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Why is the video game industry in crisis?
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 08 May 2024
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According to this article from Feb 11, https://theconversation.com/the-video-game-industry-is-booming-why-are-there-so-many-layoffs-222685, the videogame industry is booming, and thus it seems like it's more an issue with companies wanting to show profitability for shareholders by reducing labor. I assume it's being justified with AI being hyped up and/or forcing out older/more expensive workers and bringing in younger/cheaper talent.
It does kind of make me wonder if the videogame market is oversaturated, as I look over my ridiculous Steam Library and see over a thousand games, many of which are unplayed. And there's another Humble Bundle that just launched with even more games I've never heard of that I can buy cheap as shit. And Epic will give me another free game or two on Thursday. And I just purchased two itch.io bundles with hundreds of titles in each of those. And I have shelves full of tabletop boardgames to go through. I have access to more videogames/boardgames than I probably have hours left in my life to play them, even if I were to be able to retire today and just play games non-stop. I rarely if ever buy new games anymore, there's just too fucking much out there now. Obviously, the industry as a whole is making billions of dollars, so people are still buying them, but it feels like there's just so much out there and too little time to play any of them.
I think your library is a good example of what's going on and the key is probably what you're buying. You have lots of games but I bet many of those are smaller games from indie studios; even if you're not playing those games the studios are benefiting from you low price impulse purchases.
I'm guessing you're not impulse buying £60 and £75 games from big studios and leaving them unplayed. And I doubt you'd even buy those games if they're not scoring well; certainly not at full price anyway.
That is the story of the games industry right now - smaller studios are doing well, some very well when they produce very good games, while the big Publishing houses are producing overpriced games, which are poorly quality controlled or even just fundamentally bad.
Can you saturate a market when a £5 impulse buy on a discounted indie game or a discounted AAA game with good review scores from 3+ years ago is about the same as a coffee? Whose going to buy a £70 poorly reviewed new release when you could have bought 100 good games on discount. Even if you don't play them all, it's just too good a proposition.