It Is Wednesday: Bad Year Blimp

Welcome back to It Is Wednesday, the very literally titled weekly column to ensure you're getting your five bucks worth outta the Patreon. In this blog I'll be discussing the game industry as a whole and narrative game design ideas.

2024 has sucked for me personally and for the game industry. If you'll forgive the doom and gloom let's do a short recap of only a few highlights in a nine month period of egg-sucking depression.

Layoffs, layoffs, layoffs. Studios that fail getting layoffs, studios that succeed getting layoffs, Bungie sinking like a rock due to mismanagement, but also victorious groups like Tango Gameworks getting shafted. Churn has always been a problem in the industry, shucking experienced developers in favor of exploitable fresh-faced dreamers, but now it's not even churn -- it's just the belt getting tighter and tighter.

Projects are getting nuked, yanked, wiped out, or launched into flaming disaster. The multi-year cycle of corporations desperate for that Fortnite Money has come to pass, sending multiple live service games straight into shallow graves. Concord, the game I talked about last week, just got obliterated and likely will never return. Blue Protocol will never hit the states, dying on delivery. Suicide Squad is clunking along but we all know what's going to happen there.

It feels like a series of comedically bad decisions are coming home to roost, and the rank and file developers are bearing the burden for terrible executive dart-throwing. But I feel the problems extend beyond AAA -- the indie market is completely clogged, it's next to impossible to get noticed without a huge marketing push, and an already volatile industry is even more volatile as a result.

But I'm not really saying anything we haven't heard before. The tailspin has been slow, steady, and sure. But how and when do we pull out of the tailspin? Can we find any positivity in this?

I don't think we're headed for a 1983 crash, the kind that defined the alternate history of Arcade Spirits. Yes, the industry is largely in the hands of a few publishers, but we don't have the absolute synonymous monolith of Atari -- if one giant falls, even if many fall, the whole nascent concept of video games doesn't get squished in the mainstream as it once did.

But a shrinking industry, that I can see. "Too big to fail" AAAs will continue on in some form or get merged and consolidated, while indies keep trying and trying. Eventually equilibrium must be found; a non-zero amount of Game Industry that levels off. And hopefully with that, we may find some peace.

I'll be largely on the outside looking in, no doubt -- I'm retiring from my day job due to disability this year, as the Bad Year Blimp is very much a personal struggle for personal health. It's slowed down development this month, and no doubt. But I do plan to continue on with game development as much as I can, even if it's as some side note weirdo hobbyist. And if that plan changes, I'll let you know.

...man, bummer of a Wednesday blog. But it's what was on my mind, so hey. If anyone has a subject they want me to rant about next week, hit me up. Slide into my DMs.