The thing that blows my mind is that 91 billion dollars was made in 2016, yet all these devs are going under. Where is all that money going?

Does anyone have a list of the devs going under? Because I don't the claim that 80% claim.

It may be true that there's less AAA studios around, but as each one crashes and burns, the employees from these studios often reform into new smaller studios that often times create the innovation that pushes this industry forward. Kind of like a rising Phoenix. Also I bet there are overall more studios when you count the smaller guys on digital networks, just less AAA studios... Is that really a bad thing though? It's easier than ever before to create and develop your own game and now it's even possible to acquire funding through the public via Kickstarter. What have we really lost from AAA studios that we haven't gotten back from the A or AA studios?

Lmao.

OT: It's also wiping out good games, which is essentially what Rol just said.

Actually smaller budget films are not really a big market anymore unless they are comedies. 

What's happened is those types of projects are now on television, thanks to things like HBO, Showcase, AMC, etc. 

That's an example of media changing, game industry has gone through changes too. 

It's $91 billion, but $60 billion of that is either mobile apps or free-to-play online games. And those numbers are revenue only, they obviously don't account for profit. 

He didn't provide a source. I have a feeling that his statement isn't true.

No it isn't. This narrow minded crusaide against "graphics" is silly and is driven by a mix of egocentrism, selective memory, and rossy retrospection. There are games coming out constantly this generation in all shapes and sizes and I don't understand how people don't see that.

To illistrate my point:

The PS4 has averaged 35 games a month since it's release compared to 31 games for the PS2 and 26 games for the PS3.

Game development is fine, and more importantly has become far more democratized.

To be fair the original Crysis literally went viral due to it's pretty graphics and that *did* push sales on PC, same thing happened when they made the first  FarCry.
Then Crytek started to pander to Consoles and their sales and popularity seemed to go backwards.

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Basically, the video game market has matured, the market has consolidated, the same thing happened to the film industry years ago where studio's closed and consolidated and again with the music industry.

Developers/Publishers will continue to make games with minimal risk and the greatest financial return, they are business's and not charities.
If they don't have the return the publisher/developers needs/wants then they get closed and that talent distributed elsewhere.

The bright spot is the PC which allows for pretty much everyone and their dog to build a game and get seen on Steam, which if you care about the industry, you should try and support... As one day, if their game is a success they might get picked up and released on console. - It happens more often than you think too!

This is why I'm re-evaluating what kind of game market I want to eventually enter. I'm going to university learning all these high end 3d techniques but I don't think it's necessary and it's too costly to implement these aspects into gaming. No to mention, photogrammetry is going to put a lot of 3D realist jobs out of the window. Mobile is looking to be really great choices to eventually start developing games on for me. There's lots of money to be made, graphics aren't in high regard, and it's easy to program games for.

Development will become cheaper the future as computers and cameras begin taking place of human jobs but I don't think that'll happen even within the next 10 or 20 years.

Allot of 3D techniques actually reduce development time, for many of them, that is the entire point of it existing in the first place.

Photogrammetry still requires artists to clean up textures, modellers to optimize and improve models, programmers to write shader code to simulate effects like wet cloth and lighting.
Photogrammetry is just another tool that developers can use to build their games.
Will it take away jobs? Perhaps. But it might not either.

Mobile is a good place to start though, but don't ignore the PC by jumping into mobile, sometimes it is the PC that makes the mobile game successfull.