Is The Gaming Industry On The Verge Of Collapse?

[RanmyakuIchi's icon RanmyakuIchi RanmyakuIchi]

There are many eras in video game industry that made people stop playing games, however most of them introduced changes new customers would like:

1) Arcade crash

Shift to video game consoles changed what video games are. It made some arcade people lose interest, but new customers saw no problem with it. They enjoyed their video game consoles.

2) Console video gaming crash

This is when the concept "PC Master Race" introduced lol. People made fun of console games due to how low quality they are in terms of resolution and frame per second rate. Even arcade people may enjoyed console games but for higher quality they are shifted to PC gaming when consoles couldn't keep up. People felt like console games prevent PC gaming improve, people wanted to kill console gaming completely to stop being dragged down.

3) Online games crash and popularity of action games, diminished sense of American RPGs

They even made Skyrim turn into mindless action game that have some copy-paste side quests of Oblivion but never the ones that would be "too much bother to develop" ones. EA dude said "no one wanna play a singleplayer game" and then IDK industry shifted into some online game model. Action was so popular. Mass Effect was barely "RPG", they used popularity of KOTOR 1 to spam "similar" bad RPG games that have "dating sim" elements. This is when older gamers gave up playing games, new gamers liked dating sim games, action games and online games.

4) Modern video game industry crash

Games lacked so much quality compared to what people learned since PS2-era video games people just lost interest. If you were no action, JRPG, online and dating sim American bad RPG gamer you had nothing to play. This is when indie video game industry exploded.

5) Indie industry almost replaced AAA industry

Industry was so confused when people even left 3D gaming and played 2D games. "We better play Super Meat Boy" yo. The popular flash games released on Steam and they made profit.

6) "We are sick of Ubisoft copy games!!!!"

Indie industry made whole industry come up with bold risks to "improve" industry. Ubisoft games became a "formula" for many games. Capture areas, collect whatever, complete missions by doing side tasks and all. They produced Far Cry 3 and Assassin's Creed 4 as fun games of the era because nothing else was much fun. But then this formula started to be copy-pasted and the idea is so overused Ubisoft games started to lose interest. Afterwards Witcher 3 released.

6) Witcher 3 polished video game industry, but Witcher clones deteriorated industry

Witcher 3 was the last decent game western video game industry ever developed, but then industry shifted to Witcher 3-like games. As a result Assassin's Creed games became a hybrid of simple Witcher 3 mixed with bad JRPG elements didn't go well with the series. JRPG was always successful in its context. Western industries paniced so much they started to made their games more like JRPG but still keeping action gameplay.

7) Video game industry lacking vision

It's when people started to think "this is not a JRPG I used to like" and then "this is not the American game I used to like" because west and east started to copy paste from each other so hard games started to lose any identity, they became generic mess.

8) Netflix is more popular than video gaming hobby

It made video game industry started to develop games more like Netflix stuff so games became more like about watching and character dramas further

9) We have no idea what to do, better develop a video game by studying social media

This is the reason of the current crash. Writing about specific topic would be the reason for why they would delete this message. Let's say instead of understanding the "gamer" profile they try to befit into minority of society that's a more minority % in gamer profile as if this is the popular and common person profile. And then American culture shifted and effected many aspects in American society and as far as I know even Japan is perhaps too effected.

As a result American and Japanese games lacking their "good" aspects and therefore giving people from outside of America and Japan, especially societies that has no close resemblance of America and Japan has no interest left in video game industry anymore because new video games are not about something they would be interested in anymore.

X) Would Americans and Japanese people give up video gaming?

Video game companies from these countries will make "enough" profit but they shouldn't expect international profit at this point as much as 2 decades ago. Their industries perhaps pushing world to focus on kindling their own video game industry, even releasing their own video game consoles at this point.

Personally I don't think AAA means anything anymore. AAA budget but FFF quality games. Since past a decade I focus more on indie video game industry more but it has its own crash moments due to porn games and generic horror game spams mostly.

Back then AAA games were like "Hollywood movie" in a sense it has a sense of quality and non-AAA games were more like TV movies. Both would be enjoyable in their own context but real deal was cinema movies. Now TV movies are better than Hollywood movies (this is my analogy). Perhaps people disliked their own countries' movie industry before (still an analogy here) so they were too focused on American movies, but American stuff gets so low quality people would rather watch Indian movies at this point lol.

Back then American and Japanese games had human elements in them so game could interest people despite they are not American and Japanese. Now I don't understand the culture of current America and Japan. Still what I mean is something a reason to delete this message so what I would say is, their games started to be so narrow in their target audiance I cannot find anything to be interested in such games. I don't understand why they care about these topics nor I don't understand what's interesting about it. I rather dig out and play video games that released before I was born at this point. If you fell into a hole and cannot fly up then dig down and go out from China lolol.

 

[qw90700]

View attachment 91036

Naturally, because you are from "writer guild", not "reader guild". You just love to write, but I'm "reader/writer" guild lolol.

 

[RanmyakuIchi's icon RanmyakuIchi RanmyakuIchi]

Naturally, because you are from "writer guild", not "reader guild". You just love to write, but I'm "reader/writer" guild lolol.

Hmm... Methinks you should post in the Writer's Guild before claiming you're a part or it.

 

[Pearly]

There won't be a crash in the sense of the 80's one in the united states ever again, games simply make way too much money for that, that and this crash never happened anywhere else in the world. We still had games in many other countries. The industry is definitely having issues, but that's the entirety of tech in general at the moment, including games.

Business 101, make customer happy = cash $$$. The industry in general isn't currently known for this at the moment, infamously so.

 

[otogirisou]

yes, and it's tomorrow at 2 PM

 

[Clippy]

Playing AAA

Bullying AAA companies

AAA still provides entertainment except it's of the schadenfreude variety so I'd like it to stick around because laughing at idiots is an exquisite pastime.

 

[PrismRed]

I'd say we almost there, not gonna be surprised if it's gonna crash in very near future.
But as a consumer, we should let our wallet talk.

 

[Ferik]

I still say we're in the middle of it right now. Concord is the biggest failure in history, Star Wars Outlaws failed, Dragon Age failed, Avowed failed, Marathon is indefinitely delayed, Starfield and Monster Hunter sold well but pissed a lot of people off.

It's not like the 83 crash where Atari and Coleco burned, and Nintendo took their place. It's more like the 60's Hollywood crash where they lost a ton of money but restructured and the same companies came roaring back with fresh talent and leaner productions spearheaded by directors like Spielberg and Lucas

 

[Strategist's icon Strategist Strategist]

I wouldn't say the industry as a whole is failing because shit companies with shit business practices are failing. If nothing else, its the crows coming to roost for companies like Microsoft, Sony, Ubisoft and EA. Small to midrange companies with good ideas can still thrive and become icons of the industry. The thing is that they need to resist the temptation to go public or sell out to large, faceless corporations. The secret is to not buy into the stock market capitalism scam. Infinite growth is a mirage, as a society we should praise steady companies that produce steady results and generate good outcomes for their customers and employees. Companies that produce better and better results for the stock market while screwing over customers and employees are a blight upon society and yet are rewarded by the system.

 

[qw90700]

Hmm... Methinks you should post in the Writer's Guild before claiming you're a part or it.

I told you I'm not part of your simple "writer guild" where no one reads lol, I'm a part of "writer and reader" guild!! This is only open for chosen ones who can write a book about nothing and can read whole Harry Potter books in a day lolol.

 

[Segadude113]

It should happen just to show Nintendo. That company always gets off easy.

 

[SaveSeraph]

Even if there's another video game market crash, even if devs both AAA and indie alike stop making games, I'm sure most of us have backlogs to be entertained for the end of time.

 

[qw90700]

It should happen just to show Nintendo. That company always gets off easy.

Nintendo's everlasting existence is a testament to why the video game industry, despite many "crashes" (dude I kept reading what people wrote here always since Arcade crush decades ago) that still continues and will continue because "video game industry" will be a fundamental form of entertainment just like stories being shared.

When moving pictures you know as "movie" invented people complained "This monstrosity thus cannot give me joy. I shall keep breathing the same air as the actors on the stage in front of me!!!!" by rejecting the movie industry and enjoying their "elit" high horses by watching theatre plays but look Hollywood exploded. The fundamental law of existence is energy cannot just stop existing, it transforms into something else. Same logic is valid for what happens in society. The entertainment via stories and the tools to tell stories will always improve.

So video game industry will exist, but as always what happened to the industry before, it will change itself to something else to befit to current society to profit.

If I cannot make money by developing an RPG like Fallout 1-2, then I'll develop Skyrim with guns and call it Fallout. "It's not a bug, it's a feature" to make games simple and only in a way it only satisfies your survival and producing urges so you be happy, me be happy lol. In the end this is the customer type makes companies profit. In the end topic turns into "if you ain't satisfied with movies then don't watch it, there will be people who will eat anything served just because they can afford it and they just love to spend and go with the flow of mindless popularity by spending money carelessly". "I'm in the mood for buying Ferrari today just to show it to my friends that I can afford it, I don't even have a license to drive cars because I have a private driver already. Driving cars yourself is a sign of being a lower person!!!" lol.

So if Nintendo figures their games won't sell anymore then they will release "Zelda Twerk Simulator" and enjoy money rainin' lolol.

Too bad we cannot produce a real RPG anymore because new generation think 2 line of text too much to read, so enjoy your A to B walking simple RPGs that you just shoot anything mindlessly. This the future you built lolol. Just press the "sarcasm" button on Fallout 4, bro. No point in writing a dialogue that actually make sense because no one reads or listens to, just let AI write the dialogue and just make it sound "make sense" and boom enjoy your mindless 1 hour cutscene that has anything you want from Netflix ayy lmao. "I love colors keep changing on the screen while I think about Tiktok dances" -- society 2025 lolol

 

[Strategist's icon Strategist Strategist]

It should happen just to show Nintendo. That company always gets off easy.

Nintendo is still around and thriving because they are a steady company that has honed a business plan over the years and has very few flops to their name. They also rarely lay off their employees. Even with all the shitty anti-competitive practices, I'd take a Nintendo over Sony, Microsoft, EA and Ubisoft every day of the week.

 

[Ferik]

Nintendo is still around and thriving because they are a steady company that has honed a business plan over the years and has very few flops to their name. They also rarely lay off their employees. Even with all the shitty anti-competitive practices, I'd take a Nintendo over Sony, Microsoft, EA and Ubisoft every day of the week.

At least on the software side. They've got plenty of hardware flops, but even on badly designed hardware like the N64 or Wii U games like Mario 64 and Mario Kart 8 still pull similar numbers to the biggest titles on far better selling PlayStation consoles.

 

[moonbits]

It's not a viable career path for anyone who values their life so you might see a decline in overall quality/quantity of big productions. Independent games might be a temporal solution but once those developers reach success, the greedy gamers and publishers will expect more and more.

It's a never ending cycle of this privileged, greedy consumerist hobby.

 

[IDMTINP]

Too bad we cannot produce a real RPG anymore because new generation think 2 line of text too much to read, so enjoy your A to B walking simple RPGs that you just shoot anything mindlessly. This the future you built lolol. Just press the "sarcasm" button on Fallout 4, bro. No point in writing a dialogue that actually make sense because no one reads or listens to, just let AI write the dialogue and just make it sound "make sense" and boom enjoy your mindless 1 hour cutscene that has anything you want from Netflix ayy lmao. "I love colors keep changing on the screen while I think about Tiktok dances" -- society 2025 lolol

This is quite the rant but hits on what I thought this post would be about.
Nobody could care less about AAA dying - that's like telling me billionaires are going to die - GOOD.

But what about the introduction of AI?

I'm never going to be part of the game industry, I'm never going to make money there.

But I still love making games. However, if I make a game, it's because I want someone to play it.

I want another human being to experience what spent time designing. But what reason does another person have to consume anything I made? Once we get to the point where someone inputs instructions on an LLM and, like you said, say "make it go XYZ and make sense", what will be the point of EVER consuming a game someone else made?

I hold on to the hope that games will become what books are now.
Nobody reads, except a few people. Those few people then form part of a much more intimate community where they can form stronger bonds.

I see no future for a gaming "industry", but I hold on to the hope game design communities will still exist.

 

[UnDubious]

Collapse, probably not, unless the general cost of living crisis reaches the critical point.
During COVID everybody was home all day and playing video games was one of the common activity for normal people too. Publicly-traded companies want to grow forever, but things necessarily had to shrink back somewhat after that, so it explains a lot of the layoffs. The rest is big players making bad moves, investing in obvious disasters, testing how far they can squeeze their consumers until they fight back, etc.

 

[dropsmegamega]

Nintendo is still around and thriving because they are a steady company that has honed a business plan over the years and has very few flops to their name. They also rarely lay off their employees. Even with all the shitty anti-competitive practices, I'd take a Nintendo over Sony, Microsoft, EA and Ubisoft every day of the week.

can't have flops if most of their fanbase has no standards...

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

When companies close studies, it's not necessarily a reflection of how they (or their medium) are doing -- ATARI used to dick around with jewel-incrusted swords and chalices while the industry was burning around it, whereas EA has been widely condemned for laying off entire teams and closing developers left and right after recording record profits.

What's gonna slay this dragon is the SKG campaign, and rightly so.

 

[Frickinfrik]

Yeah, it’s starting to collapse. It’s a sinking ship on fire rn. I blame it on all the F2P shit.

 

[Graves Ruinwalker]

And im fine with it .

Most or all games that are now huge franchises are in fact Indies from the start .

From Doom to Quake and Wizardry to Final Fantasy were these games made from no name people that either got the skills and tech from their own money , making a hobby-company into a huge industry-juggernaut with their huge profits
or thanks to small corperations that assembled a team of different devs to become legends across the globe because of their daring concepts and gameplay that made huge impacts in the gaming industry early and later on .

Triple AAA gaming came later on as a term from journalists to divide the low- , middle - to the high budget games just like movies do at the time .

Triple AAA is just a title and not an important part in gaming overall . Because even many Low-budget and middle-budget games became at the times from the ps1 and N64 till ps3 and Xbox360 era huge household names like Assassin's Creed , Hitman , Splinter Cell , Gears of War , Halo and many other Classics .

Its time to get back at square one and learn from the past mistakes to make gaming great again and even catch our own lightning in the bottle in dire times like this . Its possible and thanks to indie-gaming there is alot of appreciation for old game-designs and -philosphies again overall .

 

[bjork]

Companies shedding jobs and studios after misguided projections and poor gambles =\= collapse. It's disappointing to see so many people losing their jobs either way, though.

 

[qw90700]

This is quite the rant

It's not a rant, it's a humorous post makes fun of the subjects mentioned. Nothing is "angry" about it. Adjust your American mentality and realize most of the world is not living in American culture, capish? Do you know what is humor or you need laughter sound in the background ayy lmao. As Americans keep saying "stop complaining" and "don't be a Karen" lol.

But what about the introduction of AI?

I'm never going to be part of the game industry, I'm never going to make money there.

But I still love making games. However, if I make a game, it's because I want someone to play it.

I want another human being to experience what spent time designing. But what reason does another person have to consume anything I made? Once we get to the point where someone inputs instructions on an LLM and, like you said, say "make it go XYZ and make sense", what will be the point of EVER consuming a game someone else made?

I hold on to the hope that games will become what books are now.
Nobody reads, except a few people. Those few people then form part of a much more intimate community where they can form stronger bonds.

I see no future for a gaming "industry", but I hold on to the hope game design communities will still exist.

This is like the difference between factory-made products and handmade products.

Back then when factory became popular people started riot and pretty much said the same stuff about how people get angry about AI "ruining the industry". Eventually customers turned into a way "I love the way factory-produces items are cheaper" and "I really don't care if factory made products useful as much as handmade producs". So same thing will happen to the video game industry.

For example music industry died for me when they released AI that can produce music for you. I just write my lyrics and it produces a music in the genre I want. Easy peasy eggs are tasty.

If there was an AI produced a video game I had wanted then I would wanna pay for that AI instead. But I'm kinda forced to develop my own games if I wanna spend my time on a game that actually matters to play in these years.

Would people buy your games? If it satisfied enough they will without caring if it's AI developed or human developed even when AI-produced games are popular. However you cannot expect to make money by selling your game for more expensive just because it's not AI-develop game. Not many people cares if something is AI developed or not.

Main complaint of AI generated content is how bad it's in quality. For pictures fingers are weird, for videos whatever happens has clear weirdness, for dialogues it doesn't make sense and doesn't sound like a person talking, for lots of AI generated voices it's lifeless. Perhaps only decent AI there is music generators and they surprisingly can produce great songs. Who would have thought AI cannot talk but can sing? When they sing their weird tone of voice cannot shift in weird way because their tone of voice limited by musical notes so they sing well by sounding natural. They are better than humans in the way while they sing they can make words sound so crystal clear. This is a huge plus AI singers have over human singers lol. Finally can enjoy actually listening to lyrics!!! (this is not a rant lol)

So when AI songs produce decent content and industry prove AI generated content is faster and better than what a human can do not many people will care if a video game is AI generated or not. Do you care if the table you bought is handmade or factory made? You just buy it and use it.

Now if anyone read this message until this point may think about how art is effected by AI. TBH human created art won't end but it will reduce. So many artists actually not an artist but wanna realize their ideas. To do that we needed to do it before, but now AIs help people on the fact that they don't have to be an AI anymore. They are already feeded with sum of art that's translated to data for AIs to learn and understand to generate similar artworks, even for music, so people will mostly use AIs instead of actually doing art. In the end human art will reduce but never die out.

However these depends on how AI will be well implemented in video game industry. If AAA companies spam bad AI generated games, it will make people lose hope and interest in the industry further so much they may risk making society necessarily believe "video games are rubbish", and at that point it may be impossible to make people interested in video games again.

For example, already around visual arts people accuse each other "you clearly use AI" when the artist doesn't use an AI. TBH sometimes I read such dramas on Twitter lol. So after AI ruins most of industry like video games and movies with bad AI generated content it will make people lose interest in games due to false belief of "probably evertyhing about the game is AI generated". People already blame Ubisoft for "probably the story and this and that dialogue probably written by AIs" so already AI has many haters but video game companies wanna implement AI further and further so let's see what will happen at this point. Future of industry and how society will think about video game industry depends on if they can use AIs correctly so people will think "AI generated content better than what humans can do" or "AI so sucks I don't wanna play games anymore" in a way future generations will think "video games are sucks" without actually knowing why there was the hate from the start lol.

Well I know you'll say this is a rant but I it's an informative post as much as I tried to be. Just because "it's long" doesn't make it a "rant" post lol.

They also rarely lay off their employees.

Once you get into Yakuza™ you cannot set yourself free from it alive. lol