The Future of Game Development
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- Опубликовано: 27 авг 2024
- The next couple years are going to be INTERESTING times for gaming...
Cohh on Twitch: / cohhcarnage
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Cohh Main Channel: @CohhCarnage
Edit by: / oheyspun
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If a big gaming tree falls in the woods, and no one is around to hear it, does it still charge a microtransaction?
only if you let it grab your credit card
Honestly Indies get away with microtransctions because they just rename it to supporter pack and then double the cost ratio and people buy it like hotcakes. Just look at Deep Rock Galactic. That game in reality costs $40 at its base price and has $120 worth of DLC. That's the same as a AAA game costing $70 and having $210 of DLC. That's Paradox Interactive levels of DLC and people will defend that game's DLC to the death. Double fuacking standards.
@@Ralathar44 I'd rather have indies get money than big corporations
@@captainnoyaux You say that now, but be on the downside of a bunch of flops like Mighty No 9 and Crowfall and Camelot Unchained and etc. People start getting bitter and cynical about that side of the market too ya know. Everyone just lives in their own little bubble so they always think the grass is greener somewhere else.
@@Ralathar44 yn, as a fellow DRG employee of two years(xbox), it never occurred to me to scroll through the market place on start-up, and see the absurd amount of DLC that dropped in my time
To me, the future of gaming industry is in indies.
heck ya... morally, creatively, financially Indies are where it's at.
Or even smaller studios (AA) that aren't these HUGE AAA milk machines that try to ham fist games as fast and as packed with MTX as possible.
i think the best experiences wont be indies (they will still be great tho) the best will be what we saw last year like Baldurs Gate 3 or like Witcher 3 was. Middle sized companies that have the size (amount of people working on the project) and the passion to give us cinematic experiences that equal what Gamers remember from AAA studios 15 years ago. Small studios cant offer that and therefore they will rarely be the ones with really memorable blockbuster games. They will mostly see big success via youtube/twitch hypes, like among us or palworld.
But those devs that are indies now and release for example something like Palworld THOSE are the devs that WILL HAVE the money tomorrow and those passionate devs will make the Mass Effect or Dragon Age or Baldurs Gate of tomorrow like Larian and CDPR who were no-names (or niche-, in-genre-only-names) when EA and Ubisoft ruled gaming.
It has been for several years now.
It always have been. Every franchise which is already established and taken over by corporate interests gets turned into a soulless cash cow for the shareholders preeetty quickly.
Indies will become the new AAA that you will be talking sheit about in 10-20 years. Even EA was once an indie company that just wanted to prove video games were an artistic medium and inspire real emotions in you. There are still newspaper articles from when that was the company culture. Blizzard was once beloved as a smaller dev. ETC.
Indie devs/smaller dev teams are carrying the torch and we are here for it.
I love the fact you are trying to get people to understand what is really happening in our gaming life. It’s not a a time to worry but a time to explore what we have.
The writing on the wall is that while big publisher decided to double down and even dare to utter "AAAA game experience" as a serious talking point, the industry is moving in the completely other direction. A direction were middle size studio/publisher have the flexibility to innovate and where single developers or double digits studios can self-publish on Steam and reach worldwide audience. So no, i am not worried about Game development. AAA has and will always close down studios. It's part of their corporate DNA to do so. Developers working for them should not get attached to their job there and instead make sure to use that time as a learning experience. Never expect corporation to act in your best interest.
A few years back, whenever i heard that "the future is indie games", i was like "meh, they are not as big and advanced, i don't care".
But lately i mostly buy indie games, and i am much more satisfied with them.
They are doing the things i want from a game.
Alanah Pearce said it months ago. The industry wide layoffs and cutbacks will impact the gamers in a year or two as AAA games will come less often and they will be worse than the ones we have been getting
She also called having a kid having a disability. I don’t really think she knows what she’s talking about lmao
I’d definitely love to have more videos like this, where Cohh just shares his thoughts on games and stuff. Also saw his reaction to the new Dragon Age and loved to see that and agreed with him, so stuff like that would be nice in a bite sized video like this one as well. :)
Umm...Cohh's been doing that for over 10 years, my man.
@@FortunePayback I know, but I meant for this new channel as well.
@@FortunePayback I think unfortunately his non gaming content do get buried amidst all of the gaming playlists. Also Cohh churns out content on daily basis so it make sense to miss out on his thoughts video unless you specifically look for it or check in on daily.
While I see this shift being mostly good for gamers, I see the future for game developers being way less stable, even volatile. Simply said, it will no longer be as easy to make a career of game development. The big corpo jobs add the stability and cushion the risks, so without that, a developer needs to be willing to scrape by and shoulder the risks themselves.
It'll be more like today's music scene. There are still ways to make it by as a musician, but it's the dirty work. Things you know people will like. Cover bands, teaching, church bands. But you still do your passion projects when you have time (if you still have energy) knowingly that you can't bank on it blowing up. The markets are flooded since everyone has a direct path to releasing. A lot more comes down to social media presence and not your art. I'd say that the main difference in game development is that a lot of indie devs flooding the market now have a lot of technical experience and years of networking gained from the structure that was. They are now the direct competitors to your lobbyists. Good for games! Hard to penetrate for the newbies.
This all comes from a guy that went to school for music and became a software engineer. I'm working on my own game projects, and about six months ago I was hoping to make the shift into game development so that I be in a business setting that would help me grow as a game developer. I'm just trying to restructure what that looks like to me now.
The forest analogy was great.
Investors are super cautious rn, due to a combination of higher interest rates and disappointing receptions to gaming titles that they expected to be awesome (rightly or wrongly). It'll probably get better once interest rates go down some and "riskier" investing bets become less punishing to make.
This is a fundamental problem for the top level of the industry, that the rest of the industry doesn’t care about at all. Small indie studios are flexible, and large indie studios have cash reserves to keep up high end development without investors because they aren’t stupid and they don’t have shareholders demanding every last cent.
The problem is that we’ve seen 20k game developers lose their jobs in the past couple of years and most of those people are leaving games forever.
Those are the people going somewhere else, not the “money people” as Cohh calls them.
The effect of these layoffs will be felt over the next 5-10 years as we begin looking at a gaming desert. People just can’t “go indie” anymore. Even Rami is saying this and he’s forgotten more about indie development than most will ever know.
I’m sure that we’ll still see great games in the future, but I don’t that future will be as bright as Cohh hopes.
The indie space can be a shining beacon while AAA takes a break, but in order for that to happen, players need to understand that these teams don't have the same level of resources as AAA. Players need to accept that games can't be localised into 30 different languages, games can't have hundreds of accessibility options, can't be optimized for every possible PC build. Indie studios are spending thousands of dollars to get all of these extra QOL features into their games so they don't get called out and slated by Steam players demanding the world. At the risk of their own financial stability.
Players need to lower their expectations as we enter this brave new world of games.
The suits of these big companies are always just looking at trends and copying the stuff that is popular and making money. However what they fail to realize is that if they make the same stuff the market is going to get saturated. Back when Wow was at it's peak a lot of studios tried to make their own MMO, but they failed to realize that if their game isn't better than Wow people will stop playing it and return to Wow as soon as it has new content. There is a limited amount of time a player can spend playing different MMO:s and a lot of them will just fail. We are now seeing the same thing with live service games. Players don't have the time to play all of them. Especially when a lot of them are very mediocre and rushed by studios that were forced to make them. What makes things even worse is the FOMO tactics these companies use to keep players invested. This makes it even more hard for players to move from their prefered live service game to another. If they start too late there might be stuff that they can no longer get so why bother even trying it. While these big studios are battling it out with eachother smaller studios can just make good regular games. Those will always sell really well.
Pocketpair is one of the best examples of the forest analogy Cohh used. Yes, pokemon is (regrettably) still hugely successful, mostly because it's... you know pokemon, the biggest media franchise in the world, but it's like a giant tree with most of it's branches cut off. And in sweeps the tiny tree Pocketpair, sucks up all the sunlight, and gives the players something they actually want. And boy has that tree grown a WHOLE lot in a short time.
If all triple A studios went under overnight, I would have zero concern for the future of gaming. There's so many amazing indie games that I could be content with them for the rest of my life.
This had to have been recorded immediately following the summer games fest - cause xbox, nintendo, etc. Showed off a bunch of AAA games coming this year and next. He'll, even GTA6 is coming next year dude...
The only thing actually failing is summer games fest show. Geoff is losing his touch with the industry and doesn't get the good huge announcements, studios would rather show off their own games in their own directs and whatnot.
But yea, there's layoffs and stuff sure- but there are actually a ton of AAA games coming this year and next. Hate to burst your bubble there...
I think it’s somewhat true. The more there is to announce and update on, the more than can be spilled over into third party shows. It’s not just that there’s a preference for showing things off themselves, but that they only have enough to fill that quota with not as much to spare.
If you re waiting for gta6 with hopes, i have to advise you, give up friend
Very optimistic take. Here's another one: AAA studios and their publishers may not be announcing AAA games at the moment, but there is no way they're abandoning the industry to make way for Indie studios to get that "sun". They're going to stop producing expensive single player games with a whole lot of front loaded content, and they're going to keep shifting (a process that has already begun) toward games that charge you on a continuing basis for drips and drabs of content. Much of this will be on mobile. Less upfront investment and a longer tail, both things their investors will love. These AAA companies will still have the biggest marketing budgets, the name brand recognition, and the licensed properties to grab eyeballs, so those Indies' share of the pie will not increase at all, but the games will become crappier, more soul-less, and more expensive (over time).
None of which is to say that there won't be just as many Indie devs as there are today. But the sun won't be shining on them any more than it is now, and it'll be contingent on consumers, as it always has been, to find these companies and their games. It'll be up to them to avoid playing whatever bullshit Marvel or COD or Elder Scrolls ftp game is plopped in front of them, and look for new, fresh ideas. Many won't, just like they don't now. And for a lot of them, because of the nature of these big studio games (designed to keep your attention and money for long periods of time), they will never feel the need to look in an Indie games' direction.
My biggest concern is that these triple AAA publishers are going to do "an Embracer Group" and buy up a boatload of indie developers and then Microsoft them to hell once they delivered the goods.
I would hope those indie studios will tell them no. Indie games are all I've been playing lately, except for Elden Ring.
As an indie working on my first solo title (which is exciting enough), this is very encouraging.
Good luck.
Great video, love for the editors. Was there with all the discussions, and this is literally a expanded “TLDR”❤
Indie game devs lead with innovation and creativity, producing hits like "Hades" and "Among Us." AAA studios bring resources and technical prowess, despite high costs and market saturation. Both sectors are crucial: indies push boundaries, while AAAs refine and popularize new ideas. This balance ensures a diverse and dynamic gaming future.
Refine? Elaborate on that, because all i see from them monkey see, monkey doo, just with more microtransactions and wokeness
Umm...still not sure if good or bad in my opinion. I'm worried. Some of those "smash" indie hits, would honestly have been called unacceptable trash from a AAA studio. Satisfaction is generally a function of expectation. It's a heck of a lot easier to exceed expectation...when their is no expectation. We need both, AAA and smaller indie teams, they serve different needs and carry different expectations. Imagine the backlash if people start to expect the same in terms of polish and completeness, from manor lords as they do from GTA. Indie devs better develop some thick skin, if they are the main source of our games for a bit, they won't get the same level of forgiveness for the....quirks. Those of us who treasure indie titles are a heck of a lot more forgiving than the usual mainstream. Expectation. I said it so much, felt like I needed one more.
No AAA titles announced for next year? Maybe nothing you enjoy, but there's plenty of AAA games that've been announced.
- 2025 AAA releases -
2XKO
Death Stranding 2
Doom: The Dark Ages
Fable
GTA6
Marvel 1943
Metroid Prime 4
Monster Hunter: Wilds
Pokemon Legends
Civ VII
I don't think Nintendo is falling just yet, especially after the direct yesterday.
Shoutout to the editors! Great video and totally agree on the topic. Nice to see some smaller studios getting the attention they deserve when the bigger ones don't deliver. Looking forward to it.
Love the topic and the editing with context. Congrats to the new team
It's a cycle. It's just a very long one.
The small studios do well, get big, go public, and after many years of mistakes in search of profit, get pushed aside for smaller studios.
Unless people rethink the way they approach business, the cycle will continue.
problem is , copyrights/ patents
the npc ai , the tech , all that ... indie games cant use them if the big companies dont sell or give right...
Honestly not sure if I feel too happy about this. Sure large studios tend to make failures lately but there are just some games that for indies are out of scope. Games like RDR2 and mmorpgs for example. Most of those indie games showcased are things I pick up for free on epic and they just end up collecting dust in my library. Some companies manage to slowly build up to be able to make excellent game like Witcher 3, who after two lesser scale games or (I hope) kingdom come deliverance 2. But most of my favorite games are made by big studio with a lot of resurses and money and after seeing a lot of kickstarters, I don't have great fate in indies. Something truly great like Valhaim is rare occasion.
Cohh: Triple A games are dead, Indies are the future.
Also Cohh: Never touches Indies, except he's sponsored
You clearly didn’t understand the video, he’s saying the Indie companies are going to become the ‘new age triple a companies’. They just wont be AS soul sucking and money focused whilst getting the same amount of money from investors since they will be the ones replacing the old Triple A companies whilst having a track record of making amazing games without having said investments, making it a perfect opportunity for consumers to actually enjoy triple a games again
@@NA1Preferred I think it's a really naïve take to think that Indy companies if given the resources, funding and manpower of AAA companies wouldn't be exactly the same as the current AAA games given enough time. I may just be a bit cynical but people are in general greedy. It's not just big companies it's everyone including consumers
Really like this type of vid, props to the editors with the visuals as well
This is why I love watching Cohh. Him and I are almost exactly the same age, and come to a lot of the exact same conclusions about gaming. The gaming industry is awful right now, but this has been coming for a long time, and for those of us old enough to have lived through it or heard stories about it, you'd know this isn't even the first time this has happened. Hell, it isn't even the worst existential crisis gaming has faced. The gaming recession between 1983 and 1985 was WAY worse. I think I read there was a roughly 97% drop in consumer spending on video games? BUT, immediately after that recession that damn near killed the industry we had (in my humble opinion) one of the greatest periods of gaming history. The SNES, Genesis, and PS1/Saturn/N64 era was fantastic. The leaps in technology felt much more significant than they do now. Just imagine the possibilities opened up when games jumped from 2d to 3d for the first time, and developers were given complete creative control to explore the boundaries of what this means for gaming. What followed (the PS2/XBOX era) was also pretty great, but IMO it was only great because that era removed the hardware limitations of the previous generation. The ideas were just being recycled from the PS1/Saturn but without the severe restrictions imposed by hardware that was just barely powerful enough to run 3d games. Contrast that with today, and now new hardware just enables more "realism" and higher FPS when games already look absolutely incredible. BUT IT'S EVEN MORE REAL NOW!!! QUADRUPLE A GAMING BABY! 🙄
So that's what gives me hope. Attempts will always be made to turn creative endeavors into profit, and capitalism dictates that profit must be maximized to the detriment of the very creativity it's trying to capitalize on. But creatives will always exist who love gaming for gaming's sake. Those are the people who carry gaming forward. Indies take the creative risks that big studios won't, and once they prove a concept works, then AAA studios will try to copy it, polish it up with pretty graphics and famous voice actors, repackage it, and sell it back to us over and over until the soul has been sucked out of it. But there will always be dreamers to take gaming forward.
Love the tree analogy. That is so spot-on.
On the contrary, no AAA titles makes me optimistic. Nothing ruins game development like big corporate executives that couldnt possibly care less about video games.
I prefer rare masterpiece titles like Elden Ring to enormous small indie games where I feel like I am on the mobile. Quality over quantity.
what about those of us that only play rpg ?
all the indie games you mentioned are ones i dont go near
I’m sure you know how to use the search feature on RUclips . …
time to try out some new things
don't miss out :(
PREACH!!!! Great point, Cohh! All this has me feeling that I can't wait to see your next game update!
Honestly I think this will be good and bad. On the plus side, it will perhaps pull those only interested in profits away but that has down sides too. Indie companies are FAR more financially exposed than a larger company. On poor selling title can sink a small studio. Plus for every wildly successful indie game there will be a dozen that do poorly, perhaps even just because they release at the wrong time, and the developer behind them could face bankrupcy. Finances in any business endevour are always a double edged sword. Plus at the end of the day, I doubt a game like Elden Ring, will ever be cheap to make and I think it would be sad for games like that to become rare in the gaming landscape.
I've been worried about the future of games too. The costs of development, both financially and with time, has began to outweigh the profits.. And any deviation from continuous growth results in criticisms and a lack of profit. The risk is great for these devs.. Something has to change for gaming to become sustainable. Otherwise we're heading toward game dev as a hobby being back to the norm.
You're not wrong though, in that there is a blessing in disguise in seeing gaelme development being spearheaded by those who love games again, and not by those who simply love profit.. But as a casual gamer, I don't think we're quite ready for that either. I hope I'm being dramatic, but this video is pointing out evidence that would lend credibility to my overall fears here.
If the indies can really thrive, and if the big companies don't truly fall, maybe it'll create an environment where triple A games can take the proper amount of time to develop. Maybe the larger companies should be investing in small companies for a return on revenue to support a longer development cycle of a triple A title. I don't know if that makes sense, but I always look for a world where get can have a bit of both whenever possible.
Also, if Cohh is right, maybe we will see a lot of new studios formed from the layoffs and new investors to the indie market.
Executives of this game companies are not gamers but a businessmen, they are thinking that games is for kids and kids waste money on a nonsense game so they only make low quality game with full of microtransactions. Indie games is our only hope for a good game development nowadays.
the thing is gamers largely dont care about indie titles. everyone will claim to the high heavens that they love indies but when push comes to shove they spend their money on big franchise entries first and foremost.
Seeing all the layoffs and the publishers backing out. It got me thinking something like you said: gamers wont stop playing and wanting to buy games.
So if you are a small indie who does not need a publisher, it leaves a lot more room for you, cause if AAAs are underserving the gamers, gamers will look at indie games.
The gaming industry is a cancer since corporate greed took over every major studio and it became so obvious for most of us when quality declined greatly because every game regardless of how suitable it was for a console was dumbed down for a console release. Can't do more complex control schemes because it has to be mass compatible and playable with a controller, lighting effects and overall graphics have to be dialed down a lot because it has to run on consoles, no we have to take everything out of a game that needs some skill to master because then fewer people will actually play it.. et cetera.
Love the Haunted Chocolatier background music
AAA games industry is failing mainly due to them moving the objectives of the developers from developing a good game to developing a profitable game (or what they think will be profitable).
That shifts the focus from quality to quantity. You can see it clearly with the amount of "milking" corporations are making with certain brands like star wars, batman, etc.
Once a studio is bought by a corporation, you can expect their games to be crap after a few years because they get pressured by management for profitability (because management are usualy made up of egocentric morons who think they know what people want), and you can see that with Bioware, for example. More and more, corpo management pushes games towards the live service front, just for profit (dont get me wrong, live service games can be good, its just the goal of the game that matters).
That being said, some advice for corpos:
- Always cater to the player base needs not the company
- shift game development focus to quality, not quantity
- Good stories are hard to find. invest in them
- stop repeating. reliable game mechanics are good, but investing in new ideas is better
- Safe is not always a good thing, sometimes its boring and it doesnt sell
- stop making all games as live service games
- if you want t make live service games dont use big brands (like suicide squad)
- if you want t make live service games focus on the mechanics and player engagement, not the store. the store should always be considered as a "bonus"
- listen to the majority of the community
- Management : be honest about everything. people will respect you more if you admit to your faults. we are only human and nobody's perfect. mistakes happen, bad decisions can be forgiven, and are lessons for the future.
Feel free to post more 😁
People say Indie games are the future and yet they SGF show had more indies than AAA and they say the show sucks. Meanwhile Xbox gets praised for their AAA showing. Give me a break
it isn't just AAA taking a breather or whatever it's also that xbox saved all of the announcements and reveals for their own show which made summer game fest look bad, and it won't surprise me if xbox and sony will stay away from geoff keighley game show for the most part.
xbox showcase would've been so much worse if they did most of their reveals and announcements at the summer fast showcase.
why is summer fest and gaming awards even a thing it's so bad for xbox and sony. why did E3 die just so we can have silly game awards no one really cares about.
much rather have great sony, nintendo, and xbox showcases.
The video and topic were really nice to see. I appreciated this discussion and the points raised during the stream and it helped me arrive at a better perspective on the issue.
A little feedback on the video though: It felt like many of the edited sections gave the video a jumbled and confusing flow both to the discussion and the focus of what the video was about. For example, the edit at 1:07 illustrating the analogy was great. Clips like at 3:52 felt like they were not illustrating or feeding back to the point and instead made me think the video was just going off on a tangent of sharing random things. I suppose it might also be the frequency at which he was interrupted by the edits that made it feel disjointed.
It is interesting seeing the different style being tried here so I want to encourage you to keep exploring.
I'm no longer pre-ordering "Gold" packages for games that I end up hating. I've started funding Kickstarters instead with a lot more promise and it costs less
Waiting to buy the next IP as their own creativity has flatlined
Uh just a question but at 0:46 Cohh says "Didn't get any announcement of any major triple A titles next year or the year after" But didn't the new doom game get revealed to be released next year, and wasn't a lot of Triple A games to be showcased in the xbox announcement also for 2024/2025, or were those not the major ones Cohh talked about?
At the main show of summer game fest were no triple A companies. This was filmed before the xbox show where that got announced.
@@amjjayy Oh okay they should put that in the description. Ty
@@amjjayy Cohhs issue is he doesn't understand how long AAA take to make. if we go 1-2 years without a single AAA game is that the end of the world? Bro has a backlog of 10000000000 of AAA games he could be playing like persona 5 royal/reload, but he just doesn't seem to care about ANYTHING in his backlog. he just wants all that new AAA games so he can get lots of views on twitch.
I've been gravitated to teh smaller titles for a long time, Squad instead of battlefield, for example. Because those smaller projects seem to focus on teh game rather than only the profit margin; the downside is that some smaller studios do fail when making live service products, as they don't keep the lights on. The Cycle Frontier forexample frankly did the scummy thing and abandoned the game instead of transitioning it to a differently hosted experience.
But the tree analogy definitely works, I expect in 1-2 years time we'll see those maturing indie teams start doing truly miraculous stuff since hopefully they are financially stable, have some more experience and ideas.
Awesome video Cohh+Team!
Hope you can keep putting out more stuff like this in the future.
Someone's motivation does not dictate their talent or dedication to their craft. Losing those people that were just in it for the money is just as bad a blow as losing people that were passionate about doing it. That aside they can still make plenty of money by making games in their own studios.
It seems gaming is going in that direction and I hope you're right that it goes further in that direction. My favorite game of 2023 was Lies of P, an amazing game made by a studio that previously was making mobile games. The last Triple A game I bought was Cyberpunk, but that was years after it came out, it was just ok.
This is insane to me, lol. It’s like people have forgotten video games are just one of many optional means of spending one’s free time.
Hey, at the very least it gives me some breathing space to catch up to the big releases I've had to miss due to how many great games have been coming out in the past couple of years.
Or even better, gives me a chance to go play some of the classics I missed back in their day.
Smaller projects/games has the benefit of not needing to be smash hit to be profitable. And thus smaller games can be more niche. AAA have the problem that alot of them are to alike, they have to appeal to the masses.
This is top content for Cohh's side channel
For the past couple years now, with a few exceptions, I've only been looking at Indie games
One game company I will always stand by is Capcom; the monster hunter games will continue to have a bright future, and it seems like resident evil will keep going strong too, that's two colossal IP's (among many other decent IP's) in an industry full of professional garbage right now. They'll always have my support
Well, all you said it true! 90% of the games I end up playing the most are Indie titles. Maybe there is some hope.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on games and development. Good perspective of opportunity, but industry concern with so many big companies cutting back, could mean that a lot of potential game devs go on to other industries. Though it does make sense that I'm that space there is also growth opportunity for indies and smaller studios.
I speculate that AAA studios are in R&D mode with AI tools. They're spending big bucks now so they can spend less and make even more later.
One gripe i have is the progression in some open worldly games. They through all this information and "things" to do within an hour. I like to take my time with a game and try and complete side quests and building my character up before delving to deep into the story. But my example is dying light 2 . A hundred question marks pop up and hundred more parkour challenges and i cant complete this because im not leveled up and it's overwhelming. And I run into character after character by the time I get back into the main story I don't know who is who anymore. I've absorbed so much information my brain is on hyper overdrive I lose interest about 40 hours in. I guess my point is I like the progression and pace of The Witcher 3 or Elder scrolls Skyrim. Infact i just recently i started a fresh run of Skyrim and im happy and totally content with it😅.
Next year will be the year of GTA 6 I hope.
Tbh I've always felt this was the case ever since the golden age of indies (Super Meat Boy, Bastion, The Binding of Isaac, etc).
Investment bankers saw annual profit numbers and bought themselves into boardrooms where they'll push for whatever they think will profit most even if they don't play games. Just say no to IPOs, it's not free money.
It sucks that people are losing their jobs, but unfortunately it's bound to happen. It's not like the C.E.O's who made all the problematic decisions that caused games to suck for the past decade are going to step down instead of firing people. They'll continue to make those bad decisions until they are forcibly removed by the shareholders, who are also not very bright when it comes to game development.
For the next couple years though we have plenty of indie games coming out! It's also a fantastic time to pick up and try older games that you've never played before. Take time and enjoy things!
the big boys have made, basically the same game for decades.... Indie devs can make whatever game they are passionate about. It's refreshing.
Honestly, even with all the beloved IPs we'd lose, as far as I'm concerned it'd be a net gain if all AAA devs and publishers collapsed and split into tons of smaller studios.
Four of my favorite indie games right now is Roboquest, Nine Sols, Pennys big break and Trepang2. These titles to me have great concepts and game play and graphics not to mention they are selling for cheap compare to a 70 dollar triple a game.
I love your Analogy of the trees :D who thought deforestation had a positive effect
Liked the topic as the eddit a lot, please more of these!
The REAL Future of Gaming is "AA" and Indi and that's been clear for YEARS now.
Indies care about making the best game they can make. AAA's care about the money, and the best way to fleece more from you to appease the shareholders. Support your favorite Indie dev, they deserve it more.
Greed ruins everything eventually. Don't go public if you want to keep a player-centric mindset as developer, that is all.
I hope Larian, Warhorse and everyone else who is up and coming will find the wisdom never to sell out or grow beyond their natural limits. It never ends well.
What will be especially interesting in the coming year will be the "Covid-Games".
Quite a lot of people started to get into game-dev during the pandemic, so now after 4-5 years many of those games will come to fruition, even from single devs.
2025 might well become THE year of Indie.
2023 was already amazing for AAA anyway. Especially for Japan studios. All these future titles take almoat a decade now to release.
Its not a breather its terminal decline , people hate AAA firms
There's a new GTA coming likely next year. That will be a big ass tree
For the players, it's time to take a step back and look at the library of games they have yet to play. If not, do something else for fun.
I love how people keep saying this is fantastic for indie developers and gamers at large but neglect to mention or even process the fact that there are people who do not like these kinds of games.
I used to not be a fan of indie games, but the indie shooter market has been straight up destroying any AAA attempts at single-player shooters for years now.
Between Dusk, Amid Evil, Turbo Overkill, Selaco, Ion Fury, they have really turned a corner and revived the singleplayer shooter market that AAA has abandoned.
Even if you are an RPG fan, Pathfinder WoTR and Disco Elysium are AA games and my favorite RPGs in years.
Indie games aren't just cutesy 2d platformers anymore. They are making full-length games of incredible quality.
It's because gamers don't care about anyone but themselves sadly. Unless it effects them they will not care
@@EldritchAugur We mean genres not indie vs AAA
Great take Cohh, always love your gamedev centric discussions 👍
The Industry is definitely shifting and I hope for the better, it's to time for indies to rise!
For an example of how things generally go with this stuff, good and bad, look to CD Projekt Red and Larian. Look at where they started and where they are now. There are studios making AA games and so high quality as to be barely recognisable above AAA. There will be places for these devs to go when the "big trees" lay them off. Those big guys are clearly only chasing profit, that's not good or bad but its how capitalism works and the companies are so large that they don't see the ground anymore. There will ALWAYS be a place for gaming, if the big guys leave to chase the latest mobile or live service trend, someone WILL pick up the slack as the market is still there. Just gotta be patient and clear some of that backlog guys 🙂
Now I just have to figure out how to pay back the money I borrowed to pay rent the last three years :D
for me its great, its like half and half. You take the best games out there and use mods from talented individuals and it enhances the experience so much. VR is great once you overcome the hurdle to buy a quest 2 and set it up on your pc... Now you can mod the best games into VR. Cyberpunk VR is awesome. So are many other games, just needs a little time and work to tweak them all.
The underlying cause, why big AAA are falling, is not clear (and should).
I suspect money investors are simply afraid. With the kind of backlash and vitriol games are received these days, who would want to invest in this sector? You mention more "sun" (more money) going to indie developers, but it may just be that there is simply less investment, and the games that get made are those labors of love with much less resources than the AAA.
What a great video! Really enjoyed the edit. Well done guys!
It's felt like this since 2014
AAA games will be still around, but sane people buy it later on discount.
Indie games is awesome on PC, but it less appreciated in consoles communities.
Indie companies take risks, they try something new/fun. And that makes games feel awesome and "new"
These indie studios should swoop in and take the triple a devs that are being laid off for their own games. We are definitely going through a reinvention of gaming in some sense.
It took a long time but they are finally realizing that people who love what they are creating are creating good things.
Only gameplay and optimalisation. Indie fame and are indie games. You decide by your money and your time to play.
makes me even more excited for Wayward Realms
Corporate games is bad for us, "AAA" as almost completely turned into these Corporate games that nickle and dime players for everything and do not deliver on a fun experience
The problem with those many indy games is, there are so many, most of those companies only get a very small bite from the cake. So we won't get those grand production titles. And to be honest, i want those. It is okay to have indy titles. But i am much more interested in things like BG3. With a huge story. Small indy studios can't provide these. Even Larian had hundreds of people working on BG3.