going into 'the Cloud' via subscription, I think we're still at least a ways from that yet. I think the infrastructure to really support that in a big way is hugely expensive. So like, in my mid-sized city of around 100,000 people or so, it's over half a BILLION dollars to get everyone wired for fiber-optics. And with a crappy economy that, at least in my opinion, is likely to worsen, I don't know... But your concerns aren't completely invalid, to be sure. Apropos, I think Microsoft is betting on the kind of future you and I are hoping doesn't become dominant.
@genjiharvester1876 Honestly, I'm surprised counsels have lasted this long, especially with the Japanese market moving more and more towards mobile. It just seems like that's the direction everything is moving to. Maybe I'm just a dinosaur, though 😂. I never got into online gaming, either.
Hey KSP - I think it's clear that while the East (generally speaking) still puts the focus on the actual games and tries to push forward creativity - but in a way that generates profit. The West is as you focusing on the profit and sure fire money making games. But the issue now is that development costs are so high that it can never meet the expectation of getting that much money back. If double A games are cheaper to make (Hi-fi or Helldivers 2 or Pal World) but also have the quality of a triple A game, then this is purely bad management and focusing on the money versus the creative process.
Over time creatives lose their mojo - because their ideas are constantly rejected of changed - by the end a game doesn't look or play like the original idea - as such it just loses it core creative points.
As you also pointed out, SE's decision as of late are good decisions, SE isn't going anywhere - but it's clear that someone in there has realised that pushing games out in the way they were wasn't good business. In the wise words of Mr Miagi - "balance" is key to the gaming industry - and is key to almost everything in life :). great video - hopefully we will get our games made someday!
graphics have never made a game good
yet the master race screams for always bigger, better, more shiny
They do. Remember when Donkey Kong Country came out and everyone was mindblown by the fake 3D sprites? Or when Half life 2 came out with the source engine?
Game companies should just stay private. Public traded companies means eternal pursuit of profit until it's unsustainable, and then crash occurs.
This also comes with its own set of risks, namely you're way less likely to get investor money to help you make a game.
@@kyleofbones9338 Investor money takes away artistic freedom. Same as shareholders. If you want a 100% passionate game you cant have profit or finances influence your design philosophy.
@shakeweller While this is true, gaming is still a business. If you're in it for a career you cannot discard the money away. For every successful private gaming studio like Valve, dozens have failed. I'm not saying you could never be a private company and don't succeed, I'm saying the odds are stacked against you.
I’m probably alone on this, but having grown up with video games since the Sega Master System, the higher the production and greater the cinematic quality of today’s games, the less interested I am in them
Too many cinematics, not enough actual gameplay.
Seriously, I grew up in a great era of gaming (the 90's) so many games I could not put down, especially turn based RPG's with great stories ( FF Series was my favourite of all time until now). Now that I dont have as much time I am selective and I get bored so quickly not to mention you need to pay so much extra for DLC content and basic gear/cosmetics. We own less and less of a game and with subpar quality while corporations make more and more money. What good are insane graphics if games just arent fun anymore
Graphics are just eye candy.
A videogame should be fun first and foremost
It’s not so much that you’re alone, more than you’re tastes are moulded by your age. People older than you would probably say they stopped playing games when they introduced 3D. IMO graphical tech make modern games great…but they can stay at PS4 levels and don’t need to keep pushing the envelope.
People seem to be missing a crucial point about this, videogame streaming. That model is unsustainable in a capitalist world. Yeah, hi-fi rush was played by a lot of people, but how many of them actually bought it? Streaming is a good way to save up money, but it is unsustainable. And also, studios making games like if they were candy. Releasing tens of thousands a year, like if everyone was gonna olay that many. Releasing half baked shit that took almost decades to make. Suits making the worst decisions ever. Videogaming, and every form of art is not sustainable in a capitalist world at all (plus how the system is exploiting the resource of the world, but that is another topic). Anyway, yeah, all of this will crumble. Let's hope neither sony nor Microsoft acquire more studios. People deserve their works and make their livings on what they love and those fuckers are just destroying the industry
Well, it's not just the video game industry it's workers everywhere that are struggling. This focus on corporate profits over valuing workers has reached a new extreme. Ever notice how few workers there are now everywhere you go? That's on purpose, and while those workers struggle and have to do more with less help than ever before, corporate profits are the highest they have ever been.
Yeah man like roadworks take forever cause no one ever shows up to work. Supermarkets most of the check outs are closed. Flights cancelled cause not enough people show up to operate things. It’s pretty wild
I feel worried for Ninja Theory right now, Hellblade 2 is coming out in a couple of weeks and I don't see that being a huge seller or really driving Game Pass numbers.
Isn't it odd how, for this industry (as also with the movie industry, it seems?) we are now at a stage where modest success in sales still equals net failure because of high-end development costs?
Yeah for real. Like they sell 3 million copies of ff16 (which I really liked) and that was considered a failure. Like damn I'd hate to see what a success was. 10 mil? 15?
Don't forget the consoles that they're developed for also sell at a net loss and require software sales to make up the difference. The people running these corporations couldn't be trusted to manage a lemonade stand.
This is 100% due to so many studios being publicly traded or owned by publicly traded entities. The pressure from stockholders to max profit pushes studios to implement features they normally wouldn't implement. It leads to larger budgets and less returns. Let the developers make the game that actually makes sense for their size, scope and capabilities and you'll get overall more profitable games.
That and don't have an advertising budget be about the same as the budget to make the game.
Not really bleed it's workers, but also its fans. They pump out soo much trash that good quality stuff is hard to find when you have to sort through it all.
I can't help but notice that ever since Gamepass came out, studios are suddenly having a lot of problems with profitability and video game sales are trending down. I think just a huge amount of casuals are happy to just play what's on Gamepass and not buy other games. We see this exact situation in the music industry, where many consumers are just listening to Spotify and not buying albums anymore. As a result the middle tier and below artists make absolutely peanuts off making music and are reliant on touring to make any money.
It really depends on the studio tbh. Tho I will admit, Square Enix is probably the only major studio I can really think of that still pushes out those in-between games, and many of them are still from indie studios, or completely flop if they're not. It's hard for AA games to get the attention when AAA games steal the spotlight so much, and people would rather support indie devs within that sort of genre.
I reckon Hi-Fi Rush was a success, but not to the extent where it was worth funding that studio over another AAA title. AAA games are just always gonna make more money. They kinda shot themselves in the foot putting it on Gamepass too 'cause you miss out on those individual game sales.
Nintendo has been doing that for years now. In-between their huge tent pole franchise games they also release alot of smaller/mid-sized games as well. Wish Sony would get back to doin that and stop relying on only huge major releases
The issues with the triple A companies today, usually has insane cost coming from large teams, and where communication, takes time, when everything needs to aline to a curtain standard/look of a game.
Where smaller teams, which has an easier time solving bugs and is able to make something faster, in the very fact, that they don't have to cross reference everything multiple times.
agreed. too much brain -> too many analyze -> too many complexities -> cost more
Large teams, and woke dei localizers. Dei money is drying up and heavy inflation is causing a slow down in spending. It doesn’t have to be this way though. They can trim the fat and spend less on advertising. Why do they need to spend 2-3x the cost of a game in advertising? They need to dump the Hollywood business model and go direct to consumer.
@@georgetek That and wasteful spending at studios as well. I remember when Insomniac changed the looks of Peter Parker in their Spiderman games and their reasoning for doing it was really flimsy and stupid if I recall and looked like a complete waste of money.
I’m not worried.
My backlog is so big that if gaming just crashed and burned, I’d have enough games to last me the rest of my gaming life.
(My back log goes back to early ps3, maybe even late ps2 era)
And that’s just on the ps side, I’ve got games in steam and Nintendo too to fall back on.
So I’m not worried, the industry will self correct, or it will burn. Either way it’ll be interesting to see what side of the fence it lands on.
Mm interesting, so my question is…. where is the actual hard core proof that these games truly coast this much🤔 or are the masses just being feed a line of lies .
It feels more like the Western Games Industry is broken.
Asia (Japan and now Korea and China) Seem intent on picking up the slack, even with Tango Gameworks gone (That was a decision from a Western Company) as well as AA and Indies.
Couldn’t agree more, I had big dreams to be in this industry when I was young and even in college. Very glad I am not, long hours no work life balance, and constant threat of closing no thanks.
Here it is , , , platform console industry tried to absorb internet dependent PC Gaming product models for the greediest Profit margins conceivable , ,but Evil Game corporations have overplayed their hand and infringed on gamer freedoms far too much in last few years and unusually public about it too , , like the possibility of customer backlash was completely non existent or something , , retro gaming shall be embraced by a greater percentage of $$$ money enabled gamers a fitting end to Big Gaming Corporations ,their greed killed their golden goose - that being $$ profits formerly from us gamers 🎉🕹️🎮🇺🇲bless our countries and bless Gamers 💞🙏
Shutting down tango was the nail in the coffin for me believing there was hope on xboxs end. There's obviously a lot more to everything going on there but things are clearly a big mess in the industry. Just hope the best for the people getting screwed by this. There's gonna have to be some big reconsideration imo for there to be any kind of regain but we'll see where things go. 1 thing that seems clear to me is way too much budgeting is going into so many games that are clear to fail and these suits go for it anyways. Crazy to me.
I was saying this at the end of the last console generation (PS4, etc). What is the point of a next generation if games are already prohibitively expensive to make? And now they're talking about a PS6 generation? What a joke
As a gamer, I’ll go back and play Final Fantasy for the NES regularly.
I like and appreciate the pixel art that was made back then, still to this day. I can see every decision an artist made to fit within the limits of the console. I like that I can fly around the world in my airship in less than a minute. It makes the game more fun for me.
Now we have high fidelity and basically no limits, so games got me opening a mail box to check the mail (but make sure you get that key from a guy in the next town lol). I can do that in the real world.
Games can be simple and fun.
That said, I do not like that the owners and shareholders of these companies can profit off of the hard work of developers, and then lay them off due to low profit margins.
I guarantee you that even though games don’t “meet expectations,” someone is making money. That money should go back into the companies and workers instead of the shares and owners.
What we are seeing is the result of seeding the worst type of software development practices (A) and human resource practices (B).
First (A), instead of reusing code and improving on previous works, companies like to throw it to the garbage and start over, again and again, never aiming for a sustainable and continuous development of internal tools (i.e. game engines), which means developers need to be constantly learn different tools (which takes time) and migrate code from one tool to the other (e.g. moving from internal engine to Unity/UE). Then (B), because A takes time, some people who are not "high-performers", instead of getting training, they get laid off, which means the expertise in the company goes down the toilet. After laying off N% of the workforce, companies hire again (recent grads, interns, etc..) to do the job of industry veterans - and so the cycle repeats - these new members will take some time to build their skills and by the time they are getting any good, managers will pressure them to make it fast (instead of making it good) and bla bla bla here we go again.
It happens in every industry. I guess the game dev industry just takes it into a whole new level.
Also, shareholders failed to realize that things have changed since 1990s. Kids in the 90s had a different life than kids in 2020s. There were fewer games so we would pick/buy our favorites and keep with them. Now, you buy the monthly subscription and just play whatever you want for "free". Of course this cannot provide the same level of ROI for companies.
I don't know what is the solution but whatever it is, it needs to be something that "everyone" agrees.
Video games have passed the Point of Diminishing Returns. The only way back is to go the indie route- smaller games, stylized instead of realistic graphics, and more consumer friendly practices.
Market research would give an idea of how well something would be selling for at what price and quantity. Then costing would give an idea of how much it would take to put it together. If it doesn't pass both, it won't be funded and should not be created outside of a passion project. Try to break this and you pay the price elsewhere in ways you might not expect and one might regret more than quitting on a bad business venture.
If ff7 cost $45 million to produce that means it was more expensive than final fantasy 10 by like $14 million holy shit 😅
At this point we can see this console generation is very different because the graphical quality of games is at a point where theres not much further we can go without enormous sums of money. So I think this will be one extremely long console generation, at least 10 years. In that time it will give a chance for the market and the gamers to catch up with the high costs of games and things like that.
Big thing is that AAA needs to cut down their spending. If the game is a sequel, then do they really need to rebuild the game from scratch? Also, do they really need to spend so much money on advertising a game? When you spend almost as much in advertising as you do in developing the game, it means you have a problem. There is diminishing returns on how much money you put into both developing a game and advertising things. After that point, it just becomes a waste of money and pretty much sabotaging a game from being successful.
In advertising, I remember a commercial from FF14 Shadowbringers that had Tom Holland in it. It was a good tv commercial and entertaining, but my thought was, 'that must've cost a lot of money to bring in celebrities to make and it's probably not going to get that much more people into the game.'
In game development, I remember the first Spiderman games Insomniac made and they changed the appearance of Peter Parker for some stupid reason, after the fact. That seems like a waste of money in my opinion and wasn't needed.
Indie games need to stay independent and release games on all platforms. That's the best way.
When did companies start releasing their budgets because I remember for the longest time nobody did and I think somebody asked this to Todd Howard in an interview abd he said something like because gamers would start arguing about the price of games.
Imagine how much that game wouldve made if it wasnt on gamepass. I swear game companies are losing money by agreeing to put their game on that. The service is great for gamers horrible for developers. Unless im mistaken Microsoft just pays a one time fee for the game to be on their service. And since I know alot of people have game pass even on pc that is a buttload of missed sales because people basically played it for free and once done never touched it again.
The AAA and AA industry is broken. Indies tend to do a lot better at making a profit. TEND TO. If they over invest in costs, they can go under too.
If AAA is unsustainable currently, why don't they just do the obvious thing and make Quality AA games instead? I don't care if a game is AAA or not, I care if it's good. Is the story engaging? Is gameplay fun? Are the characters unique and likeable? That's all I ask for. Oh also, less grinding, as I keep getting older it's starting to burn me out and I'm only 33.
That's kind of what Hi-Fi Rush was. A high quality, AA game. But it didn't make enough money.
Although we don't know what "enough money" is. For all we know it could have made a profit, just not a big enough profit to satisfy shareholders.
I think there are just too many factors to take in. Plenty of people want AA gaming back, plenty stick to indies, and plenty of people have the mindset of "Console games are ruining games because it means I can't crank the graphics on my PC as high as I can".
For games to be at a more general palatable state we need to accept that games need to be less popular, alongside less AAA and indie trash.
AAA gaming just needs to cut the spending, especially in advertising. Advertising budgets in a game should not equal the budget to make a game. That and don't let AAA studios do things that would just be a waste of money. I.E. did Insomniac really need to change the looks of Peter Parker in the Spiderman games? Seems like a waste of money to me because people were fine with Peter's old look.
They should stop making games even more casual. I miss pre Wii era gaming....
@@shakeweller Me too though even Wii was alright. There's some good ones on Wii. What ruined it for me was micro-transactions and the incessant need for even larger open worlds but instead of having unique things to do in them it's just the same thing over and over. I dislike repetition.
It’s insane that video games are made with the same budget cost as movies are today. I dread the day when you have to pay 100 dollars for a brand new game. I believe that will crash the video game industry far worse than ET did.
I’m afraid that GTA VI release may be the critical point in the gaming industry.
It all comes down to AAA's obsession with graphics. If they would stop thinking they were the most important thing to a game, it would be great.
@@AKABoondock19 Right? It's so frustrating. We already hit the graphical peak last gen. Uncharted 4 was the last time a game impressed me with its hyper realistic graphics. An 8 year old game that still looks good.
Paid $96 for Phantasy Star IV in 1995 (awesome game, by the way, ha) on 24 meg ROM. A lot of Squaresoft's games were similarly priced, depending on where you lived, around that time as well. I'd maintain that games today are as great a value in entertainment as anything going, and I happily (well, you know, mostly happily) drop $100 on a deluxe box for something like Rebirth, with the hardbound art book and everything. Although, there are some games today, relative to overall advances ("advances" if you prefer) that probably don't justify the inflated prices after you factor in all the DLC and everything. It can get a bit crazy...but I think sometimes people lose perspective, too. When I'm getting 200+ hours of enjoyment out of something like Rebirth, it feels like certain other games should cost less or that one should cost more.
I know people tend to get all negative about 'the now' and nostalgic over the good ol' days... But, in funny way, I wonder if it's not so much inflated budgets and lackluster games that's the problem, but more just that there's so much pretty good-to-very good quality stuff to immerse yourself in these days....and there's only so many hours in a day/month/year... Maybe an emerging paradigm of fewer, higher quality titles does make sense in some way. But there's still that hard reality of the more immersive these games get...the less time or inclination I have to buy them all! Not to beat a dead horse, but I could easily spend all year New Game +'ing the heck out of a game like Rebirth, that I don't really need another game! And at that point, it's certainly not an issue that I paid $100 for it... So, if we're making a parallel to the fabled days of Atari, I guess the over-saturation factor is possibly at play, but now it's too many good games instead of too many bad ones!
Ultimately, the lesson might be that...sooner or later you come up against diminishing returns and sheer limitation--not even just in a given marketplace, but in the constitution of human beings as such! We only have so much time and energy to pay our bills and find time for games. And sure, the big companies do things I don't like, (what Microsoft is doing is really terrible), but at the end of the day--maybe there's not much to be done? Maybe there's just a natural cycle of things getting spun out of control and then reality/existential limitations coming back to bite us all. And many will say 'yeah and that's why AAA, *specifically,* is unsustainable', but I don't know... Maybe the problem is just more "global" and in some way more intractable than making it a referendum or anything so specific?
(Alright, thanks for listening to the ramblings of an 'old man' ha)
@AKABoondock19 the funniest part about that is that a game like Stardew Valley which was made by one dude (with other people helping with some stuff) has sold incredibly well at about 30 million copies while a game like ff7 rebirth has only sold 2ish million so far
@@darknesswave100 Yes, and Stardew runs on everything plus your toaster, arguably has a much more simple and addictive "loop", has no real barrier to entry, no series legacy, no first game/mythos to catch up on, etc. And once something like that goes viral, it's off to the races. And I'm not knocking it. That's awesome that a few dudes could make it big with a game like that. Personally, I'd rather grow my own IRL crops and spend time with my real-life wife, and then play something really special and complicated with high production values, like Rebirth, in my spare time. But that's my bias, too! I've been with Final Fantasy since the first game. I know the original 7. I don't have any real barrier to overcome, and, if anything, the reverse. I'm glad that both things exist and I hope that an over-saturation of fun games for people to play doesn't mean that games like Rebirth can't exist anymore, or that it's in any way stupid or funny for them to exist. I hope that more people become open to what a special thing a game like Rebirth can be and that its long-term sales have legs. But the reason it hasn't sold more than it has...I think that's so much more complicated, with overarching generational factors being brought to bear, than so many are making out. So many just want to reduce it down to whatever their personal "peeve" is about it or AAA generally. I think that's missing a lot of the broader forces that are really starting to have an effect on things as whole.
No, it's not. It's just the old corporations that got big (and let it get to their heads) that are the cancer within the industry. You can still make a solid game that draws attention without having big corps control your project. If you let them do that, you end up with a Helldivers II or Stellar Blade situation. There's no excuse nowadays for not going all out with your project and publishing it yourself in one or two the myriad of platforms available. If it's good, it'll garner attention out of nowhere (like Palworld did, even of shortly) if it's not, it's not. An even better example is Minecraft. It got big around 2011-2012, and once Microsoft saw its popularity, _then_ they moved in to buy it in 2014. It's just like music or movies; not every song or film is widely heard or accepted, and neither is every game. That's just life. But if you make a banger of a game, the word will spread quick regardless of what big corps do/want.
Triple-A games use tools, servers, and game engines with licensing fees, actors, and advertising. It sucks already a lot of money, and then you need to pay the employees. The GameBoy and Super NES and the old PC with a CGA or VGA graphics card were a lot easier back then...
this makes me worry so much for games I adore not getting to see the light of day again (TWEWY specifically)
While I’ve played and loved so many games this decade. I do feel that companies need to scale back their budgets for games. I don’t need to be able to see the individual pores on a character’s face, just give me a fun game with great gameplay, memorable characters, and engaging stories and I’ll be happy.
I mean maybe if they would take a page out of larians book their costs wouldn’t be so damn high developing a game nowadays is like throwing a couple hundred people into a room with computers and telling them to make a game when nobody knows anybody and they don’t know the first part of who’s strengths are what stop breaking up great teams and budgets won’t balloon ff7 rebirth took 4 years and that game is massive they also kept the same team from the 1st it’s their own faults quit firing people who are valuable as well
DILLY DALLY SHILLY SHALLY
This is my last console tbh Im 40 now and all i ever wanted was a ff7 remake just hope it can end on ps5 along with gta 6 icing on the cake.
Ive played so many games in my life and 95% dont appeal to me now. I only play the AAA games because of time restraints also to be fair.
You pointed out a key fact: The safest place you can be in as a game developer is rather AAA games that take as fewer risks as possible and as little innovations as possible or indie games where experimentation is almost always a must for your game to be at least mildly successful. And even then, your job isn’t stable.
Every year the existence of ground breaking AAA games like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth becomes rarer and that’s a bit depressing. As a developer, the only option I currently have is to stick to my indie devs local community to straight up just don’t stop our creative flow weather we currently have jobs or not.
At least I’m grateful so many people are beginning to be more aware of the issue and more willing to buy and promote indie games not just because of their quality and creativity but because of the developers who make them possible to begin with.
Just like the Helldivers crew did for that game, the ENTIRE Gen-X / Millennial / Zoomer game base could, IF THEY CARE ENOUGH, announce a TOTAL AAA-studio boycott, until....
1. Specific well-known bad-actor CEOs etc. are REMOVED AND BANNED from the industry.
2. Specific well-known GOOD-actors are promoted.
3. Companies pledge to CAP CORPORATE / SHAREHOLDER PROFITS and EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION until specific compensation and workload criteria are met for WORKERS.
Problem is, due to the cratering economy, Millenials and Gen-X (and the even smaller portion of those that actually care about games) don't have the $$$, time, nor coordination to do this.
Also, Boomers have 1.5-2x more wealth than Mill + Gen-X COMBINED, and they're not only holding on to it and NOT sharing it with their kids, but looking to MULTIPLY that wealth in the upcoming bust.
Please mention some of these points in your next video; Identifying a problem is only 1/5th of the way to solving it:
Young people need to realize that *their elders DO NOT have their backs*, and if they want change, they'll need to spend the next two decades FLAT, MINIMUM, fighting tooth and claw for it.
I’m also depressed about that Arkane closure. I loved “Prey” & I’m also a big “Dishonored” fan.
Gone were the simple days of actual completed games that were FUN TO PLAY.
But no, these corpo publishers like Microsoft/Xbox just decide INHALE all of our wallets out of pure, unstoppable greed. It’s so fucking sickening how they abuse a passion like game development all for the damn money.
It feels like it’s rare to see a business executive (NOT NINTENDO, MIND YOU) that truly *GIVES A SHIT* about their workers, the devs, the fans, the passion, creativity and freedom to do them at all without abusing said things for the sake of selfish greed and asinine business decisions that can hurt in the long-run.
I have faith. I've been working all these years. I AM NOT about to let something like this stop me. I am changing the game!
Maybe these CEOs can cut their own pay since they don't do any real work.
First, I just want to say, great video. I'd like to add something though. One thing people don't talk about when they discuss the dire predicament of AAA development is the future of development tools. The fidelity, scope, and volume of content has made these games too costly to be profitable with the current tools; yes, that is true.
HOWEVER, with the advent of AI tools and their rapid improvement, the creation of assets will become easier and easier. Furthermore, game engines like Unreal 5 have already shown an ability to auto-generate things that would have taken ages to do manually (tessellation, landscape generation, dynamic lighting, etc). Unreal is also dynamically scaling 3d models so there is no longer a need to create multiple assets for singular objects at various distances. Lastly, computers are more powerful now, so these development tools are able to render things in real time that they couldn't in the past, leading to faster iteration and more productivity.
This kind of tech isn't a silver bullet (AI kinda is....), but my point still stands. We are in a transitional period where technology hasn't caught up to user expectations. In the next decade, the cost to develop these games will become significantly lower. It's not all doom and gloom.
It's funny how the developers and players suffer and toil, but the corpo suits never seem to suffer at all...
first of all Tango Gameworks the orignal creators lift and made new studio when Microsoft Bethesda deal was done, as for Arkane Austin they had 70% turnover...
2024 looking to be a rest year for video games and how they made, and it is necessary evil and a good thing for the long term health of the gaming market, you starting to see it like EA using AI Mimic "takes footballers' real-world volumetric data and uses advanced artificial intelligence to recreate unique body movements live in EA SPORTS FC", and it cut down time almost be half..
society stopped looking at video games like paintings, and started looking at video games like a lamborghini.
I don't see that AA games are slowly disappearing. The only ones going away are the ones that are tied to the big gaming corporations. The studios that go independent to make a AA sized game are doing fine.
The thing I don't understand Sony took the same strategy and thought making triple a games is the only thing they are doing and a game like spider man 2 apparently sold well but was not enough to make a profit.
The problem with Alan Wake 2 was that it was filled with DEI nonsense courtesy of Sweet Baby Inc. NOBODY wants this - yet the Western AAA gaming industry continues to go down this path. This, coupled with the tone deaf insistence that gamers care about flashy graphics and spectacle above everything else is leading to massive losses.
I can at least understand dropping Arkane after what happened with Redfall, but axing Tango after all of their amazing work is just unforgivable. I guess we can expect more AAA garbage because that's what these big companies seem to favor.
I’ll be honest. I would absolutely pay more for pre-ordering a game I’m looking forward to that comes with more goodies. I’m willing to pay more for a AAA game that I really want. And I absolutely agree. I’m happy with a story heavy 40hr experience. I don’t need more stuff. My inner completionist wants to do everything, but it actually completely ruins pacing. So I end up appreciating the story less.
I think the industry is “doomed” for a time. But it’ll bounce back much better. I’ll explain. Radio Music in the 90s all the way to pre-CZcams pretty much lacked a lot creativity. Who got promoted on radio? Mostly the lowest common denominator catchy but ultimately boring music. Now we have a music industry where there’s sooooo much variety and interesting risks being taken, because it’s easier and more cost effective to make. It’s easier to make an album now than ever.
My guess is jobs will be lost, studios will be consumed and crushed, but with a.i. games will become easier to make. That means a lower budget. Now you don’t have to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Now you can make creative choices. I see smaller studios eventually coming out on top from this collapse . Hopefully our favourite I.p.s will still exist, but even if they don’t, we’ll probably end up with more creative, shorter experiences that actually cost us more per experience, but will correlate to what it costs to make the product without having to sell the game to 9 billion people to make a profit.
It's quite impressive to see some AAA games like Spiderman 2 getting involved in something as divisive and polarizing as politics, as if it wouldn't impact the sales of this or future products from the same studio.
Some games like lost soul aside take a very long time to make but even games with many devs take a long long time to make nowadays
I've said it and I'll say it again. We do not need every game to have crazy graphics or huge open worlds full of activities. Heck, I barely have time to play an indie, let alone a game that takes me 100 hours to complete.
Just make a game with graphics like Dragon Quest 11. Or a feel good vibe or easy on the eyes. Its a game, not a movie. And then, instead of putting a huge world that will take me over 100 hours to see everything, just make a really fun gameplay experience. Just make a simple, fun to be in, videogame world.
Why did platformers like Crash Bandicoot die down? Why did collectathons like Spyro or Banjo Kazooey die down?? Those were fun games. Older FF are still fun and chill to play. Not every RPG needs to be an action RPG. Turn based feels good once in a while to make my brain overload less.
Heck, Sea of Stars is an indie game and it was one of the best I played last year.
I think game companies have to be making their money somewhere under the table. But gamepass and other things, while great for gamers who dont have a lot of money, unfortunately makes the developers NO money.
I've been playing through unchartered 2 and 3, those games are not nearly as long as current games but was an amazing experience. Maybe current AAA games are just too big.
While I certainly don't deny the guilt of some publishers, I also put some blame on a part of the gamer community. Some players always want bigger, more realistic looking games, even though this what costs the more in development. And if they don't get the ideal game they want, they disdainly treat it as a game worthy of PS3 era, which is reflected in the player critics, and then the overall sales. I too often see this phenomeon.
don't understand it either. games don't age, if a game isn't good now, it wasn't good back then. games that are good will forever be good, because they're static, unchanging things. Same with all art, really, you don't see people lamenting that the Mona Lisa hasn't been remade or that the color scheme is too muted compared to modern paintings. It really just makes no sense to me, it's like the only thing that matters with a game (that you play) is how much like a movie it is.
Amazing speech. You are very articulate and have my full respect/support.
maybe you should try more indie games or double AA games they are doing a lot better than triple AAA games.
It sounds like it is a bad idea to create AAA games in general. If the chances are that a single risk kills a game, then it is not worth making.
AAA games need to stop with the perfect photorealistic graphics. Choose a unique art style, even one not unique, and see what happens. Personally, I grew up on 8 and 16bit games. Id be just fine if all or at least most games today looked more like a ps2 game in terms of graphical quality. I love 2D sprites, alot of ppl do.
The industry should just announce that either we cut back the graphics BS, or AAA and AA games are finished. Pretty sure most would be ok to sacrifice some petty graphics in order to even have a game.
😭 The golden age is over.
More and more news about the gaming industry is making me so sad that I only follow your channel and one other gaming channel.
I studied game design, however, I never entered the industry? Why? Because the industry sucks and I don't have enough passion to do it in spite of that.
I can't wait for the next generation. More powerful systems, more money and time to make games. It will be great!
Same here brother! Can't wait for 8K and all those extra physics engines where you can see every hair on a character's arm move individually. It'll definitely be worth the extra development time and 15fps limit!
@@kenshinngb Crapness awaits
The question that should’ve been in people’s heads already is why the rush for AI and why 2030 is the expiration date for all technologies without AI capabilities?
If your technology doesn’t have hardware AI capabilities, ot doesn’t matter if it can use software AI, that technology is deemed obsolete and unusable in 2030. But why the rush for AI and why so much money is going down the drain so fast?
A game doesn't have to be extremely high quality to sell well.
Western AAA has been placing their bets on losing horses for nearly 20 years. The western crash is long overdue and they need to learn from Japan.
so in the games industry, where does all the money go? ah i got it, development costs... ooffff
To be fair, they didn't need to bloat Final Fantasy VII's remake the way they did it. In fact, I'd have been happy if they stuck to actually remaking it and not changing the story. Only giving characters a little more screen time would have been enough. I do LOVE the combat, so there's that =P.
As for Alan Wake II... I guess they spent too much on visuals, choreographies and such, but the game is boring 😥.
As for other triple A games: why the need to make huge open worlds? Why not focus on making games you'd love? I guess that's on the investors and their hands are mostly tied, sadly 😔.