When the gaming market crashes it won’t be with a bang or an explosion it will be with a whimper. The gaming industry is one of the largest growing industries of all time succeeding with books movies and other legacy industries becoming a titian among titans. It’s hard to believe that something that screams “too big to fail” all over could ever crash and it is unlikely it will crash shortly but closer to our present than you think. The crash will not be caused by a single devastating blow but by a death of a thousand cuts. Cuts that if left to fester and decay will poison the industry that is built around those cuts seeing them as a necessary evil instead of what they are There are multiple avenues in which the current system in place in the industry fails repeatedly. To major AAA developers and investors, these cuts seem like a drop in the bucket for them, yes in the grand scheme of things losing a couple million dollars by releasing a bad game is fine. Employee turnover? Just get more employees and reviewers not enjoying the game then pay them off. Game studios are unable to deliver a game that sells unrealistic sales numbers then liquidate the company and sell it off for a quick profit. Selling a game at a sixty(now seventy) dollar price tag is not enough anymore than loading it with microtransactions to make its money back. What happens when you can’t afford for a game to be a flop, when you have no more employees you can’t exploit, when you have no more studios that make games, when the consumer gets fed up with predatory practices in games they pay for? This short-sightedness leads to an upsetting present and an ominous future.

Game development is like a machine, there are many different moving parts to make it work, every part is essential, and each deserves an equal amount of respect but sadly isn’t always the case. Game developers take many forms and shapes. There are game directors who keep the vision of the game intact, concept artists who develop the game’s personality through their art, game testers who make sure the game bugs are dealt with before the initial release, and the code monkeys themselves who pound away making lines of code to create a playable experience. The human element of games should always be a priority but what happens when that human element is used and abused to the point of breaking? Crunch is a common practice used in the game industry where employees spend inhumane overtime hours in their office (usually without overtime pay) slaving away at their desk trying to get as much work done as possible in the hope that the game ends up worth the sacrifice. The sad part about this is crunch in the gaming industry is often self-inflicted due to the culture surrounding the industry and the expectations from peers this is called “ good crunch”.  In the paper   Game Industry Discourses Perpetuate Unsustainable Labor Practices by Amanda C. Cote and Brandon C. Harris

m. “In the case of crunch and labor practices, this research considers “good crunch,” the self-imposed or scheduled crunch that developers endure to make the best games possible, as a form of cruel optimism. This is because developers set good crunch up in opposition to (indeed, as a solution to) problems of bad crunch or extended overtime imposed on developers by publishers or technology”. Crunch whether it be self-inflicted or mandated by upper management is inherently toxic to the industry, as crunch has become a commonplace practice instead of a last resort the industry becomes reliant on a practice that destroys employees.

Game reviews are intrinsically linked to the games industry and thus connected to the game development process. It is expected by industry leaders that a major release will not only be profitable but will also be reviewed well hoping to increase profits further due to good press. . In Nikolai Surminskis’s The Role of Video Game Quality in financial markets Journal he states “Data on the financial success of a game is only available weeks or months after the game’s launch. This means that during the release, game quality measured through reviews constitutes the only new information released to the market.”. Making a good game is the hard part and is in the hands of the developers, the same developers that are being crunched to make said game good will eventually lead to burnout. When developers burn out mistakes get made, people quit, and holes in development start to show. These holes cause games to get worse in the process meaning that the same practice the industry uses to make their games is the same process making the games review worse.

The Game industry loves to chase trends because it is seen as an easier way to make a profit in an increasingly expensive market. When “World of Warcraft” came out and made an absurd amount of money everyone wanted to make an MMO same with Call of Duty and Fortnite. Now game companies are not just chasing genre but copying a popular marketing strategy called ( GAAS) or games as a service. This strategy is used to make a single game last as long and be as profitable as possible usually by the implementation of content packs before and after the initial release and microtransactions. GAAS is greatly inspired by the mobile game market which profits nearly double the console market as seen in the J Clements Market renevue chart done in 2022. The problem with GAAS is that it’s a mobile game system being used on games with a premium price tag. There’s a big difference between being subjected to microtransactions in a free-to-download game that you play for an hour max on your phone versus a premium 70$ product that you need to pay hundreds of dollars for a console to have an opportunity to play and still needing to sell more money to get all of the content it has to offer. It puts pressure on consumers to pay more for less and effectively lowers engagement instead of retaining it.

References

Clement, J. (2023, August 29). Global gaming revenue by segment 2022. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/292751/mobile-gaming-revenue-worldwide-device/#:~:text=In%202022%2C%20mobile%20games%20generated,U.S.%20dollars%20in%20global%20revenue.

Cote, A. C., & Harris, B. C. (2021). The cruel optimism of “good crunch”: How game industry discourses perpetuate unsustainable labor practices. New Media & Society, 25(3), 609–627. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211014213

Surminski, N. (2023, June 3). The role of video game quality in financial markets. . https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1773250/FULLTEXT01.pdf