A shift in the games industry
polycounter lvl 18
After reading the how long have you been unemployed thread, i was going to write this in that thread but after more contemplation i figured it could use a thread of its own.
Does anyone get the sense that the games industry is shifting into a different phase? 2012 had brought us lower profits in the game industry followed by the closures of many big studios. The we are coming to the end of the Next Gen console era and it seems like the highly funded big studio model in general is in a state of decline. When it comes to MMOS it seems like there have been a alot of attempts at a WOW killer but it doesnt seem like there will be one.
Mind you this is my opinion, but to me it seems like unless a bis studio can produce a game that sells ridiculous amounts, it can be hard to really recover from a disappointing return. Is it the price of development, the state of the world economy or aging consoles, who knows.
The shift seems to be that games are going from huge AAA productions to more smaller and agile dev teams, making smaller scale games. The trend seems like its going towards smaller and easier to produce games that don't have to go through big publishers to be produced and distributed.
What does it mean for us? If there wont be as many big studios then there is the likelihood that there wont be as many jobs out there. If that's the case that could mean a lot of problems for people trying to get into the biz or other experienced developers get burnt out look to other industries out of frustration. There may be less jobs but will that mean that it will slow down the flux of students being graduated from game dev courses? I cant imagine how frustrating it must be these days landing a job straight out of Uni.
The state of things make me wonder what this industry will look like in the next few years..
Does anyone get the sense that the games industry is shifting into a different phase? 2012 had brought us lower profits in the game industry followed by the closures of many big studios. The we are coming to the end of the Next Gen console era and it seems like the highly funded big studio model in general is in a state of decline. When it comes to MMOS it seems like there have been a alot of attempts at a WOW killer but it doesnt seem like there will be one.
Mind you this is my opinion, but to me it seems like unless a bis studio can produce a game that sells ridiculous amounts, it can be hard to really recover from a disappointing return. Is it the price of development, the state of the world economy or aging consoles, who knows.
The shift seems to be that games are going from huge AAA productions to more smaller and agile dev teams, making smaller scale games. The trend seems like its going towards smaller and easier to produce games that don't have to go through big publishers to be produced and distributed.
What does it mean for us? If there wont be as many big studios then there is the likelihood that there wont be as many jobs out there. If that's the case that could mean a lot of problems for people trying to get into the biz or other experienced developers get burnt out look to other industries out of frustration. There may be less jobs but will that mean that it will slow down the flux of students being graduated from game dev courses? I cant imagine how frustrating it must be these days landing a job straight out of Uni.
The state of things make me wonder what this industry will look like in the next few years..
Replies
I remember reading a post somewhere in which someone jokingly argued that by 2025 we'd only have a single AAAAA studio employing 25.000 people and pushing out annual iterations of the same game.
While I think that it's definately an exaggerated view of the future, we're sort of heading towards that in a way. We're seeing fewer and fewer new ips, higher production costs to stay competitive and studios that try to play in this field but fail because of budgets and/or lack of manpower/expertise closing down to the left and right.
Now that we're approaching the end of this console generation we have like 15-20 studios in the world that make the biggest titles, I predict that number will probably drop to 10-15 for the next generation and the rest of the studios will either get absorbed and act as supporting studios, have to revise their business models or shut down.
The AAAAA megalon studio seems unlikely to me, at least if there would be one publisher who could be that it would be activision. All the other major publishers seem to be in decline. I think Activision is the last game publisher still being listed on the Nasdaq 100.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/183695/With_EA_out_theres_only_one_game_publisher_left_on_the_NASDAQ100.php#.UNBu9W9X3LQ
If this decline countinues what will it mean for the console market? How long until we see a X box 780 or Ps4?
Valve is also talking console as well, could we see a console that plays game from Steam?
with minecraft selling 8 million copies, super meat boy, braid and fez absolutely smashing all records in indie games and not even selling that much less than the big AAA franchises, I'm kind of optimistic and think that indie games will continue their rise in the coming years. With steam greenlight only enforcing this, I personally expect something akin to what Wasker is saying, in that the amount of AAA studios will decline, and only ever make yet another iteration of the same game, with slightly upgraded graphics. (which, sadly, some of them already do, without pointing any fingers)
One thing to consider in this discussion is the move towards maintsream. I'm not talking about gaming here, but about game development: new tools are being released every day, kickstarter projects are popping up everywhere, and game development on a small scale (SMALL scale, mind you, no gamer that doesn't know anything about game development is ever going to make an assassin's creed-killer) is becoming easier by the day. That might just create an explosion of really small, and sometimes enjoyable games, in essence spawning a new generation of game designers, who do what they do completely out of instinct, instead of out of what they have learned in a school, bound by the preconceived rules of game development.
I may be overthinking this, but I think this might be a possibility worth consideration
Free to play is up
Games are getting bigger, longer, and need more artists
PC seems to being well
Consoles are doing okay
MMO's aren't doing well
Big publishers are hurting
Motion controls and are failing
The industry is still changing a lot, but we can clearly see the next gen games will need more artists working on games, and there will be more opportunities to work at smaller studios as well. I don't see anything to be scared about.
Some of those points i cant argue but games getting bigger and longer? I would say that was more the AAA titles and those seem to be in decline, at least the total of studios who can produce those caliber games are less and less.
Free to play works if done well, free to play can also hurt a business model as well. Knights of the Old Republic being one good example.
And more artists and jobs for artists doesnt seem as forth coming at this present moment.
Yes, ofcourse, it's a gross exaggeration. I didn't mean ONE giant studio per se but rather fewer and bigger studios than we have today working on bigger titles. Having 5 or 6 studios work on single title such as Black Ops 2 or Assassins Creed isn't uncommon for the top publishers anymore. I think we'll see more studios merge this way during the next generation.
I'm derailing this a bit but personally, I think the idea of having a dedicated gaming console that runs on 10 year iteration cycles is sort of outdated. I couldn't imagine any other field of technology were we'd see this mentality. Could you imagine Apple or Samsung saying "This is the phone you'll be using for the next 10 year, see you in a decade!"
I think we'll get more streaming services were the rendering happens in a cpu farm somewhere and you only need a marketplace and a controller to enjoy your games.
As to when we'll see them. Well, who can say, I guess you just have to cross your fingers for E3 2013.
I absolutely dont think the games industry is in a decline though, there's just a shift in focus. Quite the opposite, I think we'll get a huge surge in job opportunities in the industry when more and more people gets internet access, higher living standards across the globe and the demand for easily accessible entertainment increases.
I personally preffer working at a AAA studio on high profile console games, I dont think i would be satisfied working on indie, for me it would be a risky move and I enjoy my paycheque too much.
I think the industry in AAA is shifting towards how film production is, where you are contracted for the production and then either your contract ends or you are laid off, and should be already looking for a new job 3 months before.
there are pros and cons to this, its allowed me to almost double my salary over 2 years and I have never been unable to find work and have got to work at some really awesome studios, but at the same time it makes you feel like you are leaving a place almost as soon as you got there, people dont tend to bond as much. Luckily here in montreal due to the tax benefits most places are still hiring for fulltime positions and not contract which is nice, but I dont expect it to be like that 5-10 years from now at all.
on the subject of the mega studio, there are kinda already a couple of them, Ubisoft Montreal has almost 3000 people under one roof. its interesting to say the least and the place is huge but each team is pretty harmonized and feels good.
The industry is always going to be changing, if you can anticipate where that change is going you can make a lot of money and have steady employment. there is always going to be schools pumping out grads looking for jobs, but then again out of a class of 30 maybe 3-4 have the drive it takes to work on their portfolio after they grad and actually get a job.
Same for if I go the route of freelancing, I'd like to also ready to work freelance and in Denmark there is a certain bit of predatory work for that I have to do so I want to be ready.
This feeling of a change in the games industry I can notice in my neck of the wood and I would like to get some sort of an idea about how other artists feel about this.
I'm fine with studios going smaller, since their games become more creative when doing so. But I like having a job, too. I think if artists band together as digital hitmen, there will be a substantial amount of stability within that company.
In this console generation, we've seen the nasty trend pop up of massive art layoffs after every single project. While this happened in the past, it has gotten far worse. Studios focus too much on state of the art graphics now, hiring more and more artists and when the gameplay sucks and the game sells poorly, artists art the first to go.
I feel that small studios of artists are the way to go for us in the future. That, or freelance/contracting on your own. There is no "fulltime" for us anymore.
I would love to, if I could survive without income ;p
If it were possible to raise capital then yeah, that would be freakin' rad.
It's hard to tell where things will go from here. We're potentially in a better position having shrugged off the proverbial yoke of the shitty cartoon tie in or cheap, half-arsed port, but on the other hand even with the promise of some government funding on the near horizon, there's not a great deal of money floating around and good games or not, and many of them are very good, I think there's only so many studios that can succeed, particularly given the oversaturated and unpredictable nature of the IOS store.