Is AAA gaming facing a reckoning?

[Mike S]

Obviously this is nothing like the gaming crash of 1983, but the overall industry is facing massive layoffs right now at almost all major studios ranging from first party console manufacturers to third party publishers. Huge games like Suicide Squad and Skull & Bones among others are crashing and burning. An FPS Star Wars game from Respawn rumored to be a Mandalorian game and a Twisted Metal live service from PlayStation got canned presumably as an effect of these layoffs. Xbox is putting more of its games on competing platforms and PlayStation has talked about making a bigger commitment to PC all to help increase sales of their games with balloning budgets like Spider-Man 2 costing around $330 million.

Meanwhile, while all of this is happening, we have games from smaller studios like PalWorld and Helldivers II taking the world by storm among other smaller successes and Nintendo just continues to do Nintendo. The question is simple. Are we seeing the bubble finally burst on huge budget games? Are gamers finally waking up and being more discerning with their purchases?

 

[Jerroddragon]

Maybe but sadly as AI becomes easier to use...I think that only workers will be affected. It should make making games so much easier in 5 years but in ten years I will be able to make any video game I basically want with the right AI

 

[Mike S]

Maybe but sadly as AI becomes easier to use...I think that only workers will be affected. It should make making games so much easier in 5 years but in ten years I will be able to make any video game I basically want with the right AI

Scary to think about.

 

[Jerroddragon]

Scary to think about.

As someone who works in an office...yeah

I have no idea how I or most people will have jobs. Once AI is just you telling it do something and does most humans will have zero use for businesses

If we set things up right then we could infinite art and most people will be happy making art over working but....from how those in power rule I doubt they would be willing to share the wealth to make that kinda world

 

[Mike S]

As someone who works in an office...yeah

I have no idea how I or most people will have jobs. Once AI is just you telling it do something and does most humans will have zero use for businesses

If we set things up right then we could infinite art and most people will be happy making art over working but....from how those in power rule I doubt they would be willing to share the wealth to make that kinda world

So you think they’ll just switch completely to AI to make these huge games rather than try to replicate the huge success of these smaller games?

 

[Jerroddragon]

So you think they’ll just switch completely to AI to make these huge games rather than try to replicate the huge success of these smaller games?

I don't think it will happen over night but I think it will replace a few artists, so say a team has 20 artist now it will be 15....then 10...then 5....then a handful at max.

I don't think most games will ever be just an AI making games, but I think the teams of 100-1000 people will shrink year after year once AI becomes a part of the companies tool set

The way the Devs even ones like the GTA dev team (which has endless money) shows companies don't care at all about the people working on games, so thats why I'm doom and gloom about it. The Tech is wonderful but the people in charge only want to see money and having one less artist can save you 100's of thousand of dollars because of insurance, office space etc.

 

[Nick]

Naughty Dog just got rid of crunch altogether so that’s positive for the space at least in terms of how those that work on the games are treated.

 

[Mike S]

Naughty Dog just got rid of crunch altogether so that’s positive for the space at least in terms of how those that work on the games are treated.

Let’s see how long that lasts now that they have less people. Crunch is sadly going to get so much worse industry wide after all this.