Useful information
Prime News delivers timely, accurate news and insights on global events, politics, business, and technology
I am a fan of transparency. Because, as the great newspaper says, “democracy dies in the dark.” Here is an analogy for the game business where we are reassuring ourselves. I guess it’s time for him to do some noise and wake up because we are losing the voices in our industry.
In the past, we had many people who were too loud and ready to be heard. Trip Hawkins and John Riccitiello loved to find ingenious criticisms of their rivals. Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata did not mind saying that he thought that Kaz Hirai of Sony was “arrogant” by saying that the console wars were over.
For better and bad, the bad guys were like the villains of James Bond, telling us exactly how they were going to kill the good guy before not doing exactly that.
We do not need much bravery, sure. That is fun, but it is often like the politicians who take it out and have had enough of that. However, we need dialogue to improve the industry. We need maps and headlights, as Adam Boyes told me when he started his consulting to fix the playgrounds. I will miss Ted Price, CEO of Insomniac Games, who announced his retirement this week. Price was the only CEO that gave Trump’s middle finger in his first presidency when Trump announced the prohibition of Muslim trips. With TED missing, who is going to do such things in the next four years?
Now, as the industry will possibly face tariffs on games consoles, the industry is too silent. The big Chinese companies, of course, will be low because they do not want to risk the anger of Trump or Elon Musk, who control the magician hordes that the government has resumed. Tim Sweeney, of the Epic Games, observed that the big platform companies that pretended to be Democrats are now giving Trump donations and intend to be Republicans now, hoping to keep the government away from issues such as the antimonopoly application. Who is going to shout at Trump to double the price of games consoles through the rates will kill the game industry? Of course, the CTA left its noisy and clear voice at this point in CES, I do not see that the technology or game industries join the cause and noise.
I felt that I got a data treasure this week from some people who illuminated us not because they worked in the largest companies in the industry. They were only dedicated to transparency.
Some examples. Amir Satvat, the always diligent champion of the game’s work, predicted based on his data that we could see 9,800 layoffs in 2025. That sounds terrible, but prepares us for what is ahead and is a relief compared to the layoffs of approximately 15,000 in 2024.
Matthew BallAnother sidewalk and CEO of Epyllion fell 223 slides in early access in the state of the game industry. He pointed to 10 pilots who helped the games to grow for a decade, eight initiatives that did not realize to maintain growth, 15 challenges that the industry still faces and 11 possible growth engines that could rekindle growth. Ideas helped us see the way ahead.
In another part of the Data Treasury, the Game Developer Conference issued its Annual Industry State Report, based on a survey of 3,000 game developers. He found that game developers have a negative feeling increasing compared to a year ago to the generative AI. They are worried that jobs are being removed. The feeling of unionization is still 58% in favor, a sign that people are not happy. However, they are working more for fear that they can be fired, since the developers of one in 11 games were fired in 2024.
Chainplay said that 93% of Gamefi’s projects, web 3 or blockchain games) are dead, with the value of their schedules scarves 95% of historical maximums. Chainplay analyzed 3,279 web 3 -game projects and discovered that most of them were dead and quoted 5% of their maximum values. However, there are survivors. On average, 316 new projects are launched every year, but 262 projects disappear, indicating that a significant number struggles to stay afloat for more than a few months. Even so, this is not a way to start an industry, with so many scams on the way to convince conventional consumers to immerse themselves.
The handful of web 3 games that make real games can have a real opportunity soon, since the web3 players market is growing. Dappradar reported this week that the number of unique active wallets in web3 games grew by 421% for a year to 7.4 million wallets daily. And although Blockchain games investments fell 38% in 2024 to $ 1.8 billion compared to 2023, there are real and fun web games such as the titles of the network and the telegram that obtain traction with the public.
All these are insicious data of relatively small entities. But where is all the great information of the largest companies in the industry?
One of the sad realities is that large companies are punished for transparency. Electronic Arts revealed this week that the profit objectives for the quarter of December would be lost because Dragon Age: Veilguard and FC 25 Soccer fell short. That shaved $ 4 billion of the EA market value in the trade of shares. That was the equivalent of perhaps four Ubisofts. But do not feel sorry for EA, since you can say that a great game is approaching and recover those four Ubisofts in a short time. If you observe a profit report these days, you will find that companies rarely indicate the number of games sold; Compare that with the movies, where you get box office receipts, but also get estimates about how much it costs to make those films.
I have seen great companies to get people out of our scenarios in our events because they don’t want to risk talking too much. Nintendo and Sony do not say much, except what they are obliged to say in earnings. And since Microsoft swallowed Activision Blizzard, we lost the detailed information in the calls for profits about the results of one of the largest companies in the industry. These companies do not have a press events so much where you can ask questions today.
They go “directly” to consumers in canned video ads, since we have lost the meeting place in person of E3. In the E3, I was sad to see that the company’s CEO had press conferences where they never took questions. And now I am lucky to receive interviews with those CEO. I was sad to see David Haddad renounce the work of the best games at Warner Bros. He was a game statesman, of which there are very few these days, and I was always happy to come to our events and express his views.
Social networks have also taught us to be silent too. If you argue with the players about your game it is really good and feel that it is not, you will lose that argument. So why bother? If social networks are full of misinformation, toxicity, right and unjust criticism, then it seems useless to argue their case there. Nobody wants to argue with everything Internet. Game executives do not want to risk saying something that can be taken from context or twisted after repeating themselves.
However, in games, it is true as in any other industry: good data are power. Satvat’s data means that perhaps one or two years from now on we could return to talents wars in the game industry, which would be good for employment applicants. I believe that the game industry needs to gather its considerable resources and get heard in places like Washington DC and before consumers. You need to strengthen the entertainment software association and speak in your name, since no one is doing it.
Ball surprised people observing that the almost 400 million active monthly users of Roblox means that he has more players than almost the entire Triple-A ecosystem and the towers about central rivals such as Steam or PlayStation.
And yet, Roblox produces a fraction of the time of rival platforms and publishers, and, as Tim Sweeney said by Epic Games, Roblox almost does not have an influence when it comes to overcoming Apple and Google, whose 30 -rate % In games sales on their platforms generated somewhere more than $ 20 billion at mostly profits. That is why Sweeney is so firmly dedicated to winning antimonopoly victories against Google and Apple on behalf of game developers, as he pointed out in a press event in which he promoted third -party mobile games that move to the epic game store. However, too often, Sweeney is alone. Companies like Roblox and Microsoft do not lend their voices to the antimonopoly cause.
We all know that transparency is decreasing even more as the media also drown. Informator of the closed game. Gamesindustry.biz, one of our competitors in Gamesbeat, lost his lifelong leadership during the holidays. When a journalist leaves the industry, that means we will lose thousands of stories in games over time. When I go to industry events, I see more creators than journalists.
We are being replaced by creators who have a more authentic touch with the players, but are often paid by the same people who are communicating information. I can tell you that if the game industry is not healthy, it will not admit the game media. And if the media disappear, the industry will darken.
So my message is simple. In its part of the industry, build a lighthouse and make a map. You know we will need it, and we will need thought leadership. After all, those 15 challenges that Ball pointed out will kill this business if we do not have a clear thought and bold communication.
Source link
