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?

26.1k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

5.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

5.2k

u/Akrevics Oct 02 '24

no one asked for a cartoony shooter/team game (overwatch clone) in a market already saturated with them. just because Fortnite is big doesn't mean we need 50 more, especially not with battle passes, f**k off.

2.4k

u/Lord-Norse Oct 02 '24

Exactly, and that’s the problem with executives making the big decisions, they don’t actually know what people want. They see a graph saying Fortnite made 70 bajillion dollars and think “ah yes if we make a slightly different clone of this we will also make 70 bakillion dollars”, which isn’t how the video game market works.

1.1k

u/Golden_Hour1 Oct 02 '24

It's mind boggling these companies even survive. They don't even understand the market

30

u/tree_squid Oct 02 '24

Bean counters buy successful companies and then make them do unsuccessful things and refuse to do successful things because those don't have the potential to become infinite money-printers like Fortnite.

3

u/b0w3n Oct 02 '24

The best part is when they bean counters remove all the things that made the company successful in the first place. Investors and game consumers are diametrically opposed. A few lightning strikes in a bottle has brought money in year after year. It's amazing it has lasted as long as it has, to be honest.

See: Every company EA and Activision has bought.

Make good games, they'll sell. Let your creative people be creative. Stop making games have metrics and "max daily logins" to be met in the design choices. Stop doing live games too. Diablo and Sim City don't need to be always online.

Gaming is also one of the few industries you can't really monopolize since, at its core, it's art. There will always be new companies and new ideas, it's an investor's worst nightmare because they can't completely bully people out of the market at all. And you can't even out technology them, pixel and 2d indie games sell just as well as 3d AAAAAAAAAA games (how many As are we up to now, 5?)

1

u/CaptainBayouBilly Oct 02 '24

Risk averse is cancer to creativity.