alt Hacker NewsThe argument that it is in shambles wasn’t particularly persuasive. “videogames are as profitable as ever”
It seemed more like the understandable frustration of someone whose profession is being automated. Schumpeter creative destruction, but not shambles.
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Profit in video games as an industry is largely the gambling industry hiding under the another umbrella. I'm not even talking about loot boxes. Just old school gambling games like roulette and slot machines but in a digital format. Once you strip that away and loot boxes, the numbers are great for classic games.
The profitable videogames are mobileslop appstorespam games loaded to the brim with microtransactions, as well as the really good games that everyone wants to play, which are impossible to create more of on a whim.
"the industry" also includes "human resources", previously known as personnel or humans.
Any why always call critics "frustrated" in order to depict them as weak and spiteful? Isn't the Dwarf Fortress guy independent anyway?
Which is exactly the problem. All the folks in charge care about is money. Money has absolutely nothing to do with whether a game is fun to play or not.
An eternal curse on the houses of anyone involved with these AIs.
Video games are profitable as ever, but they take years to produce, and the mass layoffs makes me wonder who’s going to be making the games coming out in 2-5 years. Also it has required a lot of write-offs from closing studios to maintain this profitability, and that’s not a trick you can keep up for long.
Profitability can only matter as long as the ecosystem is sustainable; otherwise once the floor collapses there's no more money to be made. A game can be profitable, but when the entire team that made it is laid off or furloughed before launch there isn't a team anymore to follow up. Eventually those people leave the industry and there isn't enough capital made by your average worker to fund their own gaming studio, relying on investors or the rich to parasitize their work in order to create more games.
This is part of the reason why we see endless games as a service despite 90% of them failing. Teams have to do the bidding of the rich, but the rich don't know what's 'fun'.
Part of the problem is that some investor somewhere making profits is considered the only real marker for success. It’s an insane perspective that devalues all other (arguably more important) aspects of a work’s success.