Schreier: Firewalk Studios is being shut down (Official and Neon Koi is being shut down)

[Mnementh]

twintail said:

Mnementh said:

I keep seeing the sentiment that the market is not ready for smaller games, but I see no actual backing for this. Actually the grounds were never better for smaller titles ever before. That is the reason we see more than 10K titles released in a year on Steam, numbers that were absolutely unthinkable 10 or 20 years ago. Obviously not everything is a success, but that was the case 10 or 20 years ago as well, you just never have a guarantee for anything. But the market can now sustain so many smaller titles which is amazing. There are whole niches that generates a lot of titles each year, because the devs can stay afloat.

I think this "there is no place for A and AA" stuff is a misguided narrative to support the absolution of risky AAA titles. But that model is unsustainable.  Gamers, consumers or people on the internet also have no influence over anyone getting fired. That is on the publishers. Blaming the customers or posters on the internet feels like icky whitewashing of the roles of the publishers. The reason they don't support AA anymore is not that there is no ROI for them, the reason is the publishers all only want Fortnite level of ROI, and that they will not get this with an AA title. But not everything can be a Fortnite level success, so studios get closed with no room for failure. Like the room that existed for many others.

So the closing of Firewalk is on Sony. They got greedy, they wanted in into the big Live Service money, but that means risk it in an all or nothing gamble. And if they land on nothing, than it isn't the managers that get laid off, but the dev team. Which means teams are unable to grow on their experiences and failures. They have to kick it out of the park instantly, or they lose their job. No wonder so many going indie. Thats also not easy, but not as cold as this corporate bullshit.

I don't think the high number of content is automatically a good thing. How many of these games are seeing a sizeable enough audience. How many are making an ROI?

Games are being made because there's obviously money to be made, but at the same time visibility is a major issue when there's so much stuff coming out. And if you aren't getting that visibility, then that's an issue. 

There's also the question of services like GamePass and PS+, the general prices of games, and how these ultimately play into how ppl spend money. 

Perhaps there's something I've missed about AA games. But I don't think the evidence proves that AA gaming is striving as a whole market, but I'll concede there's probably not a lot suggesting otherwise. 

"I don't think the high number of content is automatically a good thing. How many of these games are seeing a sizeable enough audience. How many are making an ROI?"

The high number is indicating that enough of these make enough ROI to keep the developer afloat, as a lot of devs also make more than one game. That is the thing that is denied by statement that there is no room for A, AA or indies.

"Games are being made because there's obviously money to be made"

Exactly. The mid to small games make overall more money than ever before because gaming as a whole grew.

"but at the same time visibility is a major issue when there's so much stuff coming out"

Yea. And again, that is not really something new. In any platform with many games (think PS2 for example) the visibility was bad for single titles. But the market itself was big enough and is big enough today, that a sizeable part of these devs can survive.

"There's also the question of services like GamePass and PS+, the general prices of games, and how these ultimately play into how ppl spend money."

Doesn't seem really matter for Steam. And indies are mostly positive about Gamepass, because it counteracts the visibility problem you mentioned. And they get some money right away.

"Perhaps there's something I've missed about AA games."

You have games like Palworld, Black Myth Wukong, Stellar Blade, Lies of P that actually do well. Nintendo actually does AA pretty often to great success, for instance Pikmin 4 or Mario Wonder.