this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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Young millennial/zillennial AAA game dev speaking.
It is 100% a top-down issue. Most devs are talented people. When you're incentivized by quarterly returns as management, over a long enough timeline you begin to care less about game quality and more about stock prices and net revenue in addition to whatever else you need to satisfy your bloated ego, even if you started out as a passionate dev initially. The Indie and AA space is currently thriving because these incentives don't factor in as much for them.
Just like game design, it's an issue with a series of carrots and sticks, not necessarily the people involved (although psychopaths do exist and tend to be overrepresented in c-suites worldwide).
tldr; Capitalism ruins everything.
Unlike most "everything"s out there, games are doing great. Ignore shovelware and corpo schlock, some of the best games ever made have come out in the past few years. Genres get pushed, art gets made, phenomenal brain-off gameplay loops are polished, stories get told. Which world is better:
4 good games come out every year but it's Nintendo and co making them. Also 100k bad games come out every year.
10 good games come out every year. Nintendo and Ubisoft and Sony churn out 29 shareholder revenue generators. There are nine million AI asset flip cash grabs and porn VNs released that year. People are paying 20,000 dollars a month for catgirl jpgs on their gambling phone games.
Who cares about "ratio" of good to schlock? You were never gonna play it all anyway. The last couple years alone saw everything from Balatro to Caves of Qud to Blue Prince.
The worse thing that can happen to your niche hobby is for it to go mainstream. US anime has been consolidated into the Sony/Crunchyroll/Funimation/Rightstuf monster.
Not that I disagree with you but it's more like greed ruins everything
^ ^ ^ This is true, but I also think it's important to note the role repeated financial and cultural success has on one's mind and ego when elevated repeatedly by both the market and culture. You are not only just financially incentivized not to innovate, but your ego continues telling you "my ideas are always good no matter what others think" after these successes, even when that's not necessarily true and you need to be reined in by others so your good ideas can still shine and the bad ones can be challenged. This is how top-down cultural problems in studio disciplines calcify in addition to financial incentives. It's important as a person(s) running a successful studio to not surround yourself with yes-men, which is not an easy task due to the previously-mentioned perverse financial and egoist incentives.
The funny thing is, I've heard about quite a few Indie studios that are just as bad. They do the very same thing we condemn AAA for - crunch, micromanaging, and even harrasment.
I was very surprised to hear that the person who lead the development on monument valley was a massive dick to his employees.(Repeatedly would use management tricks and neg people to the point of depression and feeling worthless).
So, I can totally understand the cultural success thing. Though I'd like to believe that we are better than the corporate management suite, I have to remind myself that anyone can be a dick. You can be a progressive left leaning animal lover and still be a horrible parent.
I have worked only in the indie/AA sphere, and my experience here hasn't been all that great either. But, I had always believed the problem was in the work culture of my country itself, and that I would probably find it better to work with those outside my country. No, people are the same everywhere, just of different flavours.
Though I'd still prefer to work with like minded people vs those place capital over everything else.
This is also true. I've worked at a number of startup indies/AA splinter-studios (studios comprised of former devs of hugely successful AAA franchises), and most of them were horribly mismanaged. The sheer existence of good videogames is a testament to the blood, sweat and tears poured into them by groups of insanely talented people finding ways to work together efficiently.
Capitalism doesn't ruin everything. Corporatization ruins everything.
Who runs capitalism bozo
the local coffee shop isn't a corporation
I'm just so sad that it seems most execs in the field go play tennis or golf after work and think videogames are for losers. there is a lot of contempt and expectation that losers will just forever dish out money. if it wasn't for this strange phenomenon that game engines are so available nowadays, we would be screwed. thank god for the indie space
Tbf most gamers are, indeed, losers.
true but not quite relevant, most people who read books are also losers. free-time activities are really everyone's own prerogative
I mean, the other guy brought it up.
Gamers gamify a system that can be gamed. More at 11.