r/gaming • u/CiabattaKatsuie Console • Oct 01 '24

The games industry is undergoing a 'generational change,' says Epic CEO Tim Sweeney: 'A lot of games are released with high budgets, and they're not selling'

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/the-games-industry-is-undergoing-a-generational-change-says-epic-ceo-tim-sweeney-a-lot-of-games-are-released-with-high-budgets-and-theyre-not-selling/

Tim Sweeney apparently thinks big budget games fail because... They aren't social enough? I personally feel that this is BS, but what do you guys think? Is there a trend to support his comments?

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u/JohnnyJayce Oct 01 '24

Game studios should take note from Hollywood. Eventually you are putting too much money into your project. Money that doesn't even need to be put into it.

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u/TheWuffyCat Oct 02 '24

The money isn't the issue. The people spending the money thinking that means they understand what makes a game good, is the issue. Corporate heads and finance people should not be dictating what's in a game, but they are, in part because they're investing a lot of money.

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u/Difficult-Celery-891 Oct 02 '24

I think developing a good team of developers and not firing them right after a game is launched is pretty important too. I don't believe it's just a gaming industry issue but companies don't put enough money into staff training and retention. They should treat good developers and managers like star athletes and work on their bullpens.

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u/Golden-Owl Switch Oct 02 '24

“If we reduce the number of employees for better short-term financial results, employee morale will decrease. I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world.”

  • Satoru Iwata, CEO of Nintendo, 2013

Note that this was during their worse years of the Wii U era

It’s important to have corporate leaders who understand both the business AND game development aspects of their company and industry. Without that experience and personal investment, a company will not achieve meaningful long term growth

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u/Princess_Of_Thieves Oct 02 '24 edited Oct 02 '24

I want to add that, during same said era, Iwata and other high level employees at Nintendo took large pay cuts. I believe Iwata himself saw a paycut of 50% personally. There are a lot of lessons other companies could take from Iwata and his leadership style.

I'm willing to get had it been anyone else, the Wii U may well have been the end of Nintendo in the console race. Dumber corpo shitheads would just axe the console division to save money and move on. Say what you will about Nintendo as a company, but that would have been a tragedy. Thank goodness they had someone who could appreciate the art as well as the business.

EDIT: Another good quote;

"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer, but in my heart, I am a gamer."

— Iwata speaking at GDC

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u/TheRustyBird Oct 02 '24

There are a lot of lessons other companies could take from Iwata and his leadership style.

this would require that "shame" actually be a thing in corporate america

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u/Vytral Oct 02 '24

They would be ashamed of cutting their own wages. Those people are only ashamed of being less rich

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u/slingslangflang Oct 02 '24

That’s why all these shitty games are “big budget” the shit isn’t going into game development. It’s going into bullshit admin c suite pay. Just like healthcare huge wastes of money.

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u/Princess_Of_Thieves Oct 02 '24

Just like healthcare huge wastes of money.

Uh.... what?!

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u/Didifinito Oct 03 '24

I think he thinks the healthcare money is missmanaged leading to wasted money and a worse product and it would be the same with the suits in gaming companys

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u/Princess_Of_Thieves Oct 03 '24

OK, if that's the case then yeah, that's fair enough. I do hope they expand on their statement though cause... hoo boy can it be misread fairly easily.

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u/SuperSaiyanIR Oct 02 '24

Nintendo maybe a piece of shit company to consumers and customers alike, but they know how to make games. Unfortunately, Pokemon isn't one of them, but hopefully that changes.

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u/panthereal Oct 02 '24

They only publish pokemon, Game Freak develops it.

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u/Cluelesswolfkin Oct 02 '24

Game freak needs to update their team members to newer ways to make games

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u/Fatdap Oct 02 '24

The Pokémon Company is a merch company at this point.

They likely barely give a fuck about the games because they print so much money off everything else.

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u/Golden-Owl Switch Oct 02 '24 edited Oct 02 '24

Personally speaking, as both a consumer and (former) developer, that’s the most important thing

I buy a game because I want a good game, and Nintendo, to this day, consistently makes good games

Not every project they make is maximally profitable, but every bit adds to their total portfolio, which pays serious dividends in the long term thanks to remakes and remasters

Too many other big game companies nowadays are too busy floundering around with other nonsense and aren’t focusing on that most basic of principles

I personally feel that Nintendo still understands the core values of the craft, and definitely are NOT a “piece of shit company to customers and consumers”. But we’ll agree to disagree there

Also they aren’t in charge of Pokemon. They only have a partial ownership over TPCi

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u/The4th88 Oct 02 '24

I buy a game because I want a good game, and Nintendo, to this day, consistently makes good games

Holy shit, this.

It doesn't matter what console gen in history you're talking about. You could walk into a shop at any time since the release of the N64, buy a brand new console and any random Nintendo IP launch title blind and you're guaranteed of a few things:

  • The game will be good.

  • The game will be finished.

  • The game will be playable on your hardware.

It's a sad indictment of the rest of the gaming industry that at least points 2 and 3 aren't the standard, but that's the current gaming environment.

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u/JirachiWishmaker Oct 02 '24

Heck, bump it back to the SNES. SNES has one of the greatest launch title lineups in console history. NES launch lineup was pretty cool too, but definitely took a shotgun approach and not all games landed as well.

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u/Sanguinusshiboleth Oct 02 '24

This is what helped them in the American market when the NES was first released; the 1983 viseo game saw the American market flooded with cheap games, causing companies like Atari to massive loss of consumer confidence. When Nintendo came it focused on making few better games, which sold better, where a better use of resources and limited the supply of games to avoid market saturation.

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u/shadowylurking Oct 02 '24

“Game would be finished” is a crazy underrated met expectation

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u/maladroitx Oct 02 '24

Also, Nintendo doesn't spend 57754677 trillion dollars making their games because Nintendo Switch is a very simple console that can't run something quite complex like most Playstation, Xbox or AAA PC games. Less money spent = better financial management = less people being fired (although this can still happen) = more willingness from devs to try out new ideas = more creative, fun and quality games, and I'm saying this as a PS owner that don't have a Switch.

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u/alexchrist Oct 02 '24

If you have the money for it, then I would highly recommend buying a switch just to play Tears of the Kingdom. It's honestly the best gaming experience I had last year

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u/XoRMiAS Oct 02 '24

Yeah, it’s already one of my favorite games.
I think a huge part is that they could reuse a lot from BotW. Just goes to show that if you’re making a sequel, you shouldn’t use it as an opportunity to cheap out; use it as an opportunity to deliver a game with twice as much content.

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u/Pharmakokinetic Oct 02 '24

Yeah, Nintendo has their own issues of "the Japanese businessmen really still do not understand the internet at all and don't get why people want internet features like cloud saves" but, fundamentally they still just provide games to people the way they have since the late 80s now

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u/Synthetic_Thought Oct 02 '24

To be fair, Gamefreak makes Pokemon, and the IP is shared between them, Nintendo, and Creatures Inc, who mainly handle merchandise and the TCG. The games are simply a means to make and sell merchandise, which as far as I'm aware, is the real moneymaker for Pokemon. Unfortunately, this means the games will never have the time needed to be really fleshed out experiences, as they're moreso excuses to get 100+ new potential toy designs into the public consciousness.

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u/SuperSaiyanIR Oct 02 '24

I mean if that were the case, Pokemon Legends: Arceus wouldn't exist. It was probably the best game they put out in almost a decade and they clearly are trying something new but then again, Scarlet and Violet made me feel they stopped trying that. I have high hopes for Z-A because I played the crap out of X&Y on the 3DS as a kid and seeing Arceus get so much love, makes me feel hopeful about Z-A.

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u/blanklikeapage Oct 02 '24

I would like to add, that Pokémon Legends Arceus and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet were developed simultaneously by two different teams. I expect Z-a to be more more of a mix after Gamefreak got an idea what worked in the respective games and what didn't. Just because we didn't get certain features from one game into another doesn't mean it disappeared but maybe how much people like it was underestimated and changing it in the other game doesn't work in such a short time.

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u/Synthetic_Thought Oct 02 '24

I do think that Gamefreak wants to make better Pokemon games (despite some nonsense Masuda's said) and they're now at a point where they have the manpower to experiment a bit, but it still seems like they're not given (or giving themselves) the time to make really polished products, at least not by Nintendo standards. Legends Arceus had some pretty well made gameplay ideas but there was still a lot of polish it needed, especially imo in the environments

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u/ChronoLink99 Console Oct 02 '24

They nickel and dime, but I wouldn't say "piece of shit company". If you generally don't try to profit off their IP, they don't bother you.

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u/just_someone27000 Oct 03 '24

Nintendo is still better for consumers than others. Ubisoft very easily comes to mind of a company that's much worse for consumers by a very large margin

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u/Jeremy_McAlistair88 Oct 02 '24

Hmmm. They make games with good gameplay, absolutely yes. But games with good story ... So far I've not been impressed.

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u/zebrasmack Oct 02 '24

Satoru Iwata is still missed, and the void he left at nintendo is still felt. sad the current president is all business and not a gamer.

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u/GatchPlayers Oct 02 '24

They still release great games though, Nintendo never change even with iwatas passing, their salary is low compared to the others in the industry.

What the fuck are you talking about.

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u/zebrasmack Oct 02 '24

You should pay closer attention to everything Nintendo has been up to since then. It's a bit much for me to do all the research for just a comment, so i recommend watching some youtuber or something to catch yourself up.

to clarify, nintendo developers are brilliant, their lawyers evil, and their management doesn't care about consumers just profit. luckily, there is overlap, and some of the developers can keep them a little in check (think Miyamoto). But man. it's rough in nintendo land.

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u/GatchPlayers Oct 02 '24

But the devs and games are still great that's all that matters to me.

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u/iwritefakereviews Oct 02 '24

Okay but some of the stuff they do as a company does effect the consumer and they go out of their way to shit on their die hard fans a lot of the times.

It's not something small either, they're constantly threatening people with legal action for emulation (games they don't even sell anymore), modding, all sorts of content creation (videos, articles, etc.), Hell, even organizing a tournament for Super Smash Brothers can lead you into hot legal water.

I agree with you, they do make consistently good games, and you might still not care about the issues people are dealing with, but you shouldn't ask a rude question then follow up with "I don't care they make good games" when someone takes the time to give you a genuine answer.

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u/GatchPlayers Oct 02 '24

Emulation and videos I agree. Though the emulation part people are shitting on them for the games that they do still sell, people are bitching about the death of yuzu and ryujinx. People always say that but they emulate and bitch about Nintendo stopping people from emulation games they currently sell. They don't extract their own roms, they download it illegally. They're not the 10% who knows how to extract roms from a cartridge.

The videos are just dumb and they really shouldn't take them down.

The smash tournament stuff, well I'll do that aswell when there was a major scandals of grooming and pedophelia in the scene, pretty sure that's a good enough reason to try to stop something.

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u/iwritefakereviews Oct 02 '24

Is emulation illegal? Like when they went after the ROM sites I kind of get that because it's their intellectual property being hosted somewhere but from my understanding them going after the emulation developers is only working because the devs don't have the money to fight them in court, but the precedent is that emulation itself isn't illegal. I genuinely don't know, but I would guess that the inner workings of how the Switch OS works could be considered a trade secret.

Smash: I mean sure, but you could say that about literally any Nintendo community or anything marketed at kids. Chris Chan raping his mom doesn't mean we go shut down the local Pokémon TCG tourneys. Plus they paid for the hardware and games, I don't think Nintendo should have a say even if they're awful people. (I will say; most of my opinion in this was from when Moist Critical was having issues with them while organizing a melee tourney)

I guess my argument really does center around: they have a bad reputation of constantly pursuing legal action against people that can't afford to fight it and often their targets are the people that actually want to support them. I do see where you're coming from, but I hope that you can see where I'm coming from as well, or at least understand why people have a problem with how they've been acting.

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u/CadeMan011 Oct 02 '24

I miss Iwata

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u/Alicenchainsfan Oct 02 '24

Part of why I’m passionate about video games and pro sports. There must be real soul or athletic talent for the product to be good. Creative spark, something inherent. Can’t just work a lot and be good, there has to be something else.

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u/Outrageous-Eye-6658 Oct 02 '24

Japanese culture has a much higher emphasis on respect in general

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u/Stargate525 Oct 02 '24

There really is a 'build it and they will come' aspect to company work. If your priority is your employees, then your customers, then your partners, you don't need to focus on the profits because the profits will come out of the quality and loyalty you've cultivated.

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u/CaptainBayouBilly Oct 02 '24

Corporate culture is anti human. 

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u/TheWuffyCat Oct 02 '24

Right, that's a part of what I'm saying. The Execs go "We're <insert long-standing studio name here> we make good products." and then forget that the reason that studio makes good products is it's team. They don't trust the team, so they don't attribute their success to the team, so they don't care about the team, and so the team doesn't perform for them.

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u/TurelSun Oct 02 '24 edited Oct 02 '24

Yup, and guess who they get rid of when the game they kept interfering with ends up failing. And then even when it succeeds, guess who gets all the credit and profits.

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u/TheWuffyCat Oct 02 '24

Capitalism at work, my friends.

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u/TurelSun Oct 02 '24

Indeed. It would be a very interesting world if people could just get together to make games actually for fun with no concern for making money or their own survival.

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u/Twilightdusk Oct 02 '24

Just look at Larian Studios. Baldur's Gate 3 would never have been as good as it is if the developers working on it hadn't honed their skills with Divinity: Original Sin and it's sequel. They've built knowledge and frameworks within their company for making exactly this sort of game and that's how they were able to knock it out of the park. If they had fired all of their developers between projects and re-hired new ones like they were replaceable cogs in a machine, Baldur's Gate 3 would probably just be a footnote in gaming history, if it ever got made in the first place.

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u/Thomy151 Oct 02 '24

And accepting that sometimes a game even from a good team isn’t going to do amazingly. Markets are a fickle thing and even the best team can’t predict them sometimes, so don’t fire your entire studio because 1 game did just ok

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u/Jellylegs_19 Oct 02 '24

Nintendo for all their faults is actually really good at this. It's a real pain to get a job at Nintendo but when you do you're treated pretty nice. They invest heavily in their employees with excellent pay. I think that's why their games always have that feel of magic.

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u/Curse3242 Oct 02 '24

Exactly all of this is damage control. The gaming industry won't change unless there's flops in succession

Companies are scared of the devs creating their own studios, there scared of giving devs power to create their own games.

Simply make the conditions for devs so good they don't think about leaving, allow the team to make such a successful game they don't want to leave, don't spend stupid money on marketing research & creating trendy gameplay shit.

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u/ryannelsn Oct 02 '24

What, like Nintendo?? The toy company???

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u/CaptainBayouBilly Oct 02 '24

This is a problem across humanity. The human beings that create things we need and love are treated as disposable. Those creators and innovators give up their time they will never get back only to be tossed away like and sandwich wrapper. 

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u/th3davinci Oct 02 '24

I think it's a combination of the tech disease where the only way to progress in your career is switching companies but also the fact that video game devs are creatives. People accept lower pay and worse conditions to be in game dev. They likely have lower threshold to switching companies if the new project doesn't suit them after leaving. Plus, staying just after launch means an extra line on your CV.

Companies in general need to work on their internal employee pipelines. If you eviscerate your dev grunts every X years you lose a lotta knowledge because software dev really hates constant iterations and game dev is constant iteration. It's the reason why so many games have spaghetti code.

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u/xenoriddley Oct 02 '24

no, I'd argue the money is also an issue. Didn't one of the new Tomb Raider games, I think the 2nd one, sell like 5 million copies, but it didn't meet sales expectations due to how much it cost to make?

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u/TheWuffyCat Oct 02 '24

Right, sure, but it's possible for a game to cost a lot, and then make a lot. The problem is that the people wielding the money think that more money = more success, like it's just a money printing machine.

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u/xenoriddley Oct 02 '24

Ah, I get what you're saying. Kinda like the GTA/RDR syndrome? They put so much money in and make so much, so that's all other companies see and try to emulate instead of taking notes on what actually makes those games popular?

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u/TheWuffyCat Oct 02 '24

Exactly, yeah. Finance (like, investment banking) is very simple, really; you look at trends of what's been a successful strategy, and you repeat it. Only a handful of investment strategies involve trying anything truly novel. Then, when these finance people go into gaming, they use the same approach, but just regurgitating the same thing doesn't work in a creative field. Especially if you don't understand what made the previous thing good in the first place!

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u/portalscience Oct 02 '24

I think FFXIV is a good example of this, generally. Each expansion has had increased budget and has been better received. Visible places they have spent their budget:

  • more voice acting
  • more assets (digital art)
  • more marketing (to get more players)
  • more servers (to allow for more players)

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u/Southpaw535 Oct 02 '24

Have Square ever been happy with sales figures for the last few years?

The impression I've got is it's more a projected profits problem rather than an actual "this didn't make the money we needed" problem?

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u/ArthurBonesly Oct 02 '24

What happened there was a capitalism problem. The issue was the projected return raised the stock value of the company. Even though it made a profit, the profit didn't meet the projected expectations that they had told shareholders.

The issue wasn't that the game failed to make money, but that it failed to increase capital gains.

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u/Spaciax Oct 02 '24

It’s amazing how finance bros manage to ruin every single market they touch. It’s like the legend of king Midas except instead of turning to gold they turn everything they touch into shit.

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u/fatamSC2 Oct 02 '24

It's the same with all media production these days (movies/shows/games/etc.), besides all the trash AAA games another good example is the Rings of Power show. These companies think just blindly throwing money at something will make it good, instead of trying to hire people that actually know what they're doing. 1 good person is worth 10 highly paid idiots that don't know anything about the subject matter

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u/TheWuffyCat Oct 02 '24

Exactly. Just because x director is the primo ticket right now, and y special effects director is the best in the business, doesn't mean squat if no one involved understands the stories or the genre.

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u/throwaway387190 Oct 02 '24

Seems like Execs still think graphics are a huge deal

I can list off so many examples of successful and popular games with poor graphics. Maybe they have amazing gameplay to make up for it, or a really good art style so the game still looks great

Seems really stupid to throw millions of dollars into graphics that model how a character's individual hair strands move

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u/TheWuffyCat Oct 02 '24

Yeah I don't think anyone has ever bought a game just because of the graphics. Sure it's a factor, but is it enough of a factor to justify 60% of the cost of development? I would wager not.

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u/inbredalt Oct 02 '24

It's probably for the best. If these big budget developers leave then it brings about independent devs and others right?

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u/Far_Advertising1005 Oct 02 '24

Business execs when consumers don’t enjoy playing ‘Profit Milker 2: Electric Boogaloo’

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u/Spoopy_Kirei Oct 02 '24

Video game conpanies being led by people who have probably never  played a videogame in their entire life. At least that's how I see it looking how out of touch some of their decisions are

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u/broniesnstuff Oct 02 '24

The money isn't the issue. The people spending the money thinking that means they understand what makes a game good, is the issue

People with money need to stop thinking they know best, about everything. Idiots can be, and often are, stupidly rich.

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u/TheWuffyCat Oct 02 '24

It's almost like capitalism is just a biased lottery.

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u/Wind_Yer_Neck_In Oct 02 '24

At this point I'm convinced that when the next Elder Scrolls finally releases it's going to have menu screens trying to sell you Daedra gear or spells you can only get through their shop.

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u/ToastyMozart Oct 02 '24

The money is very much part of the issue. Blowing over 300 million dollars is stupid even on a slam-dunk like Spider-Man 2, especially when the first game sold fantastically while only costing $90M.

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u/Kyle772 Oct 02 '24

Money is 100% PART of the issue. It really is the same as Marvel in some ways. They put all of this money in so they expect/need money to come out, the massive budgets is WHY every game is full of micro transactions. If a game costs 2 million to make they will eventually recoup that money EVEN IF it flops (to a degree ofc) because the initial investment wasn't a nuclear bomb for the studio. The alternative is you get that massive investment up front and every single person involved in the conversations says "yes but how am I going to get this money back?" with the answer always being "micro transactions, skins, pay to win" etc.