The state of the games industry
polycounter lvl 12
Hello Polycount!
To whom it may concern...What do you think of the state of gaming in October 2023? It seems like many studios are folding over.
To whom it may concern...What do you think of the state of gaming in October 2023? It seems like many studios are folding over.
Replies
It'll pass - it happens every decade or so
No offense but this reads like conspiracy theory. Your average indie steam release makes less than $10K over its lifetime (source) - publishers do serve a purpose. I'm not a big fan of Epic's increasing monopolization, but AAA studios like CDPR aren't switching to Unreal because of mind control - they're doing it because it makes financial sense to abandon their own tech.
As CEO, however, Kotick has a specific mandate. And this mandate is to act in the interest of the company. Purely personal motives are not relevant in this context and can therefore not be used to legitimise certain actions. The accusation of "short-sightedness" is therefore also based on how and whether he acts in the interest of the company - not whether he succeeds in enriching himself personally during this time. Therefore, such actions must also be morally condemned and legally sanctioned (not only in relation to Kotich).
I am not sure how you want to understand this statement.
It may be your subjective feeling, but objectively it is not correct. Whether human beings ultimately act in a purely egoistically motivated way is an often-discussed philosophical core question. Most experts will answer it in the negative. Our world is not deterministic in many respects. All these views may be interesting (and would also make some things easier to understand), but they fall short.
No offense, but your whole post comes off like one of those people who says "I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist", because they can't see their worldview is just another matter of perspective, and is shaped by their own personal experience as much as anybody else's. It's all subjective.
There's truth in some of what you say, of course, but man, what a poisonous and cynical angle to come at the world from. It sets you up only for hollow interactions, and paints everything in black and white. Any ounce of falsity makes you a liar, any ounce of greed makes you only care about money; the truth is, its all, all, all, shades of grey. More than in a 16-bit greyscale image. Even the evilest person has good in them, even the most selfish decision can have good effects.
I'll leave it at that, but my suggestion is that maybe you should read some philosophy, study some spirituality, because a lot of these things emphasize that every-present nuance. Nothing is only one thing. You'll be happier thinking this way, and it's the opposite of burying your head in the sand--
"'Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."
Meaning that, while marketing folk and "suits" are trying to squeeze money out of their customers, its because its the only proven strategy for maintaining live games like Destiny.
So, it might be more like,
Suits: "Do it anyway. Keeping you guys employed with the lights on is really expensive, and if we don't you're all out of a job."
Bungie's been around forever and they definitely know how to make good games. I have 1,722 hours in D2, and gave them $300 so me and my bros could go play Witch Queen.
I don't have experience with the US employment system. The vast majority of the stupidly rich CEOs and mass lay-offs that we see are US-based, because the US has law and culture that treat employees as expendable. This isn't actually the case in many (most?) other parts of the western world.
In NZ, the only way I can be fired on the spot is by breaching my contract or gross misconduct. Redundancy and downsizing are long, involved processes which can be legally challenged by employees. This is why I suggest that some of these monetization decisions might actually be made to keep a studio running, and not to buy someone a new yacht
But, I'm not a financial analyst, so I'll just leave this here: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/what-the-hell-is-going-on-with-video-games-analysis
worth repeating : Look into the investors/stock holders, if anything they are leading the situation we are all starting to hate if they are just following the money, then follow the moves they make and why? perhaps or find someone who is. if you do not want to listen to me go find out, if it will effect you eventually look into why at least.
And then conveniently: https://polycount.com/discussion/234113/tim-sweeney-says-unreal-might-move-to-a-seat-based-software-model-in-2024#latest - ... come'on ...
If you actually want to know more of the direction they want us, go to rumble site the show EyesisWatchin Podcast #118, congrats.
So, we'll have to agree to disagree
#2 - Game Over or Reset? Mass Layoffs in VFX & Games, Hollywood Strikes, AI Takeover
Perhaps I can survive for longer if I become a pure game developer. I've always wanted to make my own games and I am not sure if my game ideas are replicable by AI.
...I still love making guns and hard surface stuff though....it's going to break my heart when that goes the way of the dinosaur. I'm not sure if 3D modeling will be a job in the future. Just look at that Turbosquid + Nvidia AI thing. It's probably crap right now but look at how crap 2D was just one year ago. These people can't wait to put us out of business and see us suffer. They're very gleeful about it.
I really feel like I am screwed.
I'm not sure if this is general but all clients we've worked with in the last years used complicated in-engine shaders with MLIs and whatnot. In fact, it's not complicated but the way they were implemented and explained was a big clusterfuck. And even once you get the hang of it, it's tough making something look good with 2-3 layers in your MSI stack and low res masks. Even our current client has gone through 4 workflow overhauls. It seems like every client is repeating the same costly mistakes.
To sum up, at least from my POV, which is that of an environment artist, it seems like game art is becoming less artistic and more technical.
Level designing, placing assets, deciding level flow & elevation, (and light sources!) around has always been artistic though imo
It's really hard to get subtle details in when you use this workflow. I really just want to do stuff in painter, have 100 layers and not worry about all this but even those unique 2k textures are quite pricey in terms of performance. I'm getting used to it and I definitely see the pros when it comes to clean sci fi stuff but whenever you want to do worn grungy stuff it becomes a nightmare. Doom Eternal uses this workflow and it looks great but it's sci fi.
A problem with corporate structure in games is that you need approval on everything, it's especially frustrating when you're a specialist and just want to achieve good results, but are told to make bad work on purpose, even when informing them otherwise.
MLIs are Material Layer (Instances) that you load in MSIs, Material Stack (Instances), and then blend with RGB blend masks. It sounds easy and it should be but so far every implementation has been a nightmare to work with.
The reason I bring this up is because the constant back and forth between versions of the shaders and our work has to be expensive for the client. Eventually the money dries up and everything I mention doesn't help.
On my end, I feel like I am growing technically but stagnating and even degrading artistically. All I'm doing is making blend masks and then working with 2 maybe three layers in engine and try to squeeze as much quality as I can with the limited resources. These workflows don't seem to be artist friendly.